Positive aspects of strategic leadership.

 

Choose a CEO of a prominent firm that you believe exemplifies the positive aspects of strategic leadership.
What actions does this CEO take that demonstrate effective strategic leadership?
What are the effects of those actions on the firm’s performance?

 

Sample Solution

Strategic leadership facilitates unity and prompts employees to buy into the vision. This reduces the chances of conflict and increases teamwork between departments. Instead of being siloed, departments work together and strive towards meeting the overall objectives of the company. Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple Inc., qualifies to be a strategic leader since he had a great ability of making decisions that involved critical thinking. He did innovations of great products that led consumers to scramble for them. He adopted the organic growth strategy and influenced his colleagues to put in their all. He was the type of leader who made contact with other employees in order to exchange something valued.

Motivation is again a product of good leadership. Motivation is highly personal, and it is the leaders responsibility to understand what motivates each individual and implement policies to obtain maximum performance from a group. The importance of the leaders role in motivating individuals is highlighted in Herzberg’s Two Factor theory. The theory highlights factors that must be in place to avoid dissatisfaction, hygiene factors, and factors that promote satisfaction, motivation factors, shown in Figure 4 (Pettinger, 2007). Herzberg’s theory helps to decipher what motivates individuals, but does not advise on how to implement this to produce maximum productivity from an individual, this is achieved by using the theory in conjunction with other motivational theories such as goal setting theory.
Figure 4: Hygiene and Motivating Factors (Pettinger,, 2006)
Goal setting is not just an important part of motivation, they are essential for both teamwork and successful leadership, they provide indication on what must be achieved, how much effort they must devoted to achieve it and they act as the primary source of job motivation for individuals, therefore setting them accurately is essential (Pettinger 2007). Specific and clear goals are the most effective motivators, and will lead to optimum performance, therefore it becomes essential for a leader to understand what motivates each individual within a group (Pettinger, 2007). Motivation is highly personal, and can differ massively across a group, so the leader must adapt how they motivate to suit each individual, this highlights the need for an organisation to implement policies that allow leaders to be flexible in how they reward individuals. Issues arise when goals are not set well, if the goals are ambiguous, unachievable or too easy then the individual will lose motivation (Pettinger, 2007). Once goals have been set it becomes essential for leaders to regularly assess how individuals are progressing towards them, if well then goals should be made more challenging, if the

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