Alan Mulally, Ceo, Ford Motor Company 7

Assignment # 3:”Alan Mulally, CEO, Ford Motor Company”

Aboubacar Camara

Professor Doug Earhart

Leadership and Organizational Behavior- BUS 520

February 2011

Strayer University- Takoma Park Campus

1.      Discuss the role of leadership and how it can impact organizational performance.

      Leadership can be defined as the process where those given the role of directing are to influence and support people working in the organization to work towards pursuing the goals of the organization.  According to John Maxwell, “…leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.”  Depending upon the situation leaders use the different “interpersonal sources of power” to lead organization or business that they have in charge (Hellriegel/Slocum, 2011). The following sources of power represent the engine of influence that they use effectively and ethically to achieve their goals: legitimate power, reward power, coercive power, referent power, and expert power. However, true leaders are supposed to make the employees work hard by giving their efforts and making sure that the goals and the mission of the organization are achieved. To be effective every leader should have the following competencies:  Vision; Integrity, Honesty and Values; Releasing Potential and Energy; and Leading Change (Planned Change and Emergent Change). These competencies are important because if one of them is missing, then we do not have a true effective leader. Without vision, a leader cannot guide the actions of his employees towards the long-term goals of the organization. Without integrity and honesty, a leader cannot inspire trust. If the values of the leader are different from those of his/her employees, trust can be broken.  Releasing potential and Energy helps motivate the employees.

 Without good leadership an organization would be seen to direction and will just be full of confusion as seen in music when musicians sing without harmony due to lack of a conductor.

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