Strategic Leadership Lecture 9

Re: Leadership

Does effective strategic leadership depend on the situation or is there ‘one right way’? Why? That is very good question. If you asked writers or global leaders on this question, they would have different perspectives. However, one could argue that an effective strategic leadership depend on the situation. In other words, sometime leaders are successful because of the environment they operate within. For instance, a successful strategic leader of Tesco moves as leader in IT Company. The probability of success of that leader in IT industry would be low and this is due to the changing of situation. Therefore, it can be said that the success of leader depends on, if the situation is similar with his or her life experience, personality, ability and knowledge.

On the other hand, some authors could disagree with that and say there is one way. It does not matter which situation they are in, effective strategic leaders are successful. They believe that there is some magic effective strategic leaders use to be successful in any situation. For example, an effective strategic leader from Zara decided to be the head of IBM and it does not matter the circumstances that leader would be effective.

In general, situations require different reaction and the understanding of that is very important thing for an effective strategic leader. In David case, there are many reasons why he was successful in one role and not in another. Firstly, David’s behaviour was very aggressive and did not realise the way things are done in Energix (Culture). Secondly, effective strategic leaders know that employees do not like changing and in order to be able to make changing in an organisation power and control is vital. David did not have that power and that makes his effort to change things in Energix very difficult. Finally, he was in different situation, therefore we can say that his traits were not appropriated for the job in first place.

                                                               

From the different case studies we did so far, IDEO`s leadership style and culture might have worked. l believe the main problem why David has been unsuccessful, is due to the manner he tried to resolve Energix`s problems (Alone). As the consequence, employees did not like is method and possibly did anything they can to make him unsuccessful. On the other hand, if it was IDEO`s leadership, they would have worked with employees to find solutions to the problems.Thus, IDEO leadership approach might have the highest probability to work from the different case studies.