Attributes of a leader

Above all, a person must be able to motivate others and inspire them with a vision for the future so that they can work toward and realize that vision. For an organization, leadership can take a variety of shapes. Autocratic, democratic, and transformational administration styles are only a few of the styles that can be used. There are qualities connected to a good leader in society about excellent leadership styles. The attributes that a leader should have are made up of the characteristics. Take ownership, Set an example for others to follow, and Talk less and Listen more are a few examples.
The delivery of task-oriented objectives has recently been a top priority for leadership, who have taken heed of both people's concerns. Having this point of people concern as the root of any leadership style, some leaders have opted to have less of people concern and concentrated on task delivery. Forms of leadership arise from the blend of people interest and task orientation. Different kinds of leadership have different levels of achievement. Leaders who can have both high task orientation and people concern always have the best results arising from the organization. Bearing in mind every employee has an impact on task delivery, they need some point of people interest to motivate them. Some former Chief Executive Officers have been renowned in this area of people concern enhancing delivery. Example of Steve Jobs in Apple Inc. took good care of the people and with that matched performance which was and still recognized in the mobile industry.

Though the above case scenario has been known for quite some time, some leaders are unable to employ similar orientation in people concern and task delivery. The impact where minor conformity is holistically on task orientation, employees are demotivated since they feel their impact in the organization is not recognized and with that a negative view of the management arises.

Trimac Transportation Inc. Operations

The organization deals with transportation as well as distribution and management services in North America. Trimac uses shared services on the back office services where operations are holistically centralized with no branch among the 100 that holds any operation services about that. In that case, the management is entirely centralized with all decisions coming from the same office. That being the case the grass root issues affecting the branches are only communicated to the head office for action. Having the autonomy in decision making from the head office a lot of delays are experienced in giving a jurisdiction on an issue on ground. These delays impact the business negatively as resources will be underutilized on the branch levels.

Leadership being an inspiring tool in giving guidance and motivating misses in the branches. Leaders in the organization are primarily centralized at the head offices thus depriving staff at the branch level the chance to be inspired and motivated. Motivation is the intrinsic power to foster energy towards harmoniously delivering the set deliverable. Lack of motivation in an organization makes employees less productive which poses a challenge in achieving organization mission and vision. As the point to note, lack of leadership visibility leads to lack of leads by example and the like. Additionally having such a silky situation in leadership leads to lack of focus, frustrated employees that leads to poor performance. The question on decentralization needs is propagated to have better results.

Due to the issue at hand, a research paper to solve the problems raised above has been undertaken covering it through desk research literature.

Problem statement

Leadership visibility and action in organization determine the performance of each unit making part of the organization. From the desk review of Trimac Transportation Inc., branches do not have the local leadership, and as such vision creation, inspiration and motivation lack. The theoretical analysis indicates no much productivity is expected from the branches and as such action needs are considered.

Objectives of the desk review

A study to investigate the impacts and solutions to lack of decentralized leadership at the branches of an organization case study of Trimac Transporation Inc.

Research Questions

On the investigation of impacts and solutions relating to lack of decentralized leadership, the following research gave lead on the study:

What are the impacts associated with lack of decentralized leadership?

Which are the solutions to curb down the problem?

How are leadership articles discussing this situation?

What are the leadership qualities that are available to use?

What forms of leadership are on the disposal for the organization to use?

Literature Review

Trimac Transportation Inc. seems to believe in Self-directed teams. As such, the company will fail to understand what the repercussions associated with the approach (Stayer, 2009). The approach has some negative impacts that are: Long decision-making process as everyone needs to be part of the decision. Additionally, for Trimac transportation Inc. to have productivity, a dip will be experienced and as such pose a significant issue in the overall performance of the Inc. coming from the branches. In other cases the company is exposed to chaos since this type of team management is profoundly affected by the Infrastructure and support (Stayer, 2009). As from the review of the group it has shown some adverse impacts arising from this area since the staff complains about recognition from the branch level meaning that this team directive is not working.

Notably, the management does not have people concern and very high task orientation. The form of leadership applied is detrimental to the performance of the organization where a lot of effort is based on task performance (Robert & Warren, 2009). People concern is one way a leader needs to have so that to inspire and motivate employees In the case of Trimac, the leaders fail to execute this, and as such, the staff do not have the moral to deliver but instead follow the stringent rules stated. When an organization entirely concentrates on objectives and fail to apply rewards and recognition, the staff tend to be the frustrated and paving the way for underperformance.

It is clear that the company has not embraced experiential learning theory. The company has concentrated on making decisions from the head office with minimum attachment to the managerial position and the semi senior employees. Lack of experiential application demotivates the efforts of the staff, and nobody tends to have the vision to grow to be part of the management (Warren & Thomas, 2009). The fact that nobody visualizes growth makes the whole organization feel no impact towards developing the better working environment and this causes deterioration of performance within the organization.

The staff, state how the company leads through the use of commands and harsh punishment with little attention on how they fair. The management and administration of the company show that they only employ one base of power which addresses the negative implications to employs. The forms of control in use fail to use reward power. The staff feels a little more alienated as they don’t fetch any fruit even after performing exemplary in duty execution. The sources of vigor at any one point need be used without favor or discrimination (French Jr. & Raven, 1948). Better utilization of sources power ensures that everybody feels the impact of the leader where the wrongdoers are punished, the performers are rewarded, and the well-known leaders are acknowledged through legitimate control among others.

Leadership is gauged on the level of leadership participation application. Different levels have different performance grades about organizations accomplishment. In Trimac leaders have given a chance to staff to govern themselves to have results on the table. The level of leadership, in this case, is inferior since it lacks motivation, guidance and even inspiration to conform to the vision and mission of the company (Collins, 2013). Companies whose leaders empower the employs and involve them as leadership participants fetch more on productivity. Trimac fails in this application, and a lot need be worked on to have goals achieved and better results attained.

Different situations have diverse approaches (Natemeyer & Hersey, 2011). Organizations apply various strategies to address a particular state that the organization is facing. Through directing, leading, guiding and inspiring, the administration should have some ways to handle this. Trimac with head office centralization fails to understand what the branches are facing and such they are unable to cover any hard situations they are facing (Yıldız & Şimşek, 2016). To attain the diverged approaches in curbing down the different conditions employees are supposed to empowered to be able to do so. Enabling of employees in leadership is through training and development (Clarke & Higgs, 2014). Training and development equip employees with the power to judge and correctly make a decision while executing the said tasks and duties.

Emotional intelligence is one of the critical qualities leaders need to have as they inspire and motivate the juniors. Emotional intelligence enables leaders to be in a position to understand how the subordinates are feeling and as such know how to help them be able to overcome the challenges (Goleman, 2010). In Trimac employees are left to guide themselves where the leadership is missing making it hard for the staff to be conducted and helped to adapt the environment. The administration of the company is failing to lead by example which acts as an insult to emotional intelligence that they need to have.

Leaders with the high profile of charismatic power can expose employees to new ways of handling their work through empowerment, lively contact, and participation on how the leadership is (Wilderom, Van den Berg, & Wiersma, 2012). Organizations embracing this type of leadership can adequately cover a firm ground towards the attainment of goals and with a happy relationship prevailing internally without distinction between managers and juniors. Proper leadership influences the staff to operate in the right direction. As such an organization with the belief of success need to embrace this (Hirst, Walumbwa, Aryee, Butarbutar, & Chen, 2015).

Availability of leadership at the branch levels helps the organization to have lessons delivered to the staff, but unfortunately, Trimac Transportation Inc. does not offer this making it hard for the lessons delivered to them (Shamir & Eilam-Shamir, 2017). The breakdown existing lesson delivery creates a gap in understanding how administration works and as such it will be hard for an organization to handle transitional leadership since minor links existed in the past.

For leadership performance to be noted and established, an organization should be in apposition to predict leadership relationships (Chrobot-Mason, Gerbasi, & Cullen-Lester, 2016). When an organization can predict what is yet to come, all the staff are said to have a collective identity and as such performance will be an issue on conforming to the laid principles of the prediction. That being the fact in duty performance, leadership and delivery, a firm needs to have measures in ensuring that this does not fail to be deployed at all levels of organizational management.

Another critical skill that leaders should have is the ability to manage knowledge and influence the way of doing things (Bell DeTienne, Dyer, Hoopes, & Harris, 2004). Organizations are made up of a large pool of resources coming from employees and the like. Employees with sound information on performance are knowledgeable and are said to be the central nerve in an organization. Leaders need to know how to retain and influence the resources towards having the best outcome in the organization.

Trimac has had a lot of problems addressing most of the iconic organizational management theories, and the following section will resolve the problem statement discussed above incorporating the approaches aforementioned. Leadership who fail to be in the spotlight lead to failure which was tested previously (Cranwell-Ward, Bossons, & Gover, 2004). The administration needs to understand how to deal with this leadership fail soonest possible.

Findings and Inferences

From the theoretical analysis through desk research overview findings came up, and the following are the key areas that miss in Trimac Transportation Inc.:

The Bases of power. The study covered shows that Trimac Transportation only uses to sources of power that affects the employees negatively. The application bases of power are Punishment and Authoritative sources of vigor. The organization fails to use the other sources such as reward and expertise power which are motivational tools in leadership and organizational administration.

The type of team control and guidance. The organization has failed to notice that self-directed teams need steadfast infrastructure to conduct meetings conforming to duty performance. The trouble associated with this is that the organization believes in achieving its goals yet it does not support the teams delivering the services to the end client.

The poor execution of situation leadership. Situational leadership theory states that leaders are supposed to employ different styles of leadership as and when they are exposed to a situation. In Trimac Transportation Inc. Leaders are situated at the headquarters where exposure to the various conditions is limited to them and with that the employability of different management skills is limited too.

Poor empowerment of employees. Good leadership is characterized by the ability to empower the juniors through training and development classes which may be planned as for the case of experiential or through guidance and inspiration. Trimac leadership sits at the head office where minor interactions are exposed to the staff. That means the employees meet minor training and empowerment thus poor performance expected in the long run.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The basis of power. From an organizational perspective, the organization needs to employ all the sources of power to ensure that the staff enjoys all the assumption of power. The basis of power is a number, and as such reward, legitimate, expertise and referent skills need be deployed too.

Transformational and Experiential leadership. Trimac has failed to transform employees from their current state since the leaders are not always available for interacting with employees and as such minor influence s met by the employees from the leaders. The organization needs to be grounded to have the personal touch with the staff.

Staff Motivation. Trimac does not show any sign of motivating its employees this making it hard for the employees to perform from their day to day operations. The company needs to employ better motivating means such as incentive-based rewards and the like. Self-motivation is not sufficient for employees who are away from the head office since they always think that the organization has forgotten about them. Organizational, motivational center be implemented to ensure any staff who has exemplary performance are noted and rewarded accordingly

Self-directed teams. The lack of leadership and management involvement in the grassroots branches paves the way to self-directed teams. The teams’ management is always faced with challenges that lay on infrastructure and orderly conduct of the members. Foundation is a challenge that has been noted and need be addressed to ensure that the organizations work in the right direction and deliver the best results whatsoever the conditions.

















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