Role of Leader in Organization Development.

1. By-Prof Priyanka kedia. Role of Leader in Organization Development.

2. The Nature of Leadership • A leader is a person who guides others toward a common goal, showing the way by example, and creating an environment in which other team members feel actively involved in the entire process. • A leader is not the boss of the team but, instead, the person that is committed to carrying out the mission of the Venture. • Leadership is the ability to influence people toward the attainment of goals. What is leadership? • “What makes a leader?” has been a key question asked throughout the organizations of this century. Although there is a tremendous researching the subject, however no clear blueprint of effective leadership has emerged that strongly relates to the success in variety of organizations. • General Electric Corporation defined, "a leader is considered to be someone with vision and ability to articulate that vision to the team, so vividly and powerfully that it becomes their vision". • Another text defined, "a leader is someone who brings to the situation a clear and compelling sense of the future as well as an understanding of the actions needed to get there successfully."

3. Leadership versus Management Leader qualities SOUL Visionary Passionate Creative Flexible Inspiring Innovative Courageous Imaginative Experimental Initiates change Personal power Manager qualities MIND Rational Consulting Persistent Problem solving Tough-minded Analytical Structured Deliberate Authoritative Stabilizing Position power

4. Personal Characteristics of Leaders Physical Characteristics: • Energy • Physical stamina Intelligence & Ability: • Intelligence, cognitive ability • Knowledge • Judgment, decisiveness Personality: • Self-confidence • Honesty & integrity • Enthusiasm • Desire to lead • Independence Social Characteristics: • Sociability, interpersonal skills • Cooperativeness • Ability to enlist cooperation • Tact, diplomacy Work Related Characteristics: • Achievement drive, desire to excel • Conscientiousness in pursuit of goals • Persistence against obstacles, tenacity Social Background: • Education • Mobility

5. What is the role of a leader in an organization? • The most fundamental role of a leader is to define the organizational goal, formulate plans and organize people to achieve the goals through the execution of plans. • The figure illustrates the 3-Dimensions of leadership tasks

6. The Components Vision - It defines the purpose, or simply “What to do?” A vision includes determining the next product or feature, finding new markets for the product, adoption of new technology etc. Strategy - It articulates the plans, “How to achieve the vision?” Plans or strategies demonstrate the job knowledge or the skills of a leader. It includes restructuring organization, product management, strategic management etc. People - “Who should carry out the Strategy?” How to make people accomplish the strategy and hence the goal, The people skills include providing inspiration &motivation, establishing relationship, intelligently using power and position of Leadership etc.   The most important skill that bridges the three job functions is “making decisions”. Any leader has to deal with array of options in his every day chore; a good leadership depends on how effectively he chooses those alternatives. Hence effective decision making is an essential skill for any leader.

7. Role of Leader • Leader as a Cognitive Tuner. • Leader as People Catalyser. • Leader as a System Architect. • Leader as a Efficacy Builder.

8. Leader as Cognitive Tuner. • The task of change requires the leader to understand the mental models inside the organisation and forces of change impacting on the organisation.The Change leaders must be able to tune the prevailing mindsets inside the organisation and forces of change in environment. • This challenge has been termed as cognitive tuning because it is largely a process of reflection, analysis and thinking. Cognitive tuning occurs through the medium of dialogue and conversations. • Leaders must, therefore be skilled in initiating dialogue to both understand prevailing mindsets, and to make people aware of their mindsets. They also need to pay attention to the evolving environment. • While cognitive tuning is all about paying attention to mental models both inside and outside the organisation, one cannot understand the mental models of others unless one s aware of one’s own mental model. Therefore, as cognitive tuners, change leaders need to be able to reflect on their own ways of thinking. This very act of cognitive tuning initiates change in an organisation.

9. Example for Leader as Cognitive Tuner. • A traditional organisation was undergoing a structural change to bit the competition in the market and want to launch a new product, in the process employees were required to behave in ways that would be qualitatively different from the manner in which they had been used to operating. • The organisational members were required to move away from hierarchical culture in a number of ways. Juniors were expected to talk openly about difficulties and voice opinions freely at meetings. They had to assume responsibility, work across functional boundaries and operate with minimal guidance and specific role prescriptions. • The seniors, on the other hand, were expected to actively seek opinions, encourage dissent and support efforts to modify dysfunctional procedures They had to feel comfortable with initiative being taken at lower levels, and feedback and expectations being expressed frankly by their direct reports. • No thought was given to how such changes in mindsets were expected to be brought about. Not surprisingly, these mindset changes did not occur, and so the structural changes did not take place properly.

10. Leader as People Catalyser • Force or threat is never a strategy in an organization to bring change. Change Leaders needs to influence and persuade the people to unlearn their existing mental models to accept change. Change leaders don't bring the change itself, they facilitate the process and its emergence. • The role of leader is to act as catalyst to speed up the process of letting go old mental models and adoption of newer ones. • In organisation setting this evokes support & resources,insituting a process that is open transparent and inclusive, consulting before making a decision. • Leader as Catalyse should be able to help people to redefine their mental models, they need to frame a change in such a manner that permits people to let go their old mental models. They also build support through negotiations if necessary.

11. Example of Leader as Catalyser. • When the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation(DMRC) undertook their massive projecting the Nation’s Capital, the, the leadership realised that among other challenges, it had to generate external support from Delhi's residents, politicians, bureaucrats, contractors and several other groups. The project owes its success to effectively managing the dependencies on a wide array of these external stakeholders. To illustrate the leadership’s approach, let us examine how the public support was mobilised. • The leadership team headed by E Sreedharan saw the challenge not merely in terms of communication, but as winning people over to the corporation’s philosophy and approaches. For example, a number of procedures were instituted at work sites to minimise disturbances. The procedures even specified that the vehicles should not be allowed to leave the work sites without their tyres being cleaned. As the other public utilities were notorious for their inefficiency, the interface with those agencies was handled by taking additional responsibilities to ensure that there was no public discontent. • Right through the process, there were regular community interaction programmes. People were provided advanced intimation and regular updates by using several media. Help lines were available to report difficulties. As a result, the project consistently enjoyed a great image in the eyes of the Delhi residents, and received their support. 

12. Leader as Systems Architect. • In the celebrated case of Nissan’s turnaround, Carlos Ghosn, the new leader, found that the organisation had very capable people, but the organisation’s architecture in terms of its hierarchy, procedures, policies, and decision-making processes had contributed to a culture of learned helplessness. Compartmentalisation of functions/ roles, and rivalry between departments/ divisions had reached such an extent that there was a culture of blaming each other for organisational problems. • Employees had lost both the focus and the energy. Changing anything seemed to be huge task beyond any individual’s capacity. To convert this learned helplessness into learned optimism, the leadership altered both the structure and the culture of the organisation. Cross-functional teams(CFTs) were set up to address critical issues. CFTs were supported by numberof thoughtful interventions, and so they became instrumental in creating a strong foundation for the remarkable turnaround of the company.

13. Cont- Leader as system Architect. • A key leadership challenge is to facilitate modification of mindsets by attending to four requirements: exposing people to alternative perspectives; enabling people from different functions to work together; identifying and removing roadblocks to modifying existing routines; and creating new routines to focus the organisation’s attention on continuous improvement. Leadership establishes a context that facilitates these four requirements. This is done by creating an appropriate architecture that is made up of roles, responsibilities, systems and procedures. We refer to this important leadership roles that of a systems architect. • As a systems architect, leaders create cross-functional linkages in the organisation, align policies, procedures and remove structural impediments to performance and change, and create new routines for continuous improvement. Apart from the emphasis on structure, leaders also pay attention to creating a climate of hope and optimism by clarifying purpose, enhancing preparedness and providing psychological safety.

14. Leader as Efficacy Builder. • For a company that is almost 100 years old, Tata Steel has shown remarkable agility since the early 1990’s. When the forces of liberalisation were set in motion, the leadership put in place myriad processes to prepare the company for global competition. Over a hundred teams were mobilised to bring about improvements in different areas. Cumulatively, over 5,000 people were entrusted the challenge of carrying out various initiatives for modernising mindsets of the company’s 40,000employees, enhancing quality, bringing about radical performance improvements through ‘Total Operational Performance’(TOP), creating a market-oriented organisation, de-bottlenecking facilities, phasing out technologically obsolete plants, adding new facilities for manufacturing value-added products, capacity expansion and so on. • The entire workforce of 40,000people was trained in certain improvement techniques to change patterns of thinking. A major change initiative called ASPIRE(Aspirational Initiatives to RetainExcellence) was launched to use teams as an instrument and source of innovation in the company. The idea was to get people to look at existing operations with new eyes, be innovative and translate the ideas into effective ground-level implementation. Not surprisingly, the company has been rated among the top five steel producers in the world for the last four years by the World Steel Dynamics, and was ranked the best steel company in the world in 2005.

15. Cont- Leader as Efficacy Builder. • Though the company changed all the components of capability – its skills, systems, structure, strategy and culture, the heart of the leadership lies in building self-efficacy. Self-efficacy refers to the confidence an individual has in his or her ability to achieve challenging goals. A high level of self-efficacy makes it easy for individuals to learn new things because they experience less learning anxiety. As we have noted, the subjective world and mindsets of organisational members determine what they see and how they would think and act. This leadership role of fostering a positive belief in people that they can face the challenges of change and overcome them has been termed as 'efficacy builder’ role. • To build self-efficacy, leaders enhance the aspirations of people to face challenging tasks. They create positive role models for others to emulate; design incentives that induce people to set high goals for themselves; ensure that there are support mechanisms to help people achieve their stretch goals; and promote learning as a desirable goal in the organisation. In short, they structure opportunities for people to set challenging goals and achieve them.

16. Conclusion. • Finally, it is important to note that single leader need not necessarily address all the four sets of challenges by himself/herself. An effective leader understands his or her strengths and limitations and teams up with other leaders having complementary strengths so that the leadership team can perform all four roles to be able to navigate through the complex challenge of altering mindsets. • Managing organisations in the current global environment is a complex challenge that requires sophisticated solutions. Our organisations can effectively meet this challenge by viewing leadershipas a multifaceted task of cognitive tuning, people catalysing, architecting effectivesystems and building efficacy of the people in the organisation.