Is there a single, ideal leadership and management styles and approaches that is most effective?

Leading in a Changing World

Leadership: The Introduction

“The art of management is the art of managing people”. Leadership style can be defined as how the leaders or managers react and behave towards the members of their group. These can be simplified into three: Authoritarian, Democratic and Laissez-Faire (Mullins, 2016). Leaders and managers do share some similarities as both have the power to influence others in order for them to achieve the goals and missions of the company. However, there are some differences between these leaders and managers (Northouse, 2007).

Figure 1: Leadership Boat ((Padriñán, 2016)

The number of leaders that exists is as many of the numerous ways to lead people (Kaleem, 2016). There is no correct and only way to lead people and we need to change our style depending on the situations we are in (Johnson, G., Whittington, R., Regnér, P., Scholes, K., & Angwin, D. ,2017). The main differentiator between many leaders is their ability to be visionary and creative (Feehan, 2019). A study by McKinsey shows that there is an increase of the leaders monitoring individual performance during a crisis while acknowledging that is the least helpful way (McKinsey, 2009).

Figure 2: The usually busy turned to the empty street of Kuala Lumpur during Movement Control Order (Edgeprop, 2020).

Leading in a difficult time such as pandemic Covid-19 are forcing leaders to make decisions quickly, under huge pressure and with little to no information. The stakes are high and leaders are forced to make decisions that will impact the livelihood of their employees (Chewning, Chinn, Elizabeth Young McNally, & Rutherford, 2020). Nothing has ever prepared us for this, and we have seen personally how our own leaders in our companies shifted their focus and leadership style to fit the current situation.

I do believe with CMI (2013)’s statement that there is no single best approach in leadership and this depends on the circumstances as well as individual characteristics of our employees.  According to Schein (2016), “The search for the universally correct leadership style is subject to errors of oversimplification, if not entirely doomed to failure, because of cultural variations by country, by industry, by occupation, by the particular history of given organization, and most important, by the actual task to be performed”. Based on the study done by Accenture (2020), during pandemics such as Covid-19, employees expect compassion, care and a sense of confidence in piloting the company during tough times. Employees tend to trust their leaders more if they know how to address their staff’s physical, mental and relationship needs.

Figure 3 : Basic Needs of Workers towards the Leader (Accenture, 2020).

Leadership: Real Life Leaders and their style of leadership

Business Leader 1: Jack Ma

Figure 4 : Jack Ma’s Biography (Forbes, 2021).

      Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba in China has to experiment with a few management styles when he first founded the company. He started as an autocratic leader due to he was the only one who was internet savvy in his province (Tham and Yazdanifard, 2015). As the business expanded, he knew that his management style would not be effective thus leading him to adopt a more conductive approach (Gough, 2014).

      Li (2008) argues that most of the style Jack Ma was using throughout his career was persuasive style. This is proven by his manipulation techniques to keep the investors happy when the company expanded globally (Tham and Yazdanifard, 2015). Besides that, further study by Shearer (2012)has also shown that his management style to be democratic. Every employee is given a nickname and are allowed to speak up and make suggestions to the management as they deem fit (Alqassimi and Upadhayhay, 2018). Lastly, Steadman (2013) also found that Jack Ma’s also using the “Managing by Walking Around” technique. He uses this to gather around information by talking with employees to determine if there would be a potential issue in the future.

Figure 5: Jack Ma’s retirement party (Togoh, 2019).

      Jack Ma’s ability to change his leadership style to fit the situation is exemplary. Nevertheless, the many styles of leadership also have landed him in a hot soup. China has a strict policy on foreign investors and caused Hong Kong authorities to cancel their business due to the worry that their investment is not being honoured (Solomon, 2014).      

Business Leader 2: Tony Fernandez

Figure 6: Tony Fernandes’ Biography (Bloomberg, 2021).

Tony Fernandes is not a new name for the business world in Malaysia. He is known as one of Asia’s most recognizable entrepreneurs. Together with Datuk Kamarudin Meranun, they bought the failing airline for MYR1, with MYR 40 million in debt and are able to turn the once failed airline into Malaysia domestic carrier after Malaysian Airlines and Asia’s largest low-cost carrier by passenger carried (Ernst and Young, 2021). This is after the realisation of the gap in the low-cost airline in Malaysia (P. & King, 2013).

The leadership style as practised by Tony Fernandes focussed on good interactions with all staff and he maintained a non-hierarchy practice in the office (P. & King, 2013). He is one of the many leaders who are hugely impacted by the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Air Asia experienced a drop in domestic and international travel and on top of that, the world may face a worse economic recession than the stock market crash back in 2008(Kee, et al., 2020).

Figure 7: AirAsia’s flights were grounded during Movement Control Order (Chin, 2020).

Tony Fernandes is known to support openness as his leadership philosophy. He is not a big supporter in the hierarchal structure, placed massive beliefs on his own talents and always inspired his employees, which he called “Allstars” to achieve their own dreams. This can be witnessed when he personally supported his staff who has a dream of becoming a pilot while he was a courier dispatch in Air Asia (M. Shazni, 2016). Besides that, Tony also always motivates his employees and followers to be creative and introduce new products, services and solutions within the organisation. He has introduced the tagline “Now everyone can fly”, ‘Zero” fares strategy and no-frills airlines to compete with its competitors (P. & King, 2013). To stay in business since Covid-19 has badly impacted the airline industry, he has managed to shift his focus towards Super App and created jobs through Airasia Food, Fresh, Shop and Santan (“Tony Fernandes on LinkedIn, 2020). 

While being a great leader to his employee, Tony Fernandes is not without flaws. There have been viral videos online with Thailand’s Airasia chief’s rude remarks against one employee during their Townhall. In the video, Tassapon Bijleveld used profanity and talked down against one of the staff while Tony Fernandes was shown smiling at the remarks (Wong, 2021). In addition, Tony also taken hits from Airasia customers who have been promised a refund for their unused airline tickets where they take this online after Tony showed off his brand new Tesla car (Justin, 2021). For both of the situations above, this could be handled effectively if Tony Fernandes are more sensitive with the audiences, tackle the wrongdoings as soon as it happens and have more empathy towards others.

Leadership: My Preference

Having the experience and opportunities to work with leaders with different styles, I would prefer independence and empowerment in managing my own time and tasks. I feel that it is very taxing and counter-productive for the leaders to micromanage their staff and ensure that the tasks were done on the specific date and time when their time can be allocated towards more business planning and strategic management. I trust that most self-reliant individuals can complete the tasks accordingly with the set of dates and times provided. It is however good for the managers to check in once in a while but only to offer help and guidance, not for the sake of following up the pending tasks.

I am fortunate enough to work in an international bank whereby the speak-up culture is highly encouraged with no consequences. For example, working there has taught me to highlight anomalies such as if we are seeing our colleagues or managers behaviours against others that are not acceptable. We are allowed to go through channels of communications such as whistle-blower links or also to go directly to our team leader’s managers to file a report.  The company also gives the employees a range of independence when making a decision. Besides that, the collaboration between teams and others are highly encouraged so that we can serve customers with one focused goal.

Figure 8: Working virtually from home (Unsplash, 2021).

My preference towards a leader is always someone who has a democratic style. This style allows me to take part in decision making and agree unilaterally as a team. I do trust that by working with such leaders, I could contribute more and could get immediate feedback from my leaders whenever needed. Besides that, trust from my leaders in the form of independence is always important since it would not restrict me from being creative in my tasks and would definitely increase my productivity at work. This is especially important during these trying times where most of us are working from home and there is no visibility of the staff all the time, In addition, I do believe in team coordination and mutual understanding so that team can perform independently but at the same time, always have support from others whenever needed.

To summarize, there is no one leadership style that fits all. From my observation in my working years, everyone is different and not all will fit into a single leadership style. However, each person has their own preferences on how do they want to be managed and if this is highly communicated with their managers, there is no doubt that one can bring a plethora of their contributions to the company.

References

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