Leadership And Change Management At Tesco

Leaders are born, not made’. Discuss the statement with reference to leadership framework currently I use in organisations.

Leader is a person who persuades a group of people towards the achievement of a goal. So, leader bas upon 3p’s like person, people and purpose. They are more intelligent energetic people who are initiative, energetic people who are initiative, ambitious and willing to take responsibility. They may not always make the right decision, but they are confident in the decisions that they make. A leader is one who goes first and leads by example, so other bodies motivated to follow him. As a leader, a person must have an inherent commitment to the goal that he will struggle to achieve it even if nobody follows him!

Leaders are Born Not Made.

Are leaders are born not made? It is an age-old question that has been on the minds of many throughout history. The rationale behind this executive summary is to prove that the statement “leaders are born, not made” but only to a certain extent. I want to discuss this statement with references either leaders are made or born.

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According to lockhart Ecerett leaders are those who have abilities to guides or inspires to other, they always make right decision and they know at what time and what place they take decision. Leaders recognized not chosen so we can say leaders have hidden qualities those other don’t have. They have intangible characteristic which we can’t explain, but we can see it when we recognize it. http://blogs.computerworld.com/node/3914

Great Leaders are Made, Not Born

Some time more educated and motivated persons don’t know how to lead others. So they don’t do very well in them and they don’t assume leadership positions. So they and other person assume that they were not born leader by birth. Any country, any organization even a family need a good leader then families can become dysfunctional. But research shows that leaders depends less on some innate trait you are born with, and much more on exact principles that anyone can follow.

Here i would like to add an example of a greatest military leader General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. He becomes the U.S. Air Force’s second Chief of Staff. He says that he was dismissed from the Academy for lack of leadership ability at the end of his first year. He took note and applied himself and follow the leadership roles and he become very successful leader and he continued to develop himself afterwards.

Now question is that what are the principles you must follow to become successful leader. These are eight laws of leadership which are looking very easy but you see, they are not always so easy to follow.

Maintain absolute integrity.

Know your stuff.

Declare your expectations.

Show uncommon commitment.

Expect positive results.

Take care of your people or customers.

Put duty before self.

Get out in front.

Leadership

“Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen” (Michael D. Noonan).1. In simple words we can say leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to achieve a common goal. “Contrary to the myth that only a lucky few can ever decipher the mystery of leadership, our research has shown us that leadership is an observable, learnable set of practices…. it’s a process ordinary people use when they’re bringing forth the best from themselves and others. Liberate the leader in understandable and universal process.” James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner.2

Background of Tesco

I would like to discuss leadership framework by giving the reference of well known Tesco Company. Tesco is the biggest retailer with over 2,200 stores. That is world’s third biggest grocery retailer and diversified into banking, insurance and other areas. About 280,000 employees are working in UK and over460, 000 all over the world. The main key of success of continuous growth of Tesco is better knowledge, skills and job satisfaction of employees. The mission statement is to “creating value for customers to earn their lifetime trustworthiness” and the vision of the company is to focus on customers and the company’s people. Objectives of the company are (1) growth in sales, returns and profits, (2) by providing quality products and services we can satisfy the customer and gain their loyalty, and (3) satisfy its shareholders/stakeholders (Tesco Annual Report, 2009; Tesco Annual Report, 2008).

Current Models and theories of leadership applicable in Tesco

Leadership Trait Theory

The words of John Adair who is the most influential leadership gurus, leader needs to exhibit certain attributes, characteristics and qualities in order to effectively perform their duties. These are:

Group Influence-To achieve desired goal or objectives a leader must generate willingness in Tesco.

Command- Tesco leader have command upon quick decision as on demand.

Coolness- leader composed under testing or trying conditions.

Judgment- good judgment.

Trait theories are regarding to personality and physical traits characteristics. The trait approach is considered too simplistic as a justification of the complex leadership phenomenon.

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Transformational Leadership Theory (Tesco)

Tesco is measured as the most successful retail company in the United Kingdom. The achievement of Tesco was herald by the appointment of Terry Leahy as the Chief Executive Officer. His aim for the company to become more customer-focused and to develop the company’s workforce. According to his point of view, there are four things that a leader must provide to his workers.

A job that is interesting to do

A chance to get on in life

To be treated with respect

A boss who is some help and not their biggest problem

Leadership Model: Bases of Power

One of the most popular models of leadership is bases of power. In 1959 French and Raven introduced the five bases of power model. Terry Leahy’s is the CEO of Tesco. He is most famous leader among their followers and he have three powers like legitimate power, expert power and referent power among five power like coercive power, reward power, expert power, legitimate power and referent power. Leahy achieved legitimate power when he becomes CEO of Tesco. By this power he was in able to lead the company people, as well as he have expert power like scientific knowledge, skills, quick decision maker, and good communication and so on. Referent power is leader charisma and it is based on leader’s respect and attraction upon his followers. Leahy is very famous leader among his team.

Leadership Mode: Action-Cantered Leadership

Most famous guru of leadership is John Adair he is the world’s first Professor of leadership Studies at the University of surrey and he work hard for the development of leadership. He is well known for the Action Centred Leadership’ (ACL) model of leadership. Action Centred Leadership model have three main points mention below.

Task achievement

Team maintaining and building

Individual development

Action-Centred leadership is not suitable for the modern organizations because it is based on hierarchical structure of the organization that is suitable for those organizations that are highly authoritarian.

Current and Future Requirements of Tesco

Current Requirements of Tesco

Human resource are playing important role in development of an organization in today highly competitive business environment. Company’s people are worth and they have completive edge. Now a day for employee motivation people are conceder business partner in this since they work hard, more participative, they feel more powerful and they feel more satisfaction in organization. Employee empowerment helpful in quick decision, trust, faster changes and improve better communication horizontally and vertically.

Development of participative management skills in leaders is the most important requirement of Tesco and they should possess the necessary skills in order for them to practice participative leadership appropriately. Leaders must hold on communication, flexibility, synergy, cooperation, arbitration, conflict declaration, interest and concern.

Future requirements of Tesco

Leader must be a director, he must earn the trust of his followers, and he must be kind hope and optimism and must be result driven. Leader should not focus on present circumstances but also long term planning, long term mission and vision in his mind, and shear their vision with their followers, they should get their trust and loyalty because up till your follower are not satisfied and not loyal with you and you organization you can’t survive and you can’t achieve long-term goals of an organization.

Development of leadership

For the leadership development provide learning opportunities to employees and must recognise that is primary place to learn more over outside the organization they should also provide facilities to shear their knowledge and learn more and more. The company should hair educated and experience employees, and give facility to learn and understand those countries where Tesco is operating. The organization must ha a Business Leadership Development institute within the organization under HRM department to trained employees.

Business Leadership Development should use systematic ways do development of leaders and they should provides career opportunities.

Either training is necessary for business development?

It is necessary for growth of Tesco to select right people, in the right place at the right time, and trained them according to the demand of time. What are the requirements for workforce planning?

New setup required new staff with perfect knowledge about customer profiles.

Different type of skilled employee required in-store and non-stores based posts.

Wide-ranging skilled employee performs better then less skilled employees.

Tesco have good check and balance upon the efficiency of employees to look forward to possible skills shortages. Tesco provide opportunity of training to their employee and employee can apply for training on annual basses. The leadership framework of Tesco focus on three key themes; focus on customer, work with others and personal behaviour. These three themes are very helpful to assessment of framework and also helpful to identify employees with the probable to be the, best leaders of the future. Employee feel gaps between their efficiency to fulfil this gaps employees and line managers have training opportunity.

So, several benefits for employees when they get training like,

Their sense of ownership increases in the business.

They can perform better job than before and they can easily understand customer’s problem and able to solve them.

By getting new skills and training they are more effective in their role.

Tesco provide training by two flexible ways on-the-job training and off-the-job training. On-the-job training is very suitable for employees because it is relevant and they understand easily and they feel part of the team. As well as this way is also suitable for company because it is cheaper and easy to manage. These methods are use.

By shadow training.

Through coaching of trainee’s problems in job.

Monitoring through experienced person.

By giving full responsibility for a job on a temporary basis.

Off-the-job is also suitable way for training in specific new skills like presentation skills etc.

Qualities required of people in leadership position

Many debates upon either leader are mad or born. But I think true leader is that how ignore such arguments and always in a try to improve his qualities which are very important to become a successful leader. A good leader should be an ability to make and select easier way for people who want to follow him. Leader should have at least five leadership qualities. These qualities are leader should be

Honesty

Forward -looking

Competent

Inspiring

Intelligent

These all qualities should be in a leader, that is not an easy task but with practice you can become more inspiring, honest and competent. As you are honest with your follower you can make a good team, as you are forward-looking you can take quick and good decisions, as you are more competent so you have edge upon your competitor, as you are inspiring you will upon your followers and as you are more intelligent so you will do every work efficiently.

One Quality of leadership is Honesty

Everybody wants his leader should be very honest, some time they start their career because they think their leader is honest because of the authority of their position. Some time leaders miss an opportunity to show honesty is in conduct mistake Mostly leaders try new things and change the idea which are not working and sometime leader avoid failure and they don’t want to admit when something is wrong.

Leadership as a Forward-looking

Forward-looking is bass on where you are now and where you want to go. Up till you don’t communicate actively with people where you want to go nobody will listen you. If you don’t prove that you are forward-looking against people, so you should suffer following problems.

You don’t have a forward-looking vision.

You can’t share vision with others what you have.

So when you don’t have vision for future obviously you sped lot of time today because you don’t have idea of tomorrow and up till you can’t think about future you can’t become a good planer and strategist.

Conclusion

According to my point of view people can learn to become leaders by intent on improving particular leadership skills, which they are by birth leadership abilities then others. No dugout some abilities are GOD gifted just like a good singer have a good voice by birth, when he make practice, so he more and more polish his voice and he become perfect singer. So we can say practice makes perfect. If we follow the law of leadership and practice on it we become a successful leader.