Strategic Leadership
Strategic leader is any person or an individual inside a firm who carries
off the full responsibility for the effective and efficient performance of
capital, labor or the parts of the firm.
The ability that a leader has in order to shape the decisions of an
organization or a particular firm and deliver great values over a period of
time not personally but also by inspiration as well as proper management of the
people and the whole firm is called strategic leadership in simpler terms. One of
the most important factor of strategic leadership would be the vision as well
as the shared values. Both of these allows and enables employees to make
decision that does not require monitoring and control mechanisms in a formal
way. This will allow the leader gain more time and greater capacity to focus on
other issues of the firm. (Rowe G.,
Nejad M.H., 2009)
Identify two interesting similarities and two
differences between the 5 Elements of Successful and Effective Strategic Leadership
Model and the Transcendent Leadership model.
5 elements of Successful and Effective
Strategic Leadership Model
This model has 5 key elements to it. They are:
1. Developing
and communicating the organizational purpose: According to this, forming an organizational purpose
and delivering it to each and every part of the organization is one of the prime
tasks of the leader.
2. Managing
human resources and organizational decisions: a leader is the one to select, nurture, develop the key
talents of the employees, motivate them, make them feel at home as well as make
them feel like they belong to the firm so that they can give their hundred
percent that will help to bind the organization together.
3. Setting
ethical standards: The standards
of CSR as well as the proper monitoring of the ethical values of the firm are
also one of the major responsibilities of the leader.
4. Defining
and delivering to the stakeholders: good relationship of trust and comfort should always be maintained by
the leaders in both inside and outside the organizational context.
5. Sustaining
competitive advantage over time: Based on this element, the competitive advantages as well as the main
core plus point of the firm has to be safeguarded and preserved by the leader.
Transcendent leadership includes 3 elements and they are:
1. Leadership
of Self: one needs to be
self-aware, self-regulated and develop positive human resource strengths that
has a possibility of enhancing the performance of the firm.
2. Leadership
of Others: here, the
relationship with the leaders and the followers must be maintained by adopting
different leadership styles that fits perfectly with the situation where the
leader has to lead the other people through direct or indirect close contacts.
3.
Leadership of organization: It focuses on the non-human elements such
as strategy, structures, rules, procedures, etc. where one has to interpret the
changes and the external environments and encourage learning in the firm. (Crossan, M., Vera, D and Nanjad, L., 2008)
Similarities between both models are listed below:
1. The stakeholders benefit by both these models
because they get to have good inside and outside relationship from the
organization’s side as listed in both the models.
2. The day to day change that occurs in the
environment is coped up and managed by both models by adapting to the changing
environment that helps firms sustain their competitive advantage even under
pressure and over a period of time.
Now, differences in these two
models are:
1. The lynch model considers human resources as
their top most priority where the customers are given a lot of attention with
respect to the employees of the firm as well. This model suggests that the
leader is responsible to select, nurture, develop the key talents of the
employees, motivate them, make them feel at home as well as make them feel like
they belong to the firm so that they can give their hundred percent that will
help to bind the organization together. But, the transcendent leadership model
focuses on organizational goals, rules, procedures, strategies etc that will
help the organization sustain for longer period of time.
2. The lynch model focuses more on leadership of
the organization but the transcendent model focuses on organizational
leadership as well as leadership of self.
CASE STUDY- JEFF BEZOS
I would
describe Jeff Bezo’s strategic leadership style as being very much aligned
towards the lynch model because of the following reasons:
As
per the 1st element of developing and communicating the
organizational purpose, Mr. Bezo tells in his interview with Harvard Business
Review that he does interviews so that their customers might get a chance to
understand what makes them tick and how they operate and what their principles
are so that the customers can actually know who they are involved with. This truly
resembles the development and communication of the organizational purpose.
As
per the 2nd element of managing human resources and organizational
decisions, they are more of a human focused in nature. They put their customers
first by identifying what is best for the customers and the employees. They select
people who think about how to invent on the behalf of the customers. They consider
it fun and that too intensely fun!
As
per 3rd element of setting ethical standards, they do the price
elasticity studies and everything and when the answer says to increase the
prices, they simply don’t because they want to keep their customers charged
with lowest rate possible. They believe in doing meaningful things like Kindle,
Amazon web services, etc. they are alwas clear about what they advertise and
they do not use deception to cover up their shortcomings and they definitely do
not keep their customers on a dark side.
Defining
and delivering to the stakeholders is also one of the main concerns followed by
the firm as they believe in satisfying their customers fully that will be
creating a loyal customer base very strong and they can earn the trust . after
they do that, it will automatically maximize the free cash flow over the long
term. They tend to take work in an intensely fun way by inventing on behalf of
the customers.
Sustaining
competitive advantage over time is also resembled by wanting to sustain
themselves in a very secure position in a long run by doing whats best for the
customers. So, they are trying to keep a trust worthy and loyal customer base
as their competitive advantage over time.
There is evidence that he demonstrates all
the characteristics of the lynch model as I have explained above with evidences
and his sayings.
However, he does not resemble much of the transcendent
model as there is leadership for others like their stakeholders and mainly to
the customers but there is no leadership for self. I did not even see much
initiation towards the leadership for the organization. They are more of human
focused people.
References
Crossan, M., Vera, D and Nanjad, L. (2008)
Transcedent Leadership: strategic leadership in dynamic environments, The
Leadership Quarterly, Volume 19, Issue 5, October 2008, Pages 569-581
Glenn Rowe, Mehdi Hossein Nejad, http://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/leadership/strategic-leadership-short-term-stability-and-long-term-viability#.Urb8ANJDvEQ,
accessed on 8th December 2013
Lynch, R., (2009) Strategic Management, 5th
Edition, Prentice Hall, Chapter 16, pp619
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