Functions Of leadership: Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography

Albritton, R. L., and Thomas, W. S. (2000). Developing Leadership Skills: A Sourcebook for Company Managers. Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, p.117-123.

            Albritton and Thomas have a good book that aims at helping company managers to develop skills necessary for improved leadership styles. The book discusses appropriate models that managers can relate with and use to assess their leadership. The importance of this book to the literature review on functions of leadership lies in the models the book has outlined.

Bellman, G. (2001).Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge. 2d ed. San  Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, p.389.

            This book addresses important issues in the course of leadership. It targets both people who are in leadership position and those who are not. The advice and techniques advocated for in the book can help people who feel that they have no authority over their subjects. It especially emphasizes on the use of delegation and enlisting of key people to support leadership course.  It also discusses motivating people and keeping them focused on the organization’s goals.

Geoffrey has over forty years experience in management and six books since 1986. The book therefore blends both theory and practice. The book brings new insight into the research and is neither too broad nor too narrow.

Bennis, W. (2003). On Becoming a Leader. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus, p.220-26.

            This excellent book discusses good leadership qualities. Some of these qualities are integrity, vision, curiosity and a daring nature. It goes even further to discuss strategies of becoming a leader. Bennis is a renown scholar and manager having been a lecturer and president of State University of New York. He is as well known for his 27 books, majority of them being in the subject of leadership. The book is a powerful resource that will be beneficial in this project.

Bendik, P. (2001). What Makes a Leader. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Business School Press, p.59-77.

In this book, Bendik discusses profiles that would make one a successful leader. The style follows and gives solid examples of leadership profiles of successful leaders across dofferent fields. Bendik contributes to the literature review by discussing various forms of power leaders can use.

Caroselli, M. (2000). Leadership Skills for Managers. New York: McGraw-Hill, p.78-85.

            This book discusses various roles of leadership. Some of these are being a connector, giving a vision, enforcer and a distributor of power. For this literature review, this book is relevant in its discussion of how to create team spirit, which is a key function of leadership. Caroselli is an authority in leadership and currently has over 60 published books in her repertoire.

DePree, M. (2007). Leadership is an Art. East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, p.83-87.

            This book focuses on the art of leadership, especially the use of diversity in organizations and appropriate involvement of all members of the organization. As such, one of his contributions is that leaders should carry out a SWOT analysis on each individual member of the organization. Max DePree is a recognized businessperson and writer, and is in Junior Achievement's Business Hall of Fame U.S. He has written other books.

             Gordon, T. (2007). Leader Effectiveness Training, L.E.T.: The No-Lose Way to Release the Productive Potential of People. New York: Wyden Books, p.77.

            This book shows leaders how to tap the potential in the members of the organization. It places emphasis on leaders to empower members to solve their own problems and make logical decisions. A critical idea learnt through this book is that leaders should be articulate and in a position to convince others to support their visions. Gordon is an authority and is known for the Gordon model of effective relationships.

Harrell, K. (2003). The Attitude of Leadership: Taking the Lead and Keeping It. Hoboken, N.J.: John Wiley & Sons, p.213-17.

In this book, Keith Harrel shows profiles of successful leaders from across the world. He focuses on their attitude and goes on to discuss the function of a leader as a link between the management and the other members. Harrel has a lot of practical knowledge to pass to readers and is an author of seven books.

Kouzes, J. and Posner, B. (2008). The Leadership Challenge. 4th ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p.49-57.

            This is a book that concerns itself with nurturing skills and anilities in leaders. It is a popular book having sold in millions world wide and won awards. It is currently in its fourth edition. The popularity of the book over 20 years since its first publication attests to its value.

Murphy, E. (2006). Leadership IQ: A Personal Development Process Based on a Scientific Study of a New Generation of Leaders. New York: John Wiley & Sons, p96.      

The book shows how leaders can advance on their leadership by identifying leadership patterns of outstanding leaders. The book demonstrates this through case studies. Its main contribution in this review is that leaders should be pace setters.

Sheldon, B. (2001). Leaders in Business Organizations: Styles and Strategies for Success. Chicago: American Library Association, p.191-96.

            The focus of this book is various aspects of leadership, such as trust building, effective communication, time management and power distribution. The book offers many insights on leadership and is therefore important for this review.          

Winston, M. (2001). Leadership Dynamics: Theory and Practice. New York: Haworth Press, p.69-99.

            This book tackles a diversity of theories and practices of leadership. It explains the usefulness of these theories in development of effective leadership in organizations. Its focus even goes further to discuss leadership qualities in informal organizations.

 Riggs, D. E. (2008). Leadership: What the Leaders Expect. Phoenix, Ariz.: Oryx Press, p.173-78.

            This book is a documentation of interviews on needs and expectations in different organizations leaders have.  

Pearce, T. (2003). Leading Out Loud: Inspiring Change Through Authentic Communication. Rev. ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p.255-67.

            Pearce discusses various techniques of effective leadership. His book explores methods of speechmaking as used to inspire people to support the leader’s vision. The leader’s mind should always be fashioned around the organization. As a vital book in this review, the book emphasizes that leaders should always consider the weaknesses and strengths of each employee. This knowledge is necessary in delegation of power. It corroborates DePree (2007) as in the discussion.

           Mech, T. (2008). Leadership and Organizational Success. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, p.148-53.

            Mech Terrence critically scrutinizes the role of leadership in organizations that are successful. The book shows that quality leadership is essential in promoting organization’s aims, goals, goals and objectives. The approach of the book is a compilation of essays on leadership. The book is useful in this review because it gives insights on leadership. For instance, leadership is a common denominator in all groupings in the society.

Functions of Leadership:Making Decisions for the Organization

Function of Making Decisions for the Organization

            Another crucial function that the leadership takes is making decisions for the organization. The greatest reason why this has to happen is the need for fast and effective decision-making. At some point, an organization does not have the benefit of extensive consultations before making a decision. For this reason, the leadership may make the decisions with the hope that they will benefit the organization achieve its objectives.

            A single leader cannot think for an entire organization (Mech, 2008, p.148-53). However, there are times when the leadership must take that responsibility with the aim of finding a solution or solving a problem (Winston, 2001, p.69-99).

Function of Counseling and Developing of Team Spirit

            Through teamwork, an organization can accomplish huge tasks in time and more effectively. In fact, some tasks cannot be completed without teamwork. For this reason, leadership has a primary function of creating team spirit among the members to enable them work together. The leadership carries out this function despite that each of the members has unique and sometimes conflicting opinions, ideas and way of doing things. The members also have different strengths and weaknesses. By carrying out this function, the leadership has to create harmony among them (Caroselli, 2000, p.78-85). Sometimes this has to be done through counseling, conflict resolution and team building activities.

Functions of Leadership: Effective Time Management

Function of Effective Time Management
            Just like the other functions discussed above, the function of time management in an organization rests with leadership. Time management is a critical component of any organization’s management plan. This is because if time is wasted, it cannot be recovered. For this reason, there is need for an organ to be responsible for it. All the efforts of time management are geared towards better organizational performance.

            Harrel (2003, p.213-217), in his contribution to this debate says that the leadership should ensure that the business organization’s time is optimally spent. It should also ensure that work assigned to any employee is completed in good time without compromise on quality. For this to happen, the management relies on its management plan to define and determine how to manage the organization’s time. This means that there has to be good management plan in place for this function to be effective. For the leadership to ensure that employees complete tasks in time, they need to monitor the workers at different levels of performance.

Functions of Leadership: Offering Different Levels of Thought

The Function of Offering Different Levels of Thought

            Creativity and critical thinking is a function that is important in the management of an organization. The necessity of this function cuts across business and organization types. The leadership is the one that best carries out the function. The ultimate aim of this function is to arrive at the best and most logical conclusion in the affairs of the organization. According to Pearce (2003, p.255-67), while carrying out the function, the leadership should fashion their thoughts in line with the organization and still be mindful of each member.

            In exercising this function, the leadership needs to consider the organization holistically. First, because an organization functions differently from individuals, the leadership should always ensure that they manage and guide organization’s meetings properly. This means that they should encourage active participation of every member and that they take each member’s thoughts and suggestions seriously. Through this, the leadership could encourage a sense of ownership among the members. This goes a long way in making them effective contributors to the achievements of the organization’s objectives.

            The second thing the leadership should consider is the needs, strengths, weaknesses and threats of the members of the organization. Knowledge of these issues that concern the employees is important as it can enable the leadership exercise wisdom in the delegation of powers and duties among the members. According to DePree (2007, p.83-87), the leadership of the organization should understand the members by carrying out a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats analysis on each of the employees. The benefit of performing this SWOT analysis is to help the leadership recognize and utilize the diversity of strengths in them while also improving on their areas of weakness. Apart from the SWOT analysis, the leadership should make initiatives that motivate each member and assess their progress against the achievement of the organization’s goals and objectives.

            Bellman (2001, p.138) adds that the leadership of any organization should make a consideration of each individual member’s progress. His suggestion is that the leadership should have a record of where each employee was at the beginning, where he or she is and where he or she aspires to be within a specific time. In addition, the leadership must not be static in their mode of thinking, but rather dynamic, allowing new ideas and way of thinking. This can only be achieved when the leadership has a clear, creative, and critical mode of thinking. Such would help create an environment that enables each member perform at the optimum level so that the organization succeeds in its work.

Functions Of Leadership: The Function of an Enforcer

The Function of an Enforcer

Another of the functions of leadership is that of an enforcer. There is need for each organization to have a system that enforces rules and regulations that guide daily activities within the organization. Depending on the situation, the function of an enforcer may involve psychological influence, motivation and sometimes coercion. Most organizations prefer the use of psychological and peer influence. Because enforcement is critical to the success of any organization, the leadership needs to exercise caution, transparency and independence.

            Riggs (2008, p.173-78) says that leadership should adhere to extreme caution especially when exercising power that is bestowed on it. According to him, power and authority determines the relationships with the subordinates. A positive relationship and goodwill among the subordinates can boost the leadership and enable it to steer the organization into success. Negative perception and relationship between the leadership and the workforce, on the other hand, may prove a hindrance to the organization. Therefore, the leadership should exercise this function with the aim of conserving and promoting positive relationships between it and the subordinates.

            Bendik (2001, p.59-77), on the other hand, argues that the leadership of any organization may exercise various forms of power in a bid to enforce its rules depending on the context in which the rules are being enforced, the type of organization and the people. The leader should determine the most appropriate enforcement method in the organizational context of the moment. As much as it depends on the leader, there should be consistence so that the workforce understands the processes and is prepared.

            Different types of powers can be categorized in terms of their aims. For instance, some power aims at coercing or forcing the employees to conform to particular standards ot carry out tasks. Others may aim at rewarding good performance, correcting errant behavior or enhancing expertise among the subjects. Regardless of the chosen type of power, the leadership should always aim at achieving positive responses. In other words, after the leadership exercises the power, the subordinates should be satisfied that the leadership made the correct decisions through the positive achievement in the organization. Leadership should avoid negativity among the subordinates because it may reduce chances of success and achievement of objectives in any project. This is best done through proper analysis of the situation before making choice of the type of power to employ in carrying out the enforcement function.

Functions of Leadership: Linking the Management to the Workforce

Functions of Leadership: Linking the Management to the Workforce

            One critical ingredient of a successful business that leadership normally fills is the role of a link between the management and the workforce. This role requires the leader to be a good communicator. In an organization, there needs to be an elaborate procedure of passing information in between the top management and the workforce (Harrell, 2003, p.213-217). The leadership plays the role of a connector, which is a go-between through which the top management and the workforce pass information.

            In this regard, we can deduce that the leadership communicates the workforce’s problems, difficulties and expectations to the top management. In the same way, the top management communicates its expectations and requirements through the leadership. This flow of information becomes crucial for the organization to meet its objectives.

            In addition to this role of a connector inside the organization’s structure, the leadership also networks the organization to other organizations that constitute the external environment. This linkage includes link to suppliers, customers, link to the immediate community as well as to the larger business environment. This role is endowed with the responsibility of creating new relationships and connections for the organization. It is through proper utilization of these relationships and links that the business grows into new fronts and continues to get the community’s goodwill.

            Just like visionary leadership, connector leadership also has the capacity to initiate variety and create new options for the business. This is especially through the diversity of relationships and connections the leadership makes. This function is critical because it establishes and accesses new resources for the business, these new frontiers may offer new possibilities and cut down costs. It also mines new information that is useful in achieving the organization’s objectives. Kouzes (2002, p.49-57) says that as a connector, the leadership helps build links and networks across boundaries, which assist the organization diversify and become more robust. This diversity and robustness give the organization a competitive advantage. The organization is then able to sustain profitable activities within its market.

Functions Of Leadership:Provision of Vision and Direction

Provision of Vision and Direction

    The leadership of any successful business organization has a vision of where the organization will be in a certain period. This vision also contains a way through which the organization will achieve the vision. For this reason, the leadership has to develop a clear vision and mission. These are then put in words in the organization’s vision and mission statements. The role of leadership then goes even further to plan and monitor effective strategies for the achievement of the vision. It is the function of leadership to articulate the vision and offer direction to members working for the realization of this vision.

    Many works in the past have tried to answer the question why founders of business organizations end up becoming leaders of the organizations. According to Caroselli (2000, p.78-85), the answer to these questions is that, in most cases, these founders have the requisite ability of articulating the organizations’ vision. This means that visionary leadership can draw clarity and simplify complex situations in the business. Caroselli says that the leaderships’ ability to see through complex situations and offer appropriate and timely suggestions through them helps the organization meet their objectives. It is mainly through a leadership that articulates the organizations’ vision that such organizations succeed. Such leaders have a better chance of rallying the workforce to join in supporting their course.

    In addition to articulating the vision and showing the way to achieve it, the leadership also strives to conceive the future, determine its limitations today and demonstrate that it is possible to achieve the vision. Organizations struggle to achieve their vision despite the possible complex situations. As such, the leadership remains a constant source of ideas and solutions that enable the organization to remain in its course for it to achieve its goals and objectives. Visionary leadership helps create new possibilitiesand realities that propel the organization in new and beneficial directions. (Winston, 2001, p.60-99).    

Functions of Leadership: Leadership Qualities

Functions of Leadership: Leadership Qualities

    To start the discussion, there is need to develop a working knowledge of what a leader is, and the qualities acclaimed amongst leaders. A leader is one visionary person who knows the way and leads others through the way (Bennis, 2003 p.79). A leader needs to have a vision or a set of goals and objectives that guides their actions in running the organization. Some requisite skills that leaders need to have and develop, according to Gordon (2007, p.77), include articulatory skills, which would help them convince others and guide them into supporting the vision. These form an important basis for the success of the organization.

In addition, a good leader should have skills in management, a good academic background and should serve as a role model that brings inspiration to the members of the organization. Another ingredient is general goodwill among the followers. This goodwill ensures that leadership is smooth because members do not have to be coerced to do their work. According to Murphy (2006, p.96), a leader should be in a position to set the pace, embrace teamwork, and keep time.

    Therefore, one can deduce that leadership plays an important role in insuring the success of any organization. Leaders do this by encouraging progress and defining the functionality of the organizations. Functions of leadership is, therefore, the focus of the subsequent part of this literature review.

 Functions of Leadership

    According to Albritton & Thomas (2000, p.117-123), leadership has more than six functions in every organization. Every one of these functions of leadership within an organizational context coincides with a function of the rules and standards that govern various interactions in the organization. To begin with, Leadership may take a visionary, gate-keeping, enforcer or connector role. Visionary leadership, for example, primarily generates information that is necessary for the organization and shows the way for the subjects to carry out duties geared to achieving the vision of the leaders. Although these functions vary from one organization to another, this literature ascertains that there are common functions that cut across different organizations.