Leadership

The strength of leadership in an organization is one of the key ingredients of organizational

success. But leadership is not only about a persons skills to influence the outcome. Subordinates
accept influence from leaders because they respect, like, or admire them not simply because
they hold positions of formal authority. This point is strongly proved in our case. People
followed Ms Ong even during crisis mainly because they saw her not as a boss, but more as a
close friend. Even tiers in their eyes were not because of the danger to loose job, but because of
Ongs lost dreams and her feelings. But how did she reach this kind of unity within a group?
There are some characteristics of a successful leader and we want to look them through.
1. Integrity. Honesty and integrity are the cornerstone of sustainable success. Myta was honest
with her workers, this is observed more clearly when she clearly defined the situation during the
crisis and acknowledged them with available options to choice.
2. Willingness to take Risk. Leaders are not afraid of taking risks or making mistakes. Myta took
the risk, but unfortunately she was not aware of possible outcomes of this deal.
3. Optimism and Enthusiasm. Successful leaders maintain optimism even in tough situations.
Here Myta lost her optimism and was not sure in possibility to resolve the problem.
4. Commitment to Growth. Myta was more concerned about people rather than about growth of
her business, but as her company is developed now we can conclude that she changed her
attitude toward business policies.
5. Hard Work and Conscientiousness. Myta was ready to work hard to meet both the needs of her
workers and to organize the work in the most suitable way. She spent much time considering
how to make work process acceptable for workers. This also shows her flexibility as she changed
schedules to help her workers.
6. Self-confidence. Myta lacked self-confidence. She was not sure in her ability to meet the crisis
and was ready to give up her dreams.
7. Flexibility. Here flexibility refers to the ability of leaders to recognize the needs of followers
and the demands of the situation they face and change their style in response to these
circumstances.
8. Expertise in Industry. Myta lacked self-confidence and knowledge of the business. She was
not sure in her ability to meet the crisis and was ready to give up her dreams. Also she was not
much informed about the business strategies and single bad decision led to collapse. She didnt
anticipate all the risk she faced giving landscaping on credit to a new business. Our advice to her
is to take into account all the possible outcomes and risk before accepting new deal and always
prepare plan B. Also we think that it would be better for Myta to believe in her skills and not to
fear to make notable decisions.
Myta developed person oriented leadership. People-oriented leaders are thoughtful, considerate
and care about the relationship with their followers. They pay attention to the needs of their
subordinates and strive to satisfy those needs. They seek to develop the ability of their followers
and build their self-confidence. They create comfortable, friendly organization atmosphere and
make their staff feel at ease. This type of leadership normally resulted in higher employee
satisfaction and fewer personnel problems in most of the situations and context.

As Myta was too much focused on establishing relations with her workers, she underestimated
the role of production that resulted in low performance. We would recommend her to concentrate
both on people and tasks (high task/high person in our table). And this can be obtained through
grid training. Grid training proposes a multistep process designed to cultivate these two
important skills. First we recommend to take a grid seminar a session in which Myta will be
acknowledged about her current leadership style. After that Myta will participate in training on
planning skills and communication skills. Grid training is now considered an effective way of
improving the leadership behaviour and it can be used to help Myta to find out her mistakes in
order not to repeat them in future.

Team management is the most desirable. These leaders stress production needs and the needs of
the people equally highly. The premise here is that employees are involved in understanding
organizational purpose and determining production needs. When employees are committed to,
and have a stake in the organizations success, their needs and production needs coincide. This
creates a team environment based on trust and respect, which leads to high satisfaction and
motivation and, as a result, high production.