About Organizational Leadership and Performance

b) Discuss the way that leadership has changed within the context of a globalized environment, over time. With reference to the readings for this unit, profile the leadership and communication styles of a global or national leader you admire.

Organizational Leadership and Performance in the Context of a Globalized Environment

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Organizational Leadership and Performance

Business organizations today are operating in an increasingly global environment and therefore leaders must be prepared not only to succeed in the fast changing complex and competitive world but also make use of each and every resource available. The competitive advantage of a company comes to leaders who properly utilize the organization’s greatest asset, the employees. Competitive advantage is achieved when the employees are provided with an enabling environment that engages and enables the employee to perform his best. Effective and successful leaders will always find ways to fight the odds and creating an ideal climate and culture that engages all members in an organization (Prewitt, Weil and McClure, 2011).

Leadership and management challenges increase as the company grows into more complex environments in the global scene. As organizations move from local to national, cultural values of its increasing international employee base and also the new customers from new markets continues to change. Geert Hofstede formulated a model to help managers to evaluate new market culture using various dimensional variables so as to underpin what is held dear in those countries. Mgbere (n.d.) states that culture is divided into two levels which are invisible culture and visible culture where the visible culture consists of artifacts and observable behaviors like dressing, mannerisms, symbols, language, rites among others. Invisible culture consists of those underlying values, assumptions, beliefs, and practices that form the true culture.

Culture is important for a global leader to understand as it provides a sense of a common identity and generates shared beliefs and values that create a bond among people working together. Therefore culture integrates members of an organization to know how to relate to one another and therefore helps the organization to adapt to the external environment (Mgbere n.d.).

Steve Jobs was among one of the greatest global leader that lived, having led Apple Company to its height both nationally and internationally. Apple has become synonymous with innovation in the communication industry with its inventions pushing the fabric of imagination and reality to new heights.  He portrayed the attributes of a great global leader and some of them included the ability to see the differences in the cultural self-awareness. Cultural self-awareness is the acceptance that the environment shapes our leadership and that other leadership styles exist. This trait enables a global leader escape the mistakes of performing ‘the most basic mistake’ when influencing people.

Steve encouraged his employees to think of the unexpected so as to be innovative. This is because a great leader must deliberately position the company to perceive and respond to the unexpected or face the risk of being too slow to react, misjudging the significance of an event or failing to see it all together. That’s why Apple has always been leading in innovation in its range of products (Global, 2012).

The building of strong personal authentic relationships in a business enables faster informational exchange, decision-making, and execution of ideas in teams in the organization. Steve encouraged the importance of communication in teams to strengthen their bonds. Effective leaders must be able to shift their style of communication, methods of leadership, and strategies to fit the various operational context so as they can navigate differing business environments even when the situations call for different modes of approaches (Global, 2012).

Global leaders must strive to continually increase their cultural intelligence and awareness of circumstances that surround their businesses when going global, but so that they can not only become competitive with their products but also to be market movers and leaders. Leaders must therefore focus on today and future challenges so as to create change and maintain a level of stability of a global organization (Watkins, n.d.).

 

REFERENCES

Global, A. (2012) ‘Influencing Across Borders’ going global expand your horizon… your career… your future [online] Retrieved 14 September 2012 from http://www.goinglobal.com/articles/1084/

Mgbere, O (n.d.), ‘Exploring the Relationship between Organizational Culture, Leadership Styles and Corporate Performance: An Overview’, vol. 5, (¾) p. 187-201, EBSCOhost, [accessed 14 September 2012].

Prewitt, J., Weil, R. and McClure, A. (2011) ‘Developing leadership in global and multi-cultural organizations’ international journal of business and social science[online], vol.2 (13) available from: http://www.ijbssnet.com/journals/Vol._2_No._13_Special_Issue_July_2011/2.pdf [accessed 14 September 2012].

Watkins, A. (n.d.), ‘Corporate Leadership In A Changing Environment- Global Perspective’
Odyssey Consult Inc vol. 1 (1)[online] http://www.odysseyconsultinc.com/praxis/corporate_leadership.html [accessed 14 September 2012].

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