Word count: 2,497 words

Table of Contents

Introduction............................................................................................................................3

The leadership role.................................................................................................................3

Analyse the different roles of managers and leaders.........................................................3

What are the key responsibilities of a leader?....................................................................4

How does a leader maintain integrity, fairness and consistency?......................................5

Leadership Styles...................................................................................................................6

Critically discuss leadership styles which are suited to managing teams with particular
reference to Action Centred Leadership and Situational leadership..................................6

Identify development activities that will improve your performance in managing with
cultural sensitivity..............................................................................................................7

Building an effective team.....................................................................................................8

Conclusion.............................................................................................................................9

Reference.............................................................................................................................10
Introduction

Leadership plays an important role in the success of a business and is different from
management. There are a lot of theories studied on leadership styles which propose that
each business model require a specific leadership style. This paper will apply theories of
leadership and management to evaluate the working environment of a retail store with a
diverse workforce and give recommendations for a line manager regarding to leadership
and management issues.

The leadership role

Leadership is ability of creating vision and mission of an organization, inspiring all

members to feel a strong commitment towards that vision and mission, doing and
providing teamwork (Binney et. Al, 2005). Leadership is a social process which incurs
between people in an organization in a specific environment and time.

Analyse the different roles of managers and leaders

Leadership and management are both involved personnel in an organization but two
concepts are different; and manager and leader have different roles. According to Kotter
(1987), management involves daily tasks and leadership is related to organizational
change. For example, in a retail store, daily tasks such as stocking, selling, and accounting
should be managed on timely basis. Leadership is about to deal with the change that a store
needs to adapt in changing environment in which tasks are becoming increasingly
automated. Managers do planning, budgeting, operating and monitoring while leaders set
direction and vision. Fayol (1949) suggested 5 basic functions of management as to ‘plan’,
to ‘organise’, to ‘coordinate’, to ‘command’ and to ‘control’. In the meanwhile, leadership
related to developing a vision, supporting and motivating people to achieve organization’s
objectives (Kotter 2001).

Because of differences in nature of management and leadership, they required different

characteristics of people. Zaleznick (1977) stated that managers solve problems, are
unemotional and seek to limit choices, while leaders have more same characteristics as
artists, or other creative thinkers such as emotional, involving and expand problems.
Managers are responsible for maintaining the stability, authority, and monitoring staffs’
jobs, leaders encourage change, new approaches, and perceive people’s motivation. Yukl
(1989) also supported this concept that main responsibility of managers is to ensure
smooth operation process, and leaders have long-term view so they promote new functions
and change. The manager asks how and when while the leader asks what and why, and the
manager has his eye always on the bottom line, while the leader has his eye on the horizon
(Bennis, 1998). Bennis also defined managers as administers and leaders as innovators.
Managers involve maintaining systems and structure and leaders focus on developing
people and vision. Therefore, management is based on control and regulation, while
leadership inspires trust between people. Therefore, the top managers are considered to
just maintain the organizations, the leaders are viewed as to have the ability to make a
thorough change in an organization. Therefore, differentiating management and leadership
is important despite that they share some similarities. Their approach to staff relation is the
biggest difference. Manager use formal power to control people, whereas leaders use their
vision to inspire followers.

Modern business environment is changing fast, so it is necessary for every company to

have effective management and leadership when seeking for success (Kotterman, 2006).
Leadership and management should be complementary each other in order to enhance
quality of them. Vision of leaders would be successfully realized with the support of
effective managers. In addition, some modern views proposed that in practice, the terms
leader and manager tend to be used interchangeably. Both the terms ‘leadership’ and
‘management’ have their roots in people, goal setting and influence therefore it is possible
that, over time, the two meanings have become blended.

What are the key responsibilities of a leader?

Northouse (2010) defined ‘what leaders do and how they act’ in many situations, and in
general, leaders’ responsibilities include creating organization’s vision, communicating the
vision, inspiration and motivation, setting objectives and process to achieve them,
developing and maintaining organization’s culture.

A leader must get people to work together in order to achieve common goals. This is more
difficult in the environment of diverse workforce including lots of part-time contracts like
in a retail store. First and foremost, the leader must provide meaning and purpose of the
business by creates the ‘vision’ of what the organization can achieve. Objectives should be
set out in order to make the vision a reality. Once organization’s vision has been defined, it
is important to effectively communicate that vision internally and externally. The
workforce needs to know what the organization want to achieve in the long term. Daily
activities relate to that long-term vision should be explained to staff. The leader must give
the direction of what to do to employees. Vision must be ccommunicated internally and
externally.

Motivating and empowering people are also important responsibility of the leader. The
leader gives out the general idea and motivates staff to complete specific tasks and reach
objectives. Delegating some of important duties, sharing knowledge and skills are effective
ways to inspire employees to give their best to objectives. The leader is also responsible
for the development and sustainability of the organization’s culture. The leader also needs
to create an environment in which employees perceive and support the values and beliefs
of the organization. This is a challenge in diverse working environment where there are
mostly part-time employees like a retail store. The leader needs to have a well-prepared
training framework to give to each new staff. The training materials include simply and
clear description of organization’s culture and vision, not just process of daily tasks.

According to O’Neill (2000), leadership functions include to provide direction for the
organisation as a whole, to define the direction and purpose of the organisation, to create
the right structure and culture to achieve objectives, to build successful teams, to
communicate key objectives, to get the strategy and policy right, and to release the
corporate spirit.

How does a leader maintain integrity, fairness and consistency?

Integrity, fairness and consistency are fundamental principles which every organization
should implement irrespective of its type of business. The leader needs to be straight-
forward and neutral in managerial decision making. The common benefit of the all
employees should be considered along with the interests of the customers and
stakeholders. The integrity and fairness should be implemented with consistency so that all
employees and stakeholders have a feeling of equality.

In order to achieve the integrity, the leader must always tell the truth and consider what is
morally right. He/she needs to act ethically with employees, suppliers, customers, and
other leaders. The fairness just could be implemented by making decisions based on the
facts available and decision makers don’t let their personal alliances or prejudices have
influence on them. To maintain consistency, the leader must stick to principles, rules, and
codes of practice, become a role model for best practice. The leader should always bear in
mind that treating individuals and teams alike in similar circumstances is very important.
Leadership Styles

Critically discuss leadership styles which are suited to managing teams with particular
reference to Action Centred Leadership and Situational leadership.

Action-Centred Leadership

Adair (1973) developed a model with 3 circles of task, team and individual that the leader
should consider when structuring a team (Figure below).

One circle is related to task which suggest that firstly, the leader define the task and create
an action plan to achieve the task. Then resources needed such as people, processes, tools
etc. will be identified, responsibilities will be allocated, standards for the work will be set,
and finally, the leader needs to plan the monitoring and evaluation. The tasks should be
clear and practical and shared by all members in order to form a successful team. The task
is what brings the team members together.

One circle is related to a team of people performing the task which seems to only be
achieved if all members of the team work together. Therefore, the leader must understand
the team, and facilitate good communications within the team. The leader also needs to
identify team training and development needs of staff. The other circle is related to
individual member of the team involved in the task. The leader will assign tasks to team
members according to their skills and abilities, and provide training to develop individual's
capabilities. While the team will take on a life of its own, individuals do not lose their own
identity so their needs as people must continue to be met.

The successful leader is a person with ability to keep 3 circles above in balance.
Sometimes, there would be imbalance among the three elements; for example, pressure on
time and resources will lead to pressure on a team to concentrate on the task. Other case is
spending much time on creating a positive team spirit, ignoring the task which could make
the team lose its focus through lack of achievement.

In a retail store with almost part-time staff and automated working place, beside well-
defined tasks and goals, the leader should pay attention to individual’s need to create
interesting work environment. If employees are interested in the work, they will stay with
the business longer, which help to increase the effectiveness of the business processes.

Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership

Hersey and Blanchard first introduced situational leadership model in 1969 which stated
that leadership depends on specific situations, and no single leadership style can be fit all.
In other words, when tasks are different, then each type of task needs a different leadership
style. The two factors of this theory include leadership style and the maturity level of those
being led. There are four behaviours of leadership styles including: Telling, Selling,
Participating and Delegating. “Telling” style means one way flow of information from
leader to staff. In the "selling", there is two-way communication but the leading role is
obvious. The leader tries to convince the group’s members to implement targeted tasks. In
"Participating" leadership style, all members of group democratically share decision
making right. In this approach, building human relations is more important than achieving
objectives. The fourth style is "delegating" which assigns tasks to individual, the leader
just monitor the ones in charge of the tasks.

Regarding to maturity level, there are four levels including: basic incompetence or
unwillingness in doing the task, inability to do the task but willing to do so, competent to
do the task but do not think they can, and the last group of willing and able to do the task.
Each type of task implies a different maturity level, and hence requires different leadership
style. In retail store with high automatic level, the tasks are standardised and not require
much decision making. A line manager want to make better working environment, he/she
can apply “selling” behaviour in order to get understanding between the manager and staff.

Identify development activities that will improve your performance in managing with
cultural sensitivity.

Cultural sensitivity means that leaders are aware of cultural differences; and they know
that those differences have an effect on values, learning, and behaviour of members in the
team (Bellisario, 2016). A manager must have ability to understand, and effectively
interact and work with people from different cultures. Activities could be developed to
improve the manager’s performance related to communication, team-building, time use,
and schedules.

In order to have effective team work, it is critical to have accurate and prompt
communication. People from different cultures will respond differently to news so the way
of communication needs to be customized. Developing an effective cross-cultural team-
building will help to exploit potential advantages of cultural diversity in the workplace.
Perception of time regarding to work-life balance, overtime in work is different from
culture to culture, so the leader also need to understand this matter to apply in
management. Some cultures use wildly different calendars to determine New Year or
specific holy days, and people will require time off to observe their holidays. Managers
should consider this factor while developing working schedules.

Building an effective team

In order to have a high performing team, the team members need to understand its shared
goals and objectives, and organisational direction. Shared purposes will inspire staff to
work in an enthusiastic way. Clear communication is effective mean to convey the
message, and sometimes the leader can take part in the task and offering close supervision.
First step is to create a solid shared purpose of what your team want to achieve. The
purpose is the driving force because when you know and understand the “why”, you’ll be
more motivated to focus on the “how” to realize the purpose. For service industry like
retail store, the leader could choose the purpose of “maximize customers’ satisfaction”.
This needs to be reminded to team members on a regular basis so that everyone knows it
by heart. When all employees perceive that goals, they know that service quality decides
customers’ satisfaction, as a result, they will try to improve service quality.

In diverse working environment, the culture, values and ethics of employees are various. It
is essential for successful team to have the respect of specific traits of each individual
among group of members in order to avoid conflicts between them. The leader should
develop guidelines and policies on diversity, regulate what is acceptable and ethical
behaviour in the workplace. The leader also could express that he/she values the diversity
by acknowledging and celebrating it. Understanding culture of original and how it shapes
the leader’s behaviours is also an important part of being culturally aware. The deeper
understanding of his/her culture could provide insight when learning about other cultures.
Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene Theory (also known as Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory)
would give the answer to question “How do You Motivate Employees?” The theory
includes two aspects: to eliminate the factors of dissatisfaction and create conditions for
job satisfaction which Herzberg argued that people take into those conditions when they
are motivated. In order to get rid of the dissatisfaction, the leader needs to fix obsolete
company policies; to provide effective and caring supervision; to ensure that wages are
competitive, etc. Regarding to create conditions for job satisfaction, the leader needs to
equally provide opportunities for achievement, to recognise staff’s contributions, to assign
responsibilities to individuals, and to give employees chances of promotions.

Conclusion

Leadership and management are different but complementary each other and both have
ultimate purpose to achieve organization’s common objectives. The leader is in charge of
creating and communicating organization’s vision, setting objectives and process to
achieve them, inspiring and motivating employees, and developing and maintaining
organization’s culture. In order to have sustainable success in business, the leader must
maintain integrity, fairness and consistency. According to Action-Centred Leadership, the
leader should keep balance among three circles of task, team and individual to create
interesting working environment and inspire employees. Applying Hersey-Blanchard
Situational Leadership, “selling” behaviour is suitable for the manager in retail industry to
manage the team. The leader could also apply Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory gain high
satisfactory among members which in turn helps to build an effective team.
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