More and more people are called upon to demonstrate leadership in corporate culture. It might surprise some people that current thought leadership articles support the leadership process theory, which posits the idea that leaders are made and not necessarily born with natural leadership skills. Everyone knows someone who is a natural leader, but defining leadership as a process means that leadership skills can be developed to align with any company’s goals.
The process based leadership model uses a highly structured approach for developing leadership, choosing candidates for succession and educating employees about the company’s core values. Companies have many training programs and business processes, and leadership is a process that just as demanding as other business applications. Each company can make adjustments in the leadership qualities that it wants to cultivate, but some common choices in today’s business environment include these basics of leadership development:
The leadership process theory focuses on the Social Change Model of Leadership and other similar approaches, such as Transformational Leadership, Reciprocal Theory and Relational Leadership models. These styles of leadership are flexible, but they share a common goal – to do the best possible job to promote a particular interest. That might be social change, improving the world through business technology or promoting the interests of a particular company, group or the human race.
As technology speeds business processes, a more agile and flexible type of leadership is needed to adapt to mission-related changes, respond to competitor efforts and capitalize on time-sensitive opportunities. Some of the qualities that can be developed in leaders using the tenets of leadership process theory include:
Now this is maybe the one million dollar question. Leadership is often compromised by leaders with commitments to other causes that only tangentially intersect with a company’s best interests. Natural leaders often have lots of charm and charisma, but that doesn’t mean they’ll do well in promoting the company line. Some talented employees resent charismatic people who gain immediate preference for filling leadership positions.
An old adage of employers comes to mind, and it applies to leadership development. Many employers prefer to hire inexperienced people whom they can train to meet the company’s needs. Employers often prefer to hire people so that they don’t have to break their bad habits.
Process based leadership presupposes that anyone can be trained to a leadership position. There may be difficulties, but it’s always difficult to manage people. Today’s corporate culture requires leaders at all levels, including team managers, group managers, project managers and their supervisors. Few people are born as natural leaders, so they should be trained in the company’s leadership guidelines.
A leader without charisma can still function efficiently by following strict guidelines and approaching problems with a can-do attitude. Those without integrity will eventually be weeded out in the same ways that charismatic leaders fall. Those with lesser intelligence can often compensate with a strong work ethic, personal empathy and a stubborn determination to get the job done. The work might be a little slower, but the job gets done.
Process based management encourages better communications and creates a culture where anyone can aspire to a leadership position. A company culture of agility, transparency and flexibility builds loyalty and trust. Anyone can work hard and advance accordingly because the training methodology promotes consistent leadership qualities.
Despite the problems inherent in developing leaders in-house, the potential benefits for companies can be extraordinary. These include fostering greater employee loyalty, removing the stigma of not being considered leadership material and filling leadership positions in-house so that companies can control training, handle change management more adroitly and meet company-specific leadership needs.
You remember the days when your boss is calling you on a regular basis, being…
Measuring effective teamwork is crucial for any organization that relies on team collaboration to achieve…
Leadership development programs have become increasingly popular in recent years, as organizations recognize the importance…
Many people think that being a good leader means being bossy and always in control.…
There are many different resource management tasks, but one of the most important is deploying…
There is a dichotomy of leadership. On one side, the leader is demanding and expects…