Link between strategic management and leadership

In this assignment it’s going to be discussed about the strategic management and leadership. It will be analyzed the relationship between the strategic management and leadership. The organization which will use to describe the link between strategic management and leadership is TESCO and it will discuss about the impact of strategic management and leadership on the organization and how they work.

LINK BETWEEN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP:

Strategic management:

According to Neil Ritson “Strategic management is the organised development of the resources of the functional areas which are financial , manufacturing , marketing , technological , manpower etc, in the pursuit of its objective it is the use of all the entity resources, It is a set of policies adopted by senior management, which guides the scope and direction of the entity. It takes into account the environment in which the company operates”. (Neil Riston, 2008)

Desired objective

Strategy

Development of resources

rereresources

So simply strategic management works in the organization according to their mission statement and find methods to achieve certain goals through the proper utilization of their resources.

LEADERSHIP:

In Audrina words a leadership is when you guide the organization into a result that your group has agreed upon. You and the rest of the team have a defined understanding to determine the ability and to articulate visions and goals. Leadership is said seen just as a facet of successful manager. It usually works on precedence for strategic planning and management and long-term success. (Audrina Majella, 2008)

Leadership is a skill which a person develop through the experience for example in

Tesco general sales assistant after having experience become the team leader they never appoint a team leader straight away because leadership you learn through experience and strategic management through courses and trainings.

1.1.3 LINK BETWEEN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP:

A leadership is the bridge between strategic management and their target .it’s because of a leadership that organization gets their desired tasks and targets

Management is responsible for people and resources in a unit according to rules or values that have already been set while the leadership set a direction to the people in group.

We can understand the link between strategic management and leadership by this example that good leadership and effective management are always the of success in any organization so both of these are the skills which going side by side without management a good leadership can only satisfy for the time being not in a long term same as an effective management is nothing without the good leadership.

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When great leadership is jointed with effective management, you are able to set a direction and be able to allocate the resources the way you want. Not only that, you will achieve your goal the way you have thought and the way you want to achieve.

1.2 Analyse the impact of management and leadership styles on strategic decision:

In last topic it’s been discussed that what is the connection between management and leadership and now we are going to describe by practical experience that how does they work and how both of them can put impact on strategic decision. First I am going to start with my own work experience in Tesco that how I analysed these two terms out there.

1.2.1 Tesco leadership and Management

Now it starts from my own experience and then tries to analyze the role of management and leadership and what is the impact on strategic decisions.

I use to work in Tesco express hackney London as a customer sales assistant, we almost twenty sales persons are working at the time in my shift pattern and I am working in a grocery section now we see that Tesco is been divided in sections which are GROCERY , FRESH , PRODUCE , FROZEN. the team leader is much active and expert than others and he can work almost in every department of his section so the team leader is responsible for to make sure that work done by the sales assistants is perfect for example (task finished, nice face up, no gaps)

If tasks are not assigned in groups and leaders one only manager is unable to handle all stuff. the store manager who responsible for the whole it can easily understand that store manager has no need to keep an eye on everyone .In this case study it is noticed that all the key peoples and their role within the organization now it can easily understand that who are the leaders and who are the policy makers and which are the people who work in groups and a group representative is the leader who is responsible of the performance of the group and each person in the group individually.

Now it will describe with the examples that how leadership and management work together.

1.2.2 Example: For example this is the goal of Tesco to satisfy the customer and be the no one seller in super market in the sense of sales and extending their business around now we talk about individual stores like the place where I am working the task or target which is set by the management about the annual sale of the store by using the limited resources like the work force , incentives and overtime utilization for exp 20 peoples are working in grocery department it’s been planned by the management that if 2o peoples work they should finish their task in limited time so they can get the required sale now this is the leadership quality to get the work from these specific group of peoples in required timing now this will be the real test of the leaders ability if they use these twenty peoples how leader will utilize them so task should be done in time.

1.2..3 Example 2: Now it will understand with another example that like in Tesco hackney where I used to work its been planned by the management that they should cut the hours specially overtime was being utilized at a high pace so first thing they did straight away they left people calling the overtime and that was the toughest period for the leaders to finish the task in time as there was no more overtime any more so what they did they start doing changes for exp before in ware house only two peoples were working and they use to spend almost whole night in warehouse to break down the delivery and other regarding things .

Now they asked everyone on shop floor to come back and give them 10 to 15 minutes by this way within a half hour work was done in warehouse and one the delivery is been break down than this is more easy for the shop floor worker to finish because before we were just passing time on the shop floor by walking around and chatting now they utilized properly that time and left no gap for the replenishes to waste time Assign us the different tasks and allocate time that u suppose to do it in that required time and if you were not able to do it than why someone else is able to do it.

1.3 How leadership styles can be adopted to different situation

Now we will see that which are the styles organizations use to adopt in different situations for example Tesco is using more than one leadership styles like democratic, participative and situational as well.

There are some examples of the different situation in the organization and how to handle these situations with different styles to get their desired task.

1.3.2 Leading from the front: This is the type in which leader is on top as his performance is the one which make difference for example the place I am working Tesco our team leader jerry even he is not as young we are but still he is more efficient than us. This is the example of transformational leadership style in which people follow the person who inspires them.

1.3.3 Setting examples: leadership is the example for others as they take a lesson from the leader for example if there is anything broken on shop floor or any rubbish out there the manager or leader himself will clean it and when others see that if being a manger he is going to do this then why not us and there are many examples like this so this is the quiet leadership style in which action speaks more than words

1.3.4 Being social and friendly: this is the style of leadership which put a big impact for example our section manager in Tesco is every time so friendly to us and discuss many other affairs and when we are on shop floor and after seven we not supposed to work but some of guys like me use to stay just because of him because he is asking for favour this is the type of charismatic leadership style

1.3.5 Assigning task according to ability: this is the situation in which we adopt this style for example most of the time in Tesco I used to work in grocery department in pickles , oil and herbs section and the time which other take four hours to do i can do in two hours. So my manager or leader will prefer me to do this task same as there are many guys who are expert in specific field.

1.3.6 Participative: this style is been adopted in the situation in which everyone participate to make the decisions for example democratic leadership is the good example of this style in which each one has the equal opportunity to make decision.

1.3.7 Situational: at this time a leader acts according to the situation for example in Tesco leader knows which the product is at that time running more frequently in store so he will decide to utilize his budget by bringing more stuff in to the back stock.

Conclusion:

Here we have made a conclusion that good leadership is nothing without the effective management both these terms are so important for each other for example if we consider a organization which has the management but not a good leader whatever best strategy made by the management until there is no one who can actually practically take the work from is not effective same likely if there is a good leadership but not the strategic management which actually analyse the situation resources suitability and feasibility than even good leadership is useless.

Role of strategic management is much bigger than leadership and it can be said that leadership is involved to get the strategic goal defined on the behalf of company owner or share holder

Task 2

Management and leadership theories in the organization:

Leadership is the ability of an individual to influence, motivate and enable others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organization. (House et al, 1999, pg184) There are many leadership theories which are applicable in different organization under the different situation. These theories have been categorised in form of Leaders and followers, Descriptive and prescriptive, universal and contingency theory.

By differentiating the theories in these categories it is easy to understand the type of the theories, either theory is based on leader or followers there are the characteristic which differentiate the actions. Most of the theories are based on the leaders without any interaction to the followers. Another way to differentiate theories is to understand descriptive in which a leader use to do routine work and followers follow him while in prescriptive a leader has to put efforts to get the result by motivating . Universal theories are used in every situation, weather it is descriptive or prescriptive while contingency theories are only used in specific conditions.

Leadership is a process in which a leader guides a specific group of a people to achieve the common task for the organization and to develop the skills there are many leadership theories which distinguish between the followers and leaders. According to Kendra Cherry, 2004 there are some common theories which are widely used in the organizations.

“Great Man” Theories: An old concept of inherited power from forefathers.

Trait Theories: some qualities which they inherit make them the leader.

Contingency Theories: Is the selection of best method according to the situation.

Situational Theories: Leader choose the best strategy of action

Behavioural Theories: There are certain actions which make a leader effective

Participative Theories: Every member in the group participates to give his suggestions.

Management Theories: Are called as transactional theories which focus on group performance.

Relationship Theories: are called as transformational theories which focus both on group and individual performance.

Most common theories used in the organization:

Behavioural theories:

According to the behavioural theory actions speak more than the words. A leader is not a leader because he has some extra qualities but he has experience of teaching and observation. This theory describes the behaviour of the leader which makes him different from the other team members. Behavioural approach is commonly used in the organization; like the behaviour of the manager will tell the story and the follower will understand that what his manager is thinking about. A managerial grill model which was developed in 1964 defines leadership styles in order to achieve the company goal.

To understand the impact of behaviour in management let analyze it with the example, in Tesco when an employee is coming late and doing it deliberately, manager or a leader will ignore it first time but he will behave in a silent way by watching the time on clock and then will look at him and the person will realize that manager has noticed his negligence and he might will get the warning next time from him. Same as when a task assign to the staff member, manager will never pressurise him to do it in time but what he will do. He will just walk around and come into the section and pass through that area and staff member will be careful that his manager is keeping an eye on him and he has to do his job in time in an effective manner. So it deals with the role and work according to the expectation.

Situational and contingency theories:

Herbert Spencer 1884 suggested that the time produce the person so according to the situational theories a leader has to act according to the situation as there is no hard and fast rule to handle the situation, a leader can adopt the different leadership style according to the circumstances for example if there is need to take a decision in urgent base, a leader will adopt the autocratic style and immediately make the decision on the base of his experience and if the situation is that he might need suggestions from the staff than democratic style will be adopted. It relates contingence to the situation so also called contingency theories. A leader act on the base of situational factors for example in Tesco motivation is the factor which effects the performance of a group or individual and in a situation when there is a work stress or there is the shortage of people a manger will motivate other persons to fill the gap and get the job done in time. Same as the if manager realize that a person is looking so tired and cannot give his best than he use the behavioural theory by showing his kindness to the person by giving him break or try to make him normal .

Transformational leadership theory:

According to transformational theory people use to follow the leaders who really inspire them. A person who has the ability to motivate and introducing enthusiasm is able to achieve great targets, this is the great kind of experience to work under such type of leadership because you got the chance to learn more and more and get experience to be the part of the great leadership. In transformational leadership a leader set the vision for the followers and tells them about the target and their strength to do it. By this way leader put the energy in the group and every one try to give his best. Transformational theory states that leader should have the ability to lead his team and should know the direction to get clear vision. It might be there is the case of failure in going forward but if the progress is going on than it means they are in profit. The leader will stand in the centre and is always available there for help and represent them from the front. Ceremonies and cultural festivals are introduced to motivate the staff for example Tesco always organize the parties and free meals on the occasions of Christmas, eid and diwali and use to give the free vouchers to the staff to motivate them to work for Tesco.

2.2 Leadership strategy to support organization direction:

In the lightness of these theories it is analyzed that Tesco is using different leadership theories in different situations. This is the leadership strategy which supports in order to get the goal.

Team five and participative theory: in Tesco a team five known as team five in which before starting the work each member of staff is called to join and give his suggestion, all managers, team leaders, sales staff and security members use to gather in one place and giving their suggestion about how to achieve the sales target and how to do job in time more effectively. This is the example of low participative theory in which manager listen to everyone and at the end he has the authority to make a final decision. By this way a manager and team communicate with each other and this conversation put an impact on their performance.

Team leader and behavioural approach in Tesco: A team leader represents the team and he sets the examples for others by his behaviour which works more than his words. When staff watches that their leader is working more than them and he is doing in affective way than they motivate by his behaviour and put more efforts in the job to work like him.

Management role and transactional theory in Tesco:

In Tesco duty manager takes the report of work from the section manager and section manager take the report from the team leader and team leader has to keep an eye at the performance of each individual. In this scenario each one is responsible for his individual performance and if someone doesn’t perform he will be asked for that or if the case is that someone performing well then he will be rewarded for that.

Senior management and Situational theory in Tesco:

This is the best theory which is mostly implemented in Tesco by the senior manager as they make the decisions according to the situation for example if there is some hot day and customers start buying more drinks from the shop floor. In normal case two persons use to work in drink section to finish the task but he will change the strategy and put one person extra in the section and will remove one person from some other section which is less busy as compare to the drink section. Same as some time if a person is sick and unable to work than manager will make the plan to cower that person and might change his style of leadership according to the situation by bringing the section managers and team leaders in to the discussion to complete the task in different way.

In simple we conclude that there is no guarantee that if a leadership is successful today it will must be successful tomorrow so being the part of the strategic management strategy should be made to achieve the target according to the situation and it is not necessary that if a good leader is successful in one part of business than he will be in other as well. For example in Tesco manager of grocery section is the best manager of its time but in case if he is been asked to put in produce section he might not be able to get the work from staff because he has no idea about the products in this section.

TASK 3

3.1 current leadership requirements:

A leader is one who leads the team in affective way and motivates them in order to get the objective. Followers play an important role for good leadership. In the past as trait theories suggests that there are certain qualities and characteristics which make a leader. However in this modern era a leader needs to assess current and future requirements. Leaders must have to keep an eye on the generic challenges which are described below. These are the inside and outside challenges in the organization.

It is one of the challenges for leader to control virtual organization because members of virtual organization are not physically on a single place. They usually work on computers. It uses generic strategies which focus on cost leadership and differentiation. Virtual leaders learn from the experience of others. Good quality of virtual leadership is to listen and understand and then filter your plan. There are many virtual organizations working around the world for example Google is working in the entire world and if we speak about UK only thirty peoples are working in the UK.

Leader requires identifying what the affect of globalization is and how does it work. In globalization effect of one place put impact on the other parts as well for example recently there was a flood in Pakistan and as it is an agricultural country who export cotton to the world and in this season there was no cotton and instead of exporting they have to import the cotton. In this case things will be effected on other places and cotton price will be more than as compare to past.

Economic climate always move from peak to down. It includes four stages expansion, contraction and trough. So leaders need to identify and understand the business climate when they need to expand and when they have to step back. Ethics is an important issue to realise morally that what is wrong and what is right.

Corporate social responsibility is the responsibility which an employer or customers take because of the ethics. For example last year Primark stopped purchasing from India because due to certain loop holes they were using child labour. So people in UK took the responsibility and stop purchasing goods from Primark and Primark had to ask India until you do not sort this issue we are not doing business with you anymore

World threats are always the restriction in leadership. Those threats are lack of food and water, environment threat, social threat, economical threat etc. A leader requires identifying the threat before time and finding the solution. Issue of diversity is to keep in the mind for leadership as no decision should be based on the base of age, sex and religion. It should be analysed what time which step leaders should take like when to take over and when to merge and when there is the need of restructuring. Role of technology is so important in these days because through the internet a company can work effectively by investing less money and able to introduce its products to worldwide. To market their product to worldwide and providing services is a common topic in the current leadership development program.

3.2 plan for the development of future situation requiring leadership:

In future there is the big role of practising leadership and its development. Due to the certain changes there will be effect in leadership development. Competencies of leadership will be increased and there will be the need to develop and constructs new methods to handle globalization. It will need to do the arrangement on predictions and the role of the leader will be critical. As in modern age technology is been expanding day to day and at the time it expanding it creating new challenges for the leadership. So leaders should able to make the plan to handle the crises and much informative to adopt the new technology.

Regulatory and political effect will be there in the future. A leadership should have the capacity to face the regulatory challenges for example colleges in UK are providing the university regulatory courses and they have to pay some money to university as they are the awarding body of the degree. In this case both college and university are earning money as this is their objective to make the money and expand their business. In modern age media is the big challenge and an effective leadership will require in the future. As media is independent and the can get the access in or outside the organization and raise any issue which is not in favour of the company.

E leadership is going to become so popular in these days in which peoples are managed through emails and limitations as face book is the example of E leadership. There is a big need to develop and bring new leadership strategy in this field because it is never been easy to handle the people through the internet. The role of leadership should be as they must have to know that how the technology will be used in effective leadership development.

The future trends noted reflect in part a response to the changing context of leadership perhaps the strongest pressure facing leadership practitioner in the future may be to demonstrate return on investment(Kincaid & Gordick,2003). This definition shows the importance of investment and objective that there will be a pressure in situations for the leadership to meet their objective of demonstrating return on their investment.

4.1 Developments of leadership skills:

Development of leadership is most like training of business. This is the process of improving performance and efforts. An organization is successful which is able to develop effective communication skills by the use of training courses and seminars which is helpful to make a leadership environment. There is the difference between leadership theories and practising because it is bit easy to speak but comparatively difficult in practical. Leaders are the need of the company. Effective leadership requires developing attitude, behaviour and humanity. A good leader can attract his followers by putting charismatic effect on them. There are some techniques which really help to develop leadership skills.

Formal learning is an important tool to improve the leadership skills which includes the needs of recruitment. It helps to create an environment which is really helpful to become a good leader through the training courses and developing coaching skills. However the leader learns through the experience but there are the certain things which really improve the capability of the leaders and improve their skills. A good leader should have the capability to analyze the future needs and by keeping the future needs in their mind their action should be effective. Leadership can be developed by formal training, development activities and self help activities.

Formal training is used when there is the situation to develop for the specific period for example some organizations introduced the workshops in the training centres and universities introduce the courses to develop the leadership skills. In training programs it need to design effective training which should have clear learning objective and helpful to develop the self confidence of each individual. There should be the activities which really help to develop the skills.

Most of skill essential for effective leadership is learned from experience rather than formal training programs (Davies 1984) special assignments provide an opportunity to develop and refine leadership skills during the performance of regular job duties. Coaching and mentoring can be used to help manager interpret their experiences and learn new skills. (Mans and sim 1981).

There are some development activities which are special assignment, rotation of job, coaching, mentoring and personal growth program. These activities could be used by the by the boss or co-workers. Assessment methods which include interviews, personality tests and communicating exercises are used for the purpose of development. Job rotation program are used to develop the skills of a person by putting him in different departments for a specific period of time. Mentoring is used to train the juniors from the senior management.

Self help techniques are applied to develop the skills of individual by his own corporation. These techniques could be used to learn formal training. A person develops himself by setting the vision and objective for him and more committed to learn more by taking the challenging assignments. Person learns from his mistakes and feedback from their bosses.

Evidence from one study shows that consideration of development needs when making succession planning decisions is likely to result in better performance for the organization. (Friedman, 1986)

4.2 Report on the usefulness of the methods used to plan the development of leadership skills:

A good leadership requires good human qualities through they can achieve their targets. Training is a useful method to develop the skills of a leader. There are different training courses which are really helpful in order to develop the skills. For example Tesco provide the opportunity to its employee to get the further training of management if the person is selected for the required job. It offers a person to get the carrier break and student loan so he can either go to university to educate himself and does some course like master in business managements. Different leadership training courses are introduced to enhance the skills. In these days widely technique which is been used is to learn from the experience. The experience is been used to handle the various leadership competencies. When people get the feedback from others they learn more through feedback workshop, assignments, rotation of jobs, mentoring, coaching and outdoor learning programs.

The extent to which leadership competencies are acquired and used depends on the type of development activities that occur (e.g., training, experiential learning, self learning), facilitating conditions (e.g. boss support, learning environment), and qualities of the individual manager (flexible, pragmatic, learning oriented) (Hall & Seibert, 1992; McCall, 1992).

To develop the leadership skills an individual has to be social intelligent so he can understand the people from their behaviour and attitude. Leaders should have the ability to learn through the experience so they are able to take the right decision at the right time. A leader needs to develop the integrity so he can motivate the people to get the objective of the organization.