Leadership in an organization refers to the ability of an organization manager to make prudent decisions which aim at inspiring people to achieve the set goals. Leadership aims at achieving the goals of an organization while using its workers. It is the leadership, and the right one for that matter, which inspires workers to work towards the achievement of the goals of an organization. It is against this backdrop that it can be argued that an organization without the right leadership in place is bound to fail. One of the importance of leadership in an organization is that it motivates workers. Indeed, workers are motivated through economic or non-economic rewards that encourage them to enhance their hardworking ability. It is the leadership’s onus to coordinate the interests of the workers with those of the organization. A leader is a person to initiate every work in an organization by communicating the plans and policies of the organizations to his subordinates so that they can follow and implement them. A leader also guides his subordinates on how tasks should be performed as well as giving them morale.
The fact that there are companies which prefer a one leader-team and those which have a preference for many leaders brings about two forms of leadership: shared leadership and distributed leadership. Shared leadership is a system in which all human resources have been maximized through empowering individual workers to take up leadership positions in their areas of specialization ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . In shared leadership, the leadership responsibility is not a preserve of just one person, but rather many individuals who have been empowered to be leaders at their respective working stations. For instance, a company’s CEO may find the job too involving and vast. To save the CEO from the burden of having to deal with things which he does not understand, using the shared leadership model, the post may be split to create two positions whose holders have the same status and responsibility. Each leader may head his department in which he is most qualified for and appoint people to lead various sections in the department. The shared leadership model thus helps top managers to only head departments which they are qualified in and to go ahead and appoint some leaders to head the subordinate staff ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . Distributed leadership as concept delves into how the leadership responsibilities are carried out among different workers in a complex organization. Distributed leadership analyzes leadership from the perspective of social interaction between subordinates, the situation, and the leaders. It is a known fact that complex organizations cannot be headed by one or two leaders only.
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Shared leadership helps a company to benefit from the unique strengths of the individual members. Sharing of leadership responsibilities, which the shared leadership promotes ensures that a leader specializes in what he/she understands best. After being given the responsibility to head departments, the leader would identify focused workers/subordinates and delegate the leadership duties to them ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . However, in as much as a shared leadership model is touted as the best model for an organization dealing with extensive tasks, the success of these teams still boils down to the seriousness of the individual members of a team. The genuine efforts of the team leader may be scuttled by team members who may not want the leader to take the credit for any success. Indeed, this is why most organizations, the complexity of the tasks involved notwithstanding, would prefer to retain one leader at the top who gives instructions that are to be followed.
Shared leadership does away with the heroic leadership, which is a unidirectional influenced process. Heroic leadership drew a very prominent line between the leader and the followers. The fact that decisions and information assumed a top-down direction makes it unfeasible in the contemporary organization set up ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . In today’s organization setting, the information is shared in a random manner, owing to the complexity of the processes involved and this is where a shared leadership comes in. Shared leadership fulfills the essential work, which is to create more leaders. Many believe that leadership is the capacity to increase power among the subordinates and not an exercise of power. The perception is common in many business ventures. Employees with such views have high expectations from their leaders in regards to power elevation.
Shared leadership espouses practices which can be enacted by people at every level of the organization irrespective of the person enacting it. From the perspective of shared leadership, leadership should not be a role exercised by a few people sitting at the top hierarchy of an organization; rather, it should be a non-unidirectional process executed by a group ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . For this reason, shared leadership is one of the recipes for instituting a continuous and an inclusive change in an organization in which everyone is brought on board ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . However, can it be said that by merely involving the leaders who head the small groups in an organization that everyone’s views are incorporated into the change process? Chances are very high that during their plenary meetings to discuss matters change, leaders would push their agenda, and it can therefore not be said that decisions which arise from such meetings represent everyone's views. Nonetheless, it must be understood that the decision regarding changes in these organizations which have embraced the shared leadership model remotely resemble the workers’ opinions than in heroic leadership.
The fact that prudent leaders need help to make every crucial decision which affects the organization is inarguable. It is the model of shared leadership that always comes to the aid of these leaders. To find that a single leader in a given organizational set up possesses the requisite skills and knowledge needed to make a prudent decision in an organization is soothing but is so rare ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . Further, teams are faced with the need to deal with very complex matters which may be beyond the experience of a single leader and can only be dealt with when leaders bring together their diverse knowledge together. This is why an effective organization must employ shared leadership to succeed in the realization of its goals. Even if the process of decision making would be slow when various leaders are brought on board, it is the quality of the decision made that outweighs cynics’ reservations.
Distributed leadership is a departure from a top-down leadership model. In the latter, the instructions on how to achieve objectives are given by the top leader who is always sitting at the helm of the organization then others are inclined to follow such instructions irrespective of whether or not they familiar with such guidelines ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017). By giving small groups the liberty to decide on the best way to accomplish the objectives of the organization, distributed leadership allows group members to fully utilize their skills and knowledge towards achieving the goals of the organization. Just like the saying that goes that it is he who wears the shoes that knows where it pinches, this would give members in small groups an opportunity to make adjustments where necessary to achieve the set objectives. However, permitting small groups to individually put strategies aimed at how they want to accomplish their targets may not prove effective.
Being that the primary concern of distributed leadership is the practice of leadership itself and not the responsibilities of specific leaders, it mobilizes leadership skills and knowledge at every level in an organization. This ensures that the chemistry within different small groups in an organization is not only enhanced but also strengthened. It is through the mobilization of the leadership expertise within the different ranks of the company that more opportunities for change can be developed in an organization ( Raeisi & Amirnejad, 2017) . In this way, distributed leadership expands the capacity of an organization to improve. Independent interactions and practice amongst these groups provide a fertile ground for the realization of the goals of an organization. However, if not carefully and effectively planned, distributed leadership may not achieve set goals of the organization.
Distributed leadership can only work for a given organization when there is a high level of mutual respect, trust, and transparency. These may not be present in many organizations, thus rendering the implementation of this model of leadership difficult. Incidentally, organizations find it very hard to adopt the distributed leadership model at the expense of the current one that they are using. The benefit of this model may not be guaranteed, so organizations like to work with what they have already tested its applicability and accompanying success than what is new to them. The above reason makes the adoption and implementation of the distributed leadership model very challenging. In brief, therefore, organizations employ different leadership models to ensure success in the world market. The kind of leadership strategy used in an organization depends on its commodity production or service niche.
References
Raeisi, N., & Amirnejad, Q. (2017). Investigating the effect of organizational leadership on organizational agility: Mediating role of organizational commitment. International Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11 (1), 1154-1168
