Essay on Alan Mulally

Discuss the role of leadership and how it can impact organizational performance

Leadership is the ability of a person to influence and guide followers or members of an organization. Also, we can term leadership as the process of social influence that maximizes other people’s efforts to achieve a certain set goal. The most crucial role of a leader is to provide a clear and compelling direction. A leader is a talent advocator meaning that they can bring out the ability of every employee to improve productivity, develop their careers, and solve problems (Cortellazzo et al., 2019). Also, a leader is a strategist meaning that they can attain excellent outcomes with or through other people and through critically planned processes. As a strategist, leaders create an environment whereby his delegates can work as a team and win. They can delegate duties well and understand every staff’s weaknesses and strengths.

The other type of leader is the visionary; this type of leadership defines where the organization is going and how they will get there. Managers create a shared vision and communicate it to the other staff to work towards the same goal. The other role of leadership is to ensure that other followers understand, accept, and work towards achieving set objectives. Leaders provide momentum and sharing towards achieving organizational goals. We cannot ignore the fact that leaders are responsible for decision-making in an organization. They are responsible for making long-term decisions that can impact the organization positively. Good leaders should have the ability to influence members of their team through good decision-making skills.

A leader can determine an organizational performance either negatively or positively depending on the type of leadership applied. Good leadership improves customer satisfaction, employee turnover rate, productivity, and sales revenue. Good leaders create employee engagement and passion leading to high productivity and customer loyalty. Also, service, innovation, and higher profits are provoked by good leadership. When employees feel valued, they tend to be motivated to do better in terms of productivity. A good leader frequently communicates with his employee and gives feedback where necessary. Employees tend to perform better when they know their achievements and where they are failing. A good leader recognizes that feedback is essential and communicates to employees about their achievements and areas of weakness that need to be improved. There is very clear evidence on how good leadership improves organizational performance. The results of good leadership are high morale and increased productivity.

On the other hand, bad leadership can negatively impact an organization. Bad leadership is felt throughout the entire organization. Poor leadership lacks clear and consistent communication from the leaders to the employee. Therefore the organization is hit by politics, deceit, and rumor turmoil. In this circumstance, the workers are uncertain of organizational goals and goals for success, and nor do they know their level of importance towards making the goals happen. In bad leadership environments, decisions on rank promotions are unbiased and are based on office politics. In these environments, employees tend to tear each other down. The results of such environments are high turnover, low morale, and poor productivity. Since bad leaders cannot provide direction, motivation, and staff coaching, organizational culture suffers the most. Hence the organizational budget is affected and overall profits of the company.

Discuss Allan Mulally’s leadership style at ford motor company and provide at least three examples of how his actions fit in this style.

Ford motor company manufactures and sells vehicles and automobiles under the leadership of Allan Mulally as its chief executive officer. Allan Mulally uses realigning personal leadership style to lead ford motor company. He states that leadership has a compelling vision, relentless implementation, and a comprehensive plan with talented people working as a team (Marilyn Gist, 2020). When he took over as the company leader, Allan applied a management strategy that he terms as working together with a management system. When he took over as the company’s CEO, the business was at the edge of collapsing. Still, when he took charge, he changed the company into energetic enterprise by forming full employee and organization engagement. It was after Allan took over when the only US automobile manufacturer was able to survive bankruptcy threat without state bailout money.

Allan managed to gain trust of his workers. He accepts and delivers behaviors based on modesty from each worker. Within a short period, Allan motivated thousands of employees and moved the company from failure to profitability. His style of leadership is based on the following strategies;

Embracing most important responsibility of leader

According to mulally, the most essential contribution of leaders is to hold themselves responsible for defining a broad strategy and a compelling vision. He states that leaders should create a container for how work should be done.

Identifying a road map to creating value

Mulally holds on to the principle that every leader guides the organization to identify the most excellent way of creating value for the organizational stakeholders.

Establishing a tradition of togetherness.

He emphasizes putting people first and loving them; everyone should be part of the company objective. In the organization, we should help, listen, respect and appreciate one another.

Creation of a structure for ensuring accomplishment

Alan uses data to evaluate growth. As long as the information is integrated with indicators ensure success. He further states that leaders should plan for they will use data to monitor progress.

The actions of Alan fit his leadership style; for example, he insists on togetherness; thus, he created full employee and union engagement. Also, he leads on leadership qualities based on humility, and he does not take less than that even from his workers. Lastly, Allan Mulally insists on establishing behavioral norms of working together whereby he states that we should live in harmony and appreciate one another.

References

Cortellazzo, L., Bruni, E., & Zampieri, R. (2019). The role of leadership in a digitalized world: A review. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 1938.

Marilyn Gist. (2020). The Leadership Style That Turned Ford Motor Company Around. Leadership. Retrieved from https://real-leaders.com/the-leadership-style-that-turned-ford-motor-company-around/