Abstract
Organizations have extensively use self-managed teams with an aim of achieving flexibility and less hierarchical governance structures. Managers have realized that informal structure often exerts increasingly substantial influence and offers potential leverage compared to the formal structure. Emergent leaders are the most respected and highly followed form of leadership in most organization. Emergent leadership is never assigned by position in any particular organization but in most instances, it emerges with time through an effective communication has been developed within an organization. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and the transformational leadership are critical in understanding emergent leadership. Leadership emergence entirely focuses on extremely broad perceptual measures for instance whether or not a person possesses or exemplifies strong leadership. Social cognitive theory further support the idea that cognitive processes often underlies the behavioral strategies that a potential emergent leader will select and the specific skill to be executed. These employees have important qualities hence end up to be experts when given a chance to take on leadership positions.
Introduction
Currently, there has been an increasing level of competition in the market; therefore, to meet these challenges, organizations have focused on the use of self-managed teams, flexible and less hierarchical governance structures. As a result of this, rather than relying on stable roles established within delineated organizational structure, organizations have seen the need to call employees to take some of the informal leadership roles. According to Luria & Berson (2013), managers have come to realize that informal structure that lies beneath the surface of the organization often exerts increasingly substantial influence while at the same time offers potential leverage compared to the formal structure. Focusing on the theoretical level, the self-managed organic governance structures have been established to demand an updated leadership theories influence which accounts for the emergent relationship. Organizations have recently moved away from conventional vertical leader-centered perspective and adopted the horizontal relationship among the team. To clearly understand the emergence of informal leader within an organization, there is the need to describe various complexities surrounding leadership interactions.
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Understanding the structural features of the emergent leadership network, an organization will be able to develop a clear emergent leadership picture. Studies have pointed out that an individual who has been assigned a particular leadership position in most instances does not become a real leader within a given organization (Mumford, Watts & Partlow, 2015). It can be argued that emergent leaders are the most respected and highly followed form of leadership in the most organization. It is important to note that emergent leadership is never assigned by position in any particular organization but in most instances, it emerges with time through an effective communication has been developed within an organization. Effective leadership is the most effective, flexible and cost effective form of leadership that should be adopted and implemented in all organizations.
Context/Scenario
Leadership is simply the ability to influence others within an organization or in a group. The new area of leadership is emergence leadership. Leadership emergence has thus been defined as the procedure by which individuals are perceived as a leader by others within a group. It focuses on how status is effectively accorded by various group members to each other and the emergence of informal control. As a result of this, organizations have been able to experience the existence of informal leaders who have the ability to influence others, but they do not have the formal power within the group. The ability of an individual to exercise the informal influence, therefore, defines a person as an emergent leader. Studies have pointed out that emergent leadership significantly represents an organizational challenge since it is often outside the formal control.
Organizations have been reported to use approximately $15-50 billion yearly to perform leadership training to enhance managers and executives capability and influence the subordinates. It has been established that emergence leadership arises as a result of the individual adaptation to various challenges to fulfill formal structure. According to Luria & Berson, (2013), pointed out that a person who has been assigned a particular leadership position in most instances does not become a real leader within a given organization. It can be said that emergent leaders are most respected and highly followed within any organization and it is never assigned by position but emerge with time through effective communication. Further, informal leadership can enhance the flexibility and stability of the organization through offering an alternative mechanism of governance that is highly adaptable to local environmental changes. In a more general view, the system of informal influence that is offered by emergent leadership structures within an organization is a potential leadership resource.
Theoretical Framework
Informal leadership emergence recently has been analyzed from diverse theoretical perspectives. Specific features have been identified and have the potential to increase the likelihood of an individual to be perceived by others within an organization to possess influence or even becoming a leader. Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and the transformational leadership recently have been supportive increasingly. Leadership emergence has been argued to entirely focus on extremely broad perceptual measures for instance whether or not a person possesses or exemplifies strong leadership. Social cognitive theory has also been argued to support the idea that cognitive processes often underlies the behavioral strategies that a potential emergent leader will select and the specific skill to be executed. Different scholars have critically analyzed this new field of emergent leadership and how effective it is to give an organization competitive advantage in the market.
Emery (2012) studied how diverse emotional capabilities of an individual impact the emergence of relationship leaders by focusing on a group of 41 students. Leadership is simply envisioned leadership perceptions’ dynamic network. Emergence leadership in addition to the primary role that is played by emotional capabilities have been critically analyzed using Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models. It was found out that emotional ability of individual play highly complementary roles towards the emergent leadership. Further, based on this study, an individual capability to perceive various emotions have been argued to facilitate relationship leaders’ emergence.
Luria & Berson, (2013), focused on understanding the extent at which leadership motives of a potential leader significantly predict certain informal and formal leadership assignments. The study was conducted within a military setting with a sample size of 215. It was hypothesized that candidates’ to an elite unit motivation to lead often predict their overall teamwork behaviors and possibility to emerge a potential leader among their peers. In addition to this, cognitive ability tends to interact closely with motivation to lead predicts teamwork behavior. As a result of this, teamwork behaviors have been shown to mediate between the achieved level of interaction and the emergent leadership.
Cognition is established as one of the major factors when studying emergence leadership because; cognitive greatly influences overall leader emergence and performance. Cognitive capacities, therefore, shape subsequent leader behavior. Emergent leadership is normally focused at an individual level but at the same time derived from other people’s perception. The study has identified behaviors that predict emergence leadership. It has further been shown that cognitive appraisal theorists recognize the fact that behavior is wholly dependent upon the cognitive situation’s interpretation. It has further been established that informal leaders in most occasions have a very strong influence on the overall group’s efficacy and this is normally during early periods of the group’s life. It is important to note that the overall impact and the role of informal group leader tend to change with time. Emergent leaders are considered the managers of group emotions and this has been supported by numerous theories of leadership (Mumford, Watts & Partlow, 2015).
It was argued that most research often focuses on leader development, but the majority of them tend to focus on leader development in adulthood while ignoring leader development at the early age. Early developmental trajectories have been established as critical when studying leadership throughout an individual’s adult life. According to Murphy & Johnson (2011), he believes that understanding early “seeds” of leader development is vital to determine effective emergence leadership. A comprehensive look at the concept of leadership will help leader development practices to attain their full potential.
Neubert & Taggar (2004), believe that emergence of informal leaders has not been focused extensively in the past years especially in the teams that work together over a period within an organizational context. It has been established that this team tends to include both men and women hence making the element of gender as one of the primary variables when focusing on the dynamics of the informal leadership emergence. The study further predicted that certain factors predict the emergence of informal leadership including emotional stability, the team member network in addition to conscientiousness. Mental ability further tends to predict informal leadership especially for women than men.
This study states that leadership is one of the core predictors of overall team performance in virtual and face to face team. All this point out that leadership emergence is a new field that warrants intensive study. According to Serban et al. (2015), team virtuality level and the social network ties density have been established as core condition when it comes to leadership emergence. Virtuality moderates have been established to moderate the relationship existing between the cognitive capability, self-efficacy, and even leadership emergence. In addition to this, it was argued that density of network ties tend to play the key role of moderating between cognitive abilities Association, the self-efficacy with an individual’s leadership emergence.
Application and Analysis
Emergent leadership is, therefore, a type of leadership where one of the group members is not directly appointed to be the leader, but the aspect of leadership tends to develop with time as a result of intensive interaction with group members. According to Murphy & Johnson, (2011), the majority of the organizations have seen the need to adopt emergent leadership to improve their competitive and solve the leadership challenges experienced in the market and to add value to the organizations. This form of leadership should, therefore, be adopted in all organization. Further, it can be argued that emergent leadership is significantly cost effective and it gives employees an equal opportunity to exercise their competency and skills in leadership.
Some of these employees who are believed to have important qualities turn out to be an expert when given a chance to take on leadership positions. When given an opportunity, these employees can be the best asset in an organization. Additionally, emergent leaders can help the organization reduce the cost of training and recruiting new managers because they are highly competent and possess core leadership skills. Studies have pointed out that an individual who has been assigned a specific leadership position in most instances does not become a real leader within a given organization. According to Serban et al. (2015), emergent leaders are most respected and highly followed within any organization, and it is never assigned by position but emerge with time through effective communication.
For an emerging leader to be successful, it has been argued that humility is critical to enable them to learn effective skills that will enable them to become competent leaders in the organization. Without humility, it is obvious that an individual will not be able to learn from various failures and mistakes (Emery, 2012). Humility is a key concept because it enables one to share the achieved success with the rest of the team members within a group. A person who extensively demonstrates emergent leadership skills often does not obtain power from a specific position rather he or she is believed to have the capability to steer and directs things in groups in the right direction using a high level of competence to manage social situations.
As one of the team member, the leader is in a better position to step in and then lead the group appropriately when there is the need for leadership irrespective of whether he or she has official status (Neubert & Taggar, 2004). There are situations where the leader will have to step back and then allow someone else o take over at what he or she considered to be the right time. It is important to keep in mind that for one to be an effective leader, then there is the need for the individual to be more than willing to relinquish power.
It is clear that the concept focusing on predictability, consistency in addition to fairness are critical when it comes to decision making and are primary leadership traits that are present in almost all emergent leaders. In the event, the employees understand the overall organizational management landscape and further understand the core parameters where they can operate it will follow that the team will be easily formed. According to Serban et al., (2015), unpredictability within the management tends to limit employees’ freedom and creativity. To improve employees’ management skills, there is the need for the organization to evaluate the managers at least twice a year and this should focus on various factors including consistency of the manager, respect, shares core information with the team fairly and develop attainable goals.
Certain traits and behaviors match prototypical leader who makes one to be perceived as a leader. Emergent leaders often engage themselves in various influence tactics including the most assertive techniques. Further, it has been shown that they also engage in extensive communication and greater task competence. Individual differences among other include an individual’s sex, and intelligence personality plays a critical role regarding influencing emergence leadership. Therefore, there are those people believed to have a greater level of intelligence and can be perceived as great leaders (Emery, 2012).
According to Serban et al., (2015), using the social network analysis one can easily identify vital relational tendencies that specifically govern leadership relations formation within an organization. It is important to note that it is highly impossible for an individual to emerge as an effective leader outside a specific social group. Further, leaders often influence others using direct or the indirect means implying that the choice of a leader will specifically depend on behaviors and actions of other people within a given network.
This form of leadership has been established to emerge over a period, and it often emerges through effective communication. Communication is therefore considered critical in every organization because it gives opportunities for employees to develop their leadership skills. Organization should, therefore, adopt and implement effective communication structures that will be utilized across the organization to communicate the needs of the employees and organization. According to Luria & Berson, (2013), emergent leaders also are considered to be outspoken and in most instances, they are perceived by others members of a group as contributing great ideas. These are among the critical skills that emergent leaders possess and have given an upper advantage over managers within formal organizational structures. It is worth noting that emergent leaders are believed to be verbally engaged with the rest of the team members. In most instances, they tend to seek the opinion of other members, are highly innovative, and they invest most of their time seeking new ideas. Lastly, these leaders have been established to be more dominant, intelligent and confident concerning their overall performance.
Conclusions and Reflections
Emergent leadership has been defined as a leadership style that is founded on the aspect of the creation of a collaborative culture believed to enhance innovation and profit dramatically. These types of informal leaders often are believed to be armed with the high level of persistence in addition to effective communication skills that enable them to get engaged with an individual, obtain first-hand information and become highly innovative in an entire group. Further, it has been shown that this form of leadership in most instances if highly flexible and adaptable to various changes. Emergent leaders have been argued to play a critical role in the current competitive market where organizations have used its employees to perform certain roles, and these have helped to solve leadership problems. Emergent leaders in most instances tend to make use of their behavior to communicate to group members on overall group performance effectively. One of the ways in which an emergent leader can influence the behavior of group members is specifically through the management of the emotional state of the group.
Emergent leaders will depend on the influence process to ensure that they impact the group. Therefore, since they are believed to be emergent, it follows that they are informal hence the need to rely specifically on the type of influence process instead of focusing on the formal processes of rewards and punishment. It has been established that emergent leaders are highly empathetic and responsive to the needs of the followers. It is important for organizations to adopt and implement informal structures that will give an opportunity for emergent leaders to grow. This is the only way to meet the highly competitive leadership demand in the market. Organizations will be able to cut off the cost of operation regarding recruiting and training new managers and leaders. Investing in employees is, therefore; critical for all organizations because it benefits both employees and the organization at large.
References
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