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leadership secrets

Leadership is defined as “ability to affect human behavior so as to accomplish a mission designated by the leader.”[i] Along with leadership comes power. “Power is the ability to affect the behavior of others.”[ii] Leaders can rely on several kinds of power to influence others. In many industries, workers suffer from overwork- a demanding schedule, stress, and long working hours.[iii] In organizational settings, there are usually five kinds of power: legitimate, reward, coercive, referent, and expert power.[iv] Leaders must develop appropriate organizational power bases to use effectively their power to influence others. Nature of work in today’s complex organizations requires that we become more enlighten with respect to issues of leadership, power, and influence. Personal energy enables managers to complete their tasks; lack of energy is disabling.[v] Leaders get their power by cutting down their stress level. They do so by taking small breaks in their work, enjoying the weekends with family, and taking vacations twice a year.

            . Workplace stress has a negative impact on business as well as the individual employee. Today, workplace stress is estimated to cost American companies more than $300 billion a year in poor performance, absenteeism and health costs.[vi] The responses our bodies and minds have to the demands placed on them is a normal part of life and a normal part of any job. We cannot meet deadlines without stress. Job stress happens when challenge and demand of work becomes excessive, pressures of workplace surpass workers abilities to handle them and satisfaction becomes frustration and exhaustion. Excessive stress creates physical and emotional responses that are harmful to the employees and businesses. Unfortunately, for many people “stress” has become synonymous with “work”[vii]. “Most top corporate leaders work 80 to 100 hours weekly, but they need a way to rebuild and refresh.”[viii]

For example, Marissa Mayer, vice president for Google sleeps for only four to six hours. She always keeps her laptop and cell phone with her. After working so hard, she needs a break to relax and loosen up stress. She prefers taking weeklong vacation three times per year.  Some leaders play sports like running marathons, tennis, badminton etc during their work breaks to freshen up their minds. Regular exercise and yoga are good ways to recover from overwork.[ix] Gross, a securities portfolio manager does not believe in taking breaks. He likes to avoid all the calls while working and examining six monitors displaying real-time investments data.

According to Michigan Studies, there are two types of leader behaviors- job centered leader behavior and employee centered leader behavior. Job centered leader behavior is defined as, “the behavior of leaders who pay close attention to the job and work procedures involved with that job”.[x] Employee centered leader behavior is defined as, “behavior of leaders who develop cohesive work groups and ensure employee satisfaction.”[xi] We can say that Gross has job centered leadership behavior. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, states that if the 20 smartest people left, Microsoft would be an insignificant company.[xii] Thus Bill Gates has employee centered leadership behavior. Hank Paulson, CEO of Goldman Sachs calls the company’s top 60 CEO customers to wish them New Year, every year. He likes to develop good relationships with all the company employees, suppliers and customers, thus he has employee-centered leadership behavior.

“Charisma is a form of interpersonal attraction that inspires support and acceptance.”[xiii] Charismatic leadership assumes that charisma is an individual characteristic of the leader. “Bill Gates is the head of the software company Microsoft and is one of the world's wealthiest men. He oversaw the invention and marketing of the MS-DOS operating system, the Windows operating interface, the Internet Explorer browser, and a multitude of other popular computer products. Along the way he gained a reputation for fierce competitiveness and aggressive business savvy”[xiv]. Although he is considered charismatic leader within his own company, he fired Microsoft’s first company president in only 11 months of his job. Gates never surrounded himself with the people who agreed with him, he was able to convince himself with others point of view being reasonable. His key to success was his ability to focus on the fundamentals of the business while keeping office politics or his own ego from getting in the way.[xv]

Thus, leadership and management are often related but are also different. Leadership is a vital force in organization today, and effective leadership can spell the difference between success and failure.[xvi]

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