Leadership Report Assignment Sample
Introduction
The concept of leadership may be regarded as one of the most crucial aspects when it comes to organizational effectiveness and success of an organization. It needs to be mentioned that effective leaders have the capability to make an organizational culture the most positive one and take it to the pinnacle of success and on the other hand, an ineffective leader will bring the enterprise down. Leadership is one of the main determinants of success and failure of any enterprise and it is the aspect that helps people to be directed and motivated to attain goals and objectives of an organization (Al, 2018). Leaders are also able to create a company culture that provides significant job satisfaction to people and a culture in which the individuals feel excited to work in. thereafter, it may be stated that the behavior’s of leaders have a significant impact on the company culture.
Thereafter, it may be implied that the impact of an effective leader is extremely significant for an organization and its success and thus, in this report the concept of effective leadership and the way leaders have a significant impact on company culture will be discussed critically. British Airways (BA) will be the chosen organization for this given report and the challenges that the company is facing will be discussed at large by putting emphasis on the way the company’s leaders are treating the situation (Britishairways.com. 2022). Along with that, the leadership style of the company’s leader, the challenges the company is currently facing which is regarding cutting down on its workforce owing to the pandemic will also be discussed. The company is also facing some challenges in relation to discarding its carbon footprint as much as possible to make their practices as much sustainable as possible.
A brief description of the British Airways and the challenges it faces in the current business environment
Assessing the link between the leader’s behavior’s and organizational culture to mitigate the organizational cultural challenges
The behavior’s of a leader has a significant impact on the culture of an organization and also the people who are working within the same as well. There are some approaches towards leadership that is able to completely transform the culture of an organization from a negative one to a positive work environment, such as transformational leadership. The transformational leadership theory is completely contradictory to a democratic leadership style, as this kind of leadership approach empowers and inspires the employees along with enabling the workforce to participate in generating new ideas and also provides a significant amount of flexibility (Ketamine et al., 2020). The leader of British Airways, Sean Doyle us an exemplary leader and thus, has managed to implement effective strategies for the company that has helped British Airways to make effective strategic decision that led the company to partner with American Airline (Refer to Appendix 1). The leadership of Sean Doyle has been helpful in creating quite an efficient organizational culture within British Airways as well that has facilitated the company to meet all its organizational goals effectively.
Innovation
Under the leadership of Sean Doyle the company has become extremely innovative and taken significant steps that have led British Airways to stand apart from the rest of the competitors. From the beginning of 2020, the airline has been counteracting all the domestic flights and the customers travelling to a far distance are able to choose to cancel the individual’s carbon emission with the company’s own carbon calculator (Jackson and Tozer, 2020). Such an approach is extremely innovative and also quite helpful for the sustainable future that people are trying to build and also for mitigating another challenge the company is facing, which is the reduction of its carbon footprint.
Aggressive and outcome oriented
An organization with an aggressive organizational culture will always be committed towards outperforming the company’s rivals to stay ahead in the competitive game and outcome oriented organizational culture always puts emphasis on the results and actions as imperative measures. The airline falls under both the categories under the leadership of Sean Doyle as British Airways always try to introduce strategies that will lead the company to stay ahead in the competitive game by obtaining significant results in business performance by making relevant changes to mitigate the different issues the company may be facing. Airlines are known to be notorious for offering less amount of returns on investment in comparison to other corporations and thus, the executives always aim to acquire increased financial return always (Lohmann and Spasmogenic, 2018).
Stable
A stable organization culture provides the people employed within the enterprise with a sense of security, confidence as well as optimism when the organization may be going through any kind of crisis. In order to transform the way British Airline works, the company has been focused on creating a workplace that is significantly diverse and rewarding as well so that people working in the company may feel proud to be part of such an organization (Refer to Appendix 4).
People and team oriented
The leadership of Sean Doyle has created such an organizational culture that has kept consumers at the heart of the business as British Airlines has always been committed towards serving the people in the most effective way possible. The result of a survey has stated that British Airways has been able to satisfy its customers and has matched the expectation of people in an effective manner and for that the customers will travel with the airline again (Efthymiou et al., 2018).
The culture of the company also encourages teamwork as it is an extremely effective aspect when it comes to attaining organizational goals for a large organization, such as British Airways. In a large corporation there are several divisions that need to be looked after by an extensive range of employees and thus, creating a team will ensure the attainment of that in the most efficient manner possible.
Detail oriented
Organizations that have a detail oriented organization culture are prone to pay significant attention to detail to ensure that all the activities are carried out in the most effective manner without causing any disruption in operation management. The organization culture under the leadership of Sean Doyle has also become quite detail oriented at British Airways, since there has been no incidents of scandals or controversies after the individual became the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the airline. A transformational leader, such as Sean Doyle focus more on mitigating long-term impediments and requirements for the future and these individuals are also known to be quite useful, inspirational and has a humanistic perspective (Khan et al., 2020).
Figure 1: Transformational Leadership
(Source: Khan et al., 2020)
Therefore, the above-mentioned discussion goes on to establish that the behavior’s and competency of a leader has quite an effect on the culture of an organization. Sean Doyle’s style of leadership which is mostly transformational has proven to be quite effective for the given airline since the time the individual has become the CEO of the organization. However, owing to the unprecedented arrival of Covid-19 the company has had to reduce its workforce to a significant amount in order to overcome the losses (Refer to Appendix 5). However, with the valuable guidance of the CEO of the company British Airways has been able to overcome the losses to a great extent and that further established the fact that the leadership style and approach of Sean Doyle is extremely beneficial for maintaining a profitable work culture within the company. It needs to be mentioned that as most of the airlines have been busy in planning for the company’s immediate future, British Airways has been committed to restructure the company for the long run (Forbes.com., 2022).
The prevailing culture within the organization that is helpful for overcoming cultural issues
It is the duty of an organization to maintain a healthy organizational culture in the company and for that reason, the management of British Airways maintain a sustainable and healthy organizational culture. British Airways is one of the most famous and renowned airline service providers of the United Kingdom and nearly 30,000 employees are working in the company. The main motto of the company is to focus on the customer and employees of the company which makes it one of the most customer-friendly airlines in the world. The company is extremely focused on implementing anti harassing, gender discrimination policy in the workplace which plays a crucial role in managing the diverse work culture of the company effectively. It is one of the main responsibilities of the leader of a company to know about the organizational culture of the organization as effective organizational culture is immensely impactful in improving the performance of the company (Warrick, 2017). The healthy organizational culture of the company helps the organization to maintain a healthy and long term relationship with the employee. The leaders of the company play a significant role in maintaining the organizational culture which motivates and encourages the employee to provide superior service to customers in a flight.
The leaders and managers of British Airways are also focused on providing an equal opportunity to the employees of the company which denotes that there is no gender discrimination in the corporate culture of the organization. It is extremely important for the management of BA to establish an effective organizational culture that generally indicates the value and attitude and belief of the employees. According to the HR policies of BA, every employee needs to behave properly and give respect to every employee of the company which reduces the incidence of conflicts in the organization. British Airways also ensure the health and safety of employees which motivates the employee as during the Covid-19 the company launched Covid-19 policies for the employees and customs of the company. According to the policies, every employee of the company needs to follow the safety measures and wear PPE equipment, mask in flight. The leaders and managers of the company also decided to shift the organizational culture of the company to an open safety culture in order to improve teamwork (Turner, 2019). In recent days the leader and manager of the company have changed the organizational culture of the company in order to improve the organizational effectiveness.
Figure 2: Organizational culture of the British Airways
(Source: Turner, 2019)
The new organizational culture of the company mainly focuses on 5 themes which are immensely essential in increasing the engagement level of employees in the workplace by improving the performance of employees effectively (Refers to Appendix 2). According to this new culture of the company the leaders and managers have implemented new policies which meet the satisfaction level of stakeholders. The change management of an organization needs to be designed and developed with the help of effective leadership which plays a significant role in maintaining the organizational culture of the company (Ali et al., 2017).
Determining the impact of the culture on the business performance
The organizational culture of British Airways has had some beneficial impact on the business performance of the company and in recent years the profit level of the company has decreased. On the contrary, during the Covid -19, the company was forced to reduce the number of employees and for that reason, nearly 4000 of employees of British Airways lost their jobs (Refers to Appendix 3). Otherwise, the company strictly focuses on ensuring the career development of employees as if the employees of the organization get reward and recognition then automatically it helps to improve the performance of the company. A trusted journal also implies that without an effective organizational culture organizational performance may not be improved as it may result in less organizational engagement of employees in the organization (Nikpour, 2017). The healthy organizational culture BA always has a beneficial impact in increasing the involvement level of employees in the organization which helps the airline company to provide excellent customer service. It is the duty of the leaders of a company to follow the organizational goal as the effective and innovative organizational culture of the company is impactful in achieving the goals of the company. Sean Doyle is immensely focused on conducting partnerships with the UK government which helped the company in reopening the flight service of BA during the post-Covid-19 scenario.
The organizational culture of the company always increases the organizational value as it increases the skills and gives proper respect to every employee of the organization which helps to maintain the integrity in the organizational culture of the company. The leader and managers of the company also prefer to maintain a healthy relationship with the employee and for that reason, a healthy organizational culture is tremendously required. In the airline service, motivation and confidence is immensely essential as the managers of the company always motivate the employees in order to ensure high performance. On the other hand, due to cabin crew conflict, British Airways have faced multiple challenges which affected the performance of the Airline service which resulted in the loss of 150 million for the company (Taylor et al., 2019). It is one of the prime duties of the company to mitigate conflict issues or else the competitiveness of the company may be decreased in upcoming years. The company also developed a culture management action plan which has a significant implication in managing and handling the diverse working culture of the company. Increasing conflict issues is harmful to the growth of the company and for that reason British Airways are required to maintain a code of principles in the workplace.
Conclusion
From the above discussions, it may be concluded that British Airways is one of the most trusted airlines in the world and the CEO of the company Mr. Sean Doyle plays a crucial role in managing and leading the entire operation effectively. It has been analysed that transformational leadership of the CEO of the company is positively impactful for the organizational effective culture in order to provide positive motivation to the employees. Flexible workcuture with the help of motivation needs to be developed through which the employees show innovative skills towards the organizational activities as well as i definitely help to gain the individuals success of the employees. Additionally, effective organizational culture needs to be maintained in the airline industry of the UK that supports the industry to hold the position in the competitive market. This industry has to be taking strict actions against gender discrimination by implementing properly Gender Discrimination Act to grow effective workculture as well as this provide career opportunities to the employees. Customer Relationship Management is required to adopt by the manager of British Airways to provide superior service to customers through effective communication and it help the business growth significantly.
Reference
Al Khajeh, E.H., 2018. Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 2018, pp.1-10.
Al-Ali, A.A., Singh, S.K., Al-Nahyan, M. and Sohal, A.S., 2017. Change management through leadership: the mediating role of organizational culture. International Journal of Organizational Analysis.
Efthymiou, M., Njoya, E.T., Lo, P.L., Papatheodorou, A. and Randall, D., 2018. The Impact of Delays on Customers’ Satisfaction: an Empirical Analysis of the British Airways On-Time Performance at Heathrow Airport. Journal of Aerospace Technology and Management, 11.
Forbes.com., 2022. British Airways At The Forefront Of Change For A Post-COVID-19 Airline World. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/willhorton1/2020/05/03/british-airways-at-the-forefront-of-change-for-a-post-covid-19-airline-world/?sh=444c36ca677c> [Accessed 9 March 2022].
Jackson, S. and Tozer, J., 2020. A vision for data science at British Airways. Impact, 2020(1), pp.15-19.
Khan, M.A., Ismail, F.B., Hussain, A. and Alghazali, B., 2020. The interplay of leadership styles, innovative work behavior, organizational culture, and organizational citizenship behavior. Sage Open, 10(1), p.2158244019898264.
Kotamena, F., Senjaya, P. and Prasetya, A.B., 2020. A Literature Review: Is Transformational Leadership Elitist and Antidemocratic?. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL, POLICY AND LAW, 1(1), pp.36-43.
Lohmann, G. and Spasojevic, B., 2018. Airline business strategy. In The Routledge companion to air transport management (pp. 139-153). Routledge.
Nikpour, A., 2017. The impact of organizational culture on organizational performance: The mediating role of employee’s organizational commitment. International Journal of Organizational Leadership, 6, pp.65-72.
Taylor, P., Moore, S. and Byford, R., 2019. Cabin Crew Conflict: The British Airways Dispute 2009-11.
Turner, B.A., 2019. The development of a safety culture. Risk Management, 2, pp.397-399.
Warrick, D.D., 2017. What leaders need to know about organizational culture. Business Horizons, 60(3), pp.395-404.
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