Leadership Development: Qualities Used To Lead, Essay.

Alternative leadership development practices

Discuss about the Leadership Development Refers Qualities Used To Lead.

Clune Fund Services Company was founded in the year 1998 and it’s based in IFSC. Its main goal and objective was to provide financial services to its customers as a way of enhancing a positive believe of development among the many individuals in the financial sector. With one able chairman Mr. Clune, the company has been able to provide more than just management and investment services to its people or rather the customers. The chairman with other directors as well as board members have great experiences in terms of financial management having worn many awards due to their contribution in the finance sector. The Irish government as well has been of great support to the company by providing a health environment as well as finances where need be for them to offer services to the citizens. The company with the help of senior management has been able to employ able employees who have together enhanced sizeable growth of the company. This is a positive sign of good leadership of the company as well as determined employees to deliver towards the set goals and objectives.

Leadership refers to act of controlling or guiding in authority to giving directions by a leader in relation to set objectives and goals of the company. Clune Fund has a set of senior managers who have great experience in the field of finance, making it easier for them to enhance good leadership. Though with a sizeable rate of growth, the company is experiencing a range of leadership development issues due to high demand of promotion as a result of increasing production activities within the company that needs to be managed. As a result the management has adopted some leadership development practices to help fill the leadership gaps, like appointing leaders based on merit of performance and experiences (Frawley, Favaloro & Schulenkorf, 2018).

 Discussion below gives more alternatives of leadership development practices that the company can adopt to enhance development. The need for outsourcing development practices and how best leadership alternative practices can be evaluated to ensure they give a return on investments.

Leadership development refers to the act of enhancing qualities used to lead or rather carry out management activities in a given company or organization. Some of this qualities include proper communication, ability to motivate employees or those in junior positions and other management skills to those who may not have these skills and are in leadership positions. Leadership development practices on the other hand refers to emerging trends in management role that helps in dealing with main as well as minor risks and priorities in relation to set goals and objectives. Many companies and organizations are concerned about their level of growth, how they can be able to sustain it as the targets demand are increasing more and more each day (Boseman, 2008). As a result, they have adopted various leadership development practices that are best suited to their goals. Some of these alternative practices that Clune Fund can adopt include the following;

Most effective practice

Understand and define audiences of respective leaders in the company. If there is more than one leader in any given organization or company, it means that there is more than one set of audiences. To ensure there is no conflict of any kind in terms of leadership audiences, it’s important to ensure there is a clear definition of leadership audiences and their responsibilities towards their respective goals. Clune Fund has many arising leaders who are appointed on merit of experience and demand for promotion, this has no clear definition of whom they are supposed to lead and the uniqueness of their role from that of others (Gandolfi & Stone, 2017). The management should ensure that they define all the different roles to be carried out, the leaders of those departmental roles, whom they are supposed to lead and the expected outcomes of both the leaders and their audiences. This is important to both the senior management and the junior leaders as well as their audiences, with everyone understanding their roles and responsibilities it’s easier to achieve the set goals as there is minimal conflict if any of interest in leadership.

Develop a performance management plan. To ensure that all managers and leaders within the company carry out their roles efficiently and effectively and according to set goals, a performance management plan is very important. Regular open meetings and dialogues between the senior managers and other leaders within the company enhance their participation in sharing new ideas challenges and other engagements that enhance their experiences. This is important as it helps in monitoring their progress, understanding their strengths and weakness to identify areas they need support as well as more training. As a financial company, it’s hard for some leaders to always understand the emerging trends and needs of their customers. Example, rates and interest in the market in terms of buying and selling currency and their customers’ expectations. To help in this, performance management plan practice enhances   sharing between the leaders to help understand the trends and customers’ expectations for a better output performance to the company’s development.

Define development program and leadership competencies for each leader. Leadership competencies refers to skills required by each leader to enhancing robust growth and development as a result of good performance. Development programs in this case acts as a signature role for each leader to enable the management track their performance in relation to their level of competency. This is a very crucial leadership development practice that Clune Fund can adopt to ensure that all leaders perform according to their level of qualifications. No underperformance is required in this case unless in a very rare case where the leader may not be able to deliver. Leadership competencies while electing a leader is very important to a company like Clune Funding, this ensures that the leaders elected have a role of ensuring growth and actualization of their vision in line with the set goals. Development programs on the other hand ensure a continuous, active and progressive development phase of every leader within the company in line with their level of qualifications which is very important.

Suitability of outsourcing development practices

Findings indicate that the minor costly errors indicated from the case study are as a result of mistakes made by leaders who need support to be able to enhance their roles in their respective departments. As a result, performance management plan as one of the leadership development practices is a good recommendation to Clune Fund Company. This would be the most effective alternative practice to the company as it ensures all leaders performance is tracked, experiences and challenges shared to enhance leadership growth. Leaders who have great experiences and are highly qualified for the jobs also face challenges that needs support from other leaders in their various departments. To enhance this, sharing of their challenges gives them opportunities to gain experiences and support from other leaders hence placing performance management plan practice at its best and effective position in support of growth and development (Sarwar, 2013).

Development practices are shared beliefs that are believed to have a greater contribution in business growth and development. Outsourcing is very great and suitable idea for companies on development practices to enhance their level of performance due to various issues like sharing of ideas. Development practices in the business world are formed from discovered ideas as well as challenges that either support or negatively affect the rate of development in various business units. Outsourcing in this case will help the management to understand business ideas and challenges that are likely to affect their performances (Yukl, 2012). Coming up with solutions of any identified challenges and implementation of discovered ideas is important for all companies who enhance outsourcing of development practices.

Enhances the level of company’s growth and development. Through outsourcing, a company is able to understand the emerging trends in the market as well as the customers’ expectations. In the current business market, there are various emerging trends which are as a result of increasing technical development that characterize most of the services to be given to the customers. If a company does not understand this issues in the current market whether global or local, it’s likely to remain underdeveloped. Outsourcing will enable the various companies like Clune Funds to act according to the position of the current business trends for its development (Harkins, et al, 2016).

Enhance development programs. There are various existing companies in the same line but have different programs. Through outsourcing, a company like Clune is able to learn of more programs that can be adopted and enhance growth. Example of such programs include online financial marketing where the company and their clients never meet physically but conduct all their activities online. Another one is the biometric identification of both leaders and clients in a given company, here leaders, other employees and clients are identified using their fingerprints or other unique prints of their body. This enhances the level of security to the company as well as saves time used in looking for records kept for individual’s identification (Hoffman & Vorhies, 2017).

Leadership development practices. To enhance a company’s growth and maintain it, efficient and effective leadership practices are required, these practices varies depending on the kind of services offered by a given company in the market. Example, services given by Clune Funding cannot be the same as that of a textile company. To enhance these services, Companies in the same line share their leadership development practices to enhance their level of growth by curbing the arising challenges that may affect them (Godinez & Leslie, 2015). Through outsourcing of learning and development practices, Companies like Clune are able to learn and acquire new leadership practices that can be implemented to enhance their leadership scheme important to maintaining their level of development.

Evaluation means assessment activities carried out to gauge the level of effectiveness of a given leadership practice put in place. There are various methods that can be used to carry out evaluation of leadership development practices alternatives discussed above for Clune Fund Company (Parr, Lanza & Bernthal, 2016). Two of these include use assessment tools like survey or questionnaires and carrying out a leadership stimulation exercise. Surveys or questionnaire consists of questions administered to employees and are required to give answer, being the leadership audience employees understand the activities carried out by their leaders and are in a better position to give information regarding their duties (Engelbrecht, Van Aswegen & Theron, 2005). The questions administered are in line with the roles given to a certain leader and they are expected to act upon, they may be closed or open-ended depending on the intensity of the question. Answers given by the employees help in assessing whether the level of leadership given is in accordance to the leaders level of qualification and the set goals of the company. Leadership stimulation method is a leadership evaluation technique where the senior manager carries out assessment activity with the intended leader. In this case, the senior manager engages a conversation with the leader face to face, through a phone call or a video and may ask questions regarding to the leaders role and responsibilities. Though this method is used it’s not highly recommended as the leader may give biased information in cases where the senior manager is not careful. The results or feedback given by the leader gives the senior management information whether the leadership is in line with the company’s expectations and goals or not (Akins, et al, 2013).

In most cases, metrics used in determining investments return are assessing the quality of company’s practices and methods applied in relation to the set objectives and goals. Leadership practices put in place are in relation to the set goals of the company, as a result, returns on investments can be measured with the positivity of the present leadership and the registered level of growth. Assessments carried out from time to time are important to ensure that, the practices of leadership put in place or enhanced in the company are in line with the desired level of investment. Cost applied in enhancing leadership, should give results that are directly influencing high growth of the company indicating a return of investments (Chami-Malaeb & Garavan, 2013). Poor leadership practices evaluation results indicates that there is no cost effectiveness in the level of leadership training applied by the senior management hence no investment return. However, balancing between formulaic and statistical methods of leadership assessment may not be effective as required. This may bring resistance as some may argue the assessment was not fair and to some it could be fair. Example, assessment done via survey may at time be biased because in cases where the employee and the leader do not relate well information given may not be correct and also where the employee is not consistently careful about the leader’s responsibilities. To overcome this, it’s better for the senior management to carry out assessment using biased free methods. This will enhance fairness, positivity and good relations among the employees and leaders as it enables a clear way of observing returns investments (AlShamsi, 2016).

Conclusion

Effective leadership is crucial towards actualization process of the company’s goals and objectives. Leadership development practices enhanced in a company influences the time used and quality of achievements registered. As a global company Clune Fund has a responsibility of maintaining its sizeable level of growth, this can be enhanced by ensuring that alternative leadership development practices discussed above are applied and implemented. This will help solve the issues detected in leadership towards achieving the set goals. Outsourcing of development practices is very important to ensuring that the company understands the market structure and its requirement as well as learn from other company’s important features for development. Effective leadership results cannot be realized without evaluation, to ensure this, the senior management should ensure effective and efficient evaluation important for gauging leadership activities within the company. This evaluation enables the company to realize whether the practices put in place are effective or not depending on the rate of investment returns.

Clune Fund Company should ensure that all leaders and employees working towards achieving the company’s goals are qualified depending on the position they hold as well as responsibilities given to them. This is important to enhance easier management control as each one understands what to be done where and when as well as the expected results.

Should enhance performance management plan. To ensure that all leaders and employees perform according to their levels of qualification, the company’s senior management should adopt a performance management plan to help keep track of their performances.

Clune Fund should ensure to use efficient and effective leadership evaluation methods to help give accurate finding. This will in return make it easier to evaluate on investments return.

The company should encourage more outsourcing learning of development practices. This is important to ensuring that all trends in the market are incorporated in its production activities towards achieving its set goals. This ensures that the company’s sizeable rate of growth is highly maintained, enhancing customers satisfaction as well as adopt new ways of dealing with challenges that may be identified.

References

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