Roles and responsibilities of leaders
Management and leadership go hand in hand for effective running of activities and processes within the organization. As brilliantly put by many authors, success can never be achieved in any organization without the engagement of a good leader who is able to restructure, solve problems and guide other employees within their organizations. Previous it has been strongly suggested that leadership and management approaches within an organization affect the way service provision is delivered and eventually the performance and success within the organization.
Excellency in leadership always starts with the leader and the way he treats those under his management, communication is the most crucial and delegation of power to the rest of the members of the organization, responsibilities should be entrusted to the rest of the staff in the organization so that they can always be part of the solution to matters pertaining the organization. (Newstrom, 1997)
The term leadership entails the motivation of people or a team in order to achieve certain organizational goals and objectives. One of the main roles for leaders is to influence the people they lead through incentives, promotions, discipline, dynamics and teamwork with the aim of attaining and maintaining a healthy organizational culture. Leaders have the responsibility of being participative, supportive, directive and more importantly achievement adjusted with a view to defining certain tasks for their followers (Newstrom, 1997). Many organizations require that their leaders design work agenda for their followers and get concerned with their aspirations, feelings, achievements, problems and outside environment in order to centre all interests to the organization.
For a perfectly healthy organization, the leader has to be the servant of the workers in the sense that, he always listens to the workers and do as they want the work done because usually they are the people who are at the ground and they tend to understand the organization better than the leader, so its up to the leader to see that he communicates perfectly with his staff in matters pertaining enhancement of the organization. (Conger and Pearce, 2003)
In every organization, leadership is crucial for maintaining a healthy organizational culture within itself. The main role that a leader is entitled to undertake is to plan, control and direct other individuals to perform specific tasks within the organization. Organizational culture usually entail the –lets work together- spirit whereby the organization behaves like a ‘society’ where there are values, norms and rules which all individuals adhere to. Since these are people who work together under the guidance of their leaders, certain beliefs are entrenched in their lives which give birth to encouragement and enthusiasm thus a healthy organizational culture. Leaders therefore utilize a healthy organizational culture to balance work life chores in order to achieve the best form the employees. (Conger and Pearce, 2003)
The most important and powerful resources within any organization are the leaders. These are the people who are responsible for influencing the way the organizational culture and climate is modeled. They either create good or bad working environments and thus they are able to determine the development agenda for the organization (Newstrom, 1997). Good management culture starts with a good understanding of effective communication i.e. politeness and patience; Previous research has indicated that employees tend to work better when cherished up by leaders who are up to the task. However, due to diversity, lack of training, lack of motivation, diversification among today’s leaders and lack of definite systems to govern leadership today, there has been slow improvement and many organizations have been failed by their leaders.
Reference
Conger, J.A., and Pearce, C.L. (2003): Shared Leadership: Reframing the Hows and Whys of Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
Newstrom, W. (1997): Organizational Behavior; Human Behavior at Work; New York: McGraw-Hill
