Leader-center, Follower-centric, and Context-centric Leadership Style

Leadership Situation Evaluation
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Leadership Situation Evaluation
Leadership remains a vital tool in organizations that attempt to adapt to the dynamism of their operational environments. Business environments change consistently, thereby demanding an insightful understanding by the leaders. To address the needs of their organizations, leaders employ different styles and approaches. One leadership style cannot fit different scenarios that an organization faces. It becomes easier to spot different types of leadership in different situations. One of the situations where oversight can be spotted is during change within an organization. Change comes with varying reactions from stakeholders, support and opposition experienced almost in equal measures. The leaders must instill unique styles to address the challenges faced in various changes. This paper emphasizes a performance management change situation that demands different leadership styles from one leader. The changing operational environments for business organizations require that leaders develop avenues of incorporating leadership styles such as leader-center, follower-centric, and context-centric to address the change-associated challenges conclusively.
The Situation
The change situation that faced the organization encompassed the need to change the performance management strategies. Company X managed its performances through the key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs in the entity consisted of areas such as production, sales, and raw materials lead time. With the information gathered from KPIs, it would be possible for the organization to ascertain the areas that performed effectively and those that needed to boost their performances. While KPIs delivered the overall organizational performance outcomes, they ignored individual performances. The top management, led by the chief strategy officer, OJ, devised a plan to change the performance strategy to a more people-oriented approach. The proposed system would be 360 degrees performance management. Implementing 360 degrees performance management would mean that individual employees set targets against which their performances will be assessed.
The new performance management tool would also allow managers to assess individual performances against the KPIs. Ultimately, 360 degrees management would enable employees to determine one another. The new performance management tool proved unpopular among employees who felt it would eliminate the “freedom” they needed at the workplace. The attempts by the organization proved futile as more employees resorted to resisting the change. In such a conflict, it demanded the inputs of different leadership styles to revert the operations to normalcy.
Leader-Centric Style
The leader-centric style evident in OJ’s solutions to resistance was autocratic leadership. Authoritarian/autocratic leadership denotes a leader's complete control over their followers. Authoritarian leaders are viewed as experts in their organizations, and as a result, they are tasked with determining organizational goals and a strategic road to success (Murphy, 2019). They set clear expectations for their followers about what has to be done, wh...