Leadership Dimensions and their Linkage to Company Success /Failure

By Maximiliano Díaz Frigerio-MEM 2014

Leadership is considered today as one of the most relevant factors for the success
of a company, no matter on what stage this might be. It is believed however that
there is no linkage between the leadership dimensions and a company economic/
enterprise leadership.

In this paper I will try to explain why leadership is related to success and how
these different dimensions of leadership can affect the performance of a company
and most importantly, why is so relevant today to cultivate a proper leadership style
and application within a firm.

As explained by (McAndrew & Odero, 2015) in our leadership course, there are
four leadership dimensions: Economic / country leadership, Enterprise leadership,
Managerial leadership and Individual Leadership. In order to understand how
these leadership dimensions can be linked to a company success, it is necessary
to explain them.

Economic/ Country Leadership: Inside this kind of leadership, there are many
factors to consider a country as “leader”. Aspects as diverse as their economic
strength, educational system, labor laws, productivity, financial system, political
relationships should be consider when thinking about a nation leadership. Country
leadership is most of the times for certain factors at a time (no country is leader in
all aspects) as we saw in class some nations might be leaders in their educational
system, others in finances and so on. However, this leadership is perhaps one of
the broadest kinds of leaderships. It is hard to say how to properly measure this
leadership (the Global Competitiveness Index does a fair attempt).

One thing is clear however, as explained by (McKie & Willis, 2014), contemporary
leaders have to adjust to the new turbulent changing environment. In this case,
countries are also affected by the turbulences of today interconnected world, and
their success will also come hand in hand with the right actions, taken by their
government, who is literally “leading” the nation towards a potentially “better future”
(hopefully).

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Leadership Dimensions and their Linkage to Company Success /Failure
By Maximiliano Díaz Frigerio-MEM 2014

Enterprise Leadership: Inside a company, having good leadership is key to

success. Zander & Butler (2010) explain that companies have now within their
“modus operandi” to work with teams and, as if this was not already difficult
enough, today most teams are multicultural, which adds an additional degree of
difficulty to the task.

In order to have success, a firm has to be able to establish a clear path for their
employees to see, a “common goal” in which they can rely on. In order to reach
this goal, the employees have to be motivated and more importantly, recognized
for their job and help towards reaching the goal. The firm has to be able to face the
changes in the market and adapt to what is required, while still communicating
within and outside the message and ideas they claim their business is all about.
With these interactions, responsibility and community involvement are now
required from society, so that the firm shows that it is not only caring for the profit,
but for everyone around it.

Managerial Leadership: In the managerial leadership, managers have the tough

mission of taking what was established by the firm and downstream it towards the
teams and individuals, for reaching the goals and the objectives of the
organization. Yang, Huang, & Wu (2011) explain us that when there is an increase
in the level of leadership established by management, there is also a better
performance of the different teams that integrate the organization. In this view, they
also investigated the relation of teamwork towards project performance, which
came as a positive relation. This entails that project success can be achieved with
better team communication and collaboration, combined with improved team
cohesiveness.

All of these are achieved when a proper leadership style is reached by

management. As we revised in class, the management has to deliver a clear sight
of the contribution that is expected from their teams and team members, as well as
motivate them towards reaching the shared goals all together.

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Leadership Dimensions and their Linkage to Company Success /Failure
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Individual Leadership: Individual leadership is one of the dimensions, if not the

most vital for connecting the enterprise to a success path. In individual leadership,
different scopes interact towards making a person a leader or a follower.
Personality is very important for individual leadership, as this relates to the attitude
you got as a person towards life and its challenges, it is considered the “style” that
we have, our personal touch more or less. You can be introverted or extroverted
and that is fine, but for certain positions, you will be required to behave in a certain
way, same applies to be a leader. So, personality is not enough to be a leader and
here is where it is necessary to mention the “Intelligence Quotient” or ability to
learn. The ability to learn however is not as relevant as the “Emotional Quotient”,
which is the factor that linked to personality adds more value to your potential
leadership style.

The EQ will make you able to recognize and understand emotions, in you and
others, in order to manage your behavior and relationships with other people. EQ is
necessary to navigate through the social environment and develop empathy
towards other and social skills. Within Emotional Intelligence it is possible to find
the most key factors for people that are leading others, namely self-awareness,
self-regulation, their motivation, empathy and not a big surprise, their social skills.

Self-awareness will influence how you do things, as you know your limits and your
behavior. In a manager outlook, this relates to how you take deadlines and interact
with other working with you. Self-regulation is your ability to stay in control and
alert. In business and when managing people this will be relevant to maintain a
professional behavior, even when the results are dissatisfying. Continuously,
motivation is defined as what drives (internally and externally) people to be
committed to do a job and to reach goals. Motivation will be extremely important
for leaders, as only by proper motivating people, they will be interested in following
him and in reaching the goals that the leader and the firm are promoting.
Furthermore, when taking decisions, if these are not taken while taking into
consideration the emotions and feelings of the co-workers (Empathy), the
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Leadership Dimensions and their Linkage to Company Success /Failure
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decisions can be seen as authoritarian attitude towards them and not in the way a
leader should work. Is here were Social skills will intervene, as leader need to
manage relationships and be effective leading change, building effective teams
and persuasive to attract their team members to follow his idea.

We can see that individual leadership is by far the most relevant aspect, as if we
review success cases; it is clear the relation between a success case and potent
leader in the organization and how leadership skills and dimensions are related to
this. Here are some examples where leadership made a difference in the success
of a firm, as mentioned in the March 2013 edition of the US magazine
“Entrepreneur" (2013): Firms like Insureon (Californian Insurer) and its CEO (Ted
Devine) that have flat hierarchies and open office layout, that is more than just an
open space, it’s the view that everyone is able to talk even to the CEO if they want
to. Devine goes further and says that “best leaders are the ones that work with the
team”, as they will be more recognized and respected.

Another example from the same article is from the company LinkedIn, worldwide
firm in which his CEO (Jeff Weiner) is always thinking on the “next play”, this
relates to what Weiner explains as “praising for a minute your success or reflecting
on your failure, but then move on”. Weiner is known inside the firm for delivering
positive “constructive criticism”, which his employees love and even him asks for
feedback after his presentations. Weiner mentions that this “makes everyone feel
that they are part of a supportive team”

A final example to take from the entrepreneur article is Evernote, an organization

app firm from California, whose CEO (Phil Libin) says that the best way for his
team to reach the goals is “to focus on results” and that managers should do
everything to eliminate obstacles for their employees, so that they can reach the
unreachable. This combined with an unlimited holiday package and others perks,
help employees to cut the stress and be really good at their job. According to Gary
Little (Evernote Board member) it is not only the benefits or the goals, but the way
their CEO delivers the company vision “with a warm, embracing personality that

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Leadership Dimensions and their Linkage to Company Success /Failure
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draws people toward him and the company”. Little says “that is how our CEO gets
the best from all his people”.

After these explanations and examples, it is quite clear how leadership is important
for the success of a firm, in a way that integrates their workers under a same vision
and towards a common goal. Firms that understand this point and manage through
their managers to deliver this mission while keeping motivated and excited their
teams and individuals will be successful in today business environment. It is
possible to see that cultivating a leadership culture should be in the best interest of
all firms that want to succeed today in business.

It is in my opinion that the integration of leadership, through all the dimensions will
make a firm have better chances for success, however, as we could see in the
examples and in other examples given in class, most of the times there has to be
an individual leadership to set the path toward business success, such as the case
of Apple or Virgin. Leadership is one of the great tools of today´s business and
everyone involved in business should be aware of it, either to understand how to
integrate themselves within an organization, as a follower of a leader or to actually
become a leader and make something different in this, ever changing, business
environment.

Bibliography

Entrepreneur. (2013). 5 Influential CEOs Weigh in What Makes a Good Leader.

May. Retrieved from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/225804

McKie, D., & Willis, P. (2014). Advancing tendencies? PR leadership, general

leadership, and leadership pedagogy. Public Relations Review, 41, 1–8.

Richard McAndrew, E. O. (2015). The Dimensions of Leadership.

Yang, L.-R., Huang, C.-F., & Wu, K.-S. (2011). The association among project
manager’s leadership style, teamwork and project success. International
Journal of Project Management, 29(3), 258–267.

Zander, L., & Butler, C. L. (2010). Leadership modes: Success strategies for
multicultural teams. Scandinavian Journal of Management, 26(3), 258–267.