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Ceo of Ford

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Discuss the role of leadership and how it can impact organizational performance
Effective leadership is a personal role that requires the blending of motivational, strategic and management skills to align focus, energy and drive whilst creating a culture that encourages individual thinking and attainment. Ultimately leadership is about pushing ideas and thoughts forwards, shouldering responsibility and unlocking hidden drivers and aspirations to bring out the confidence of others. Harnessing energy in a strategic way that inspires and unites a team towards achieving some common taskAn assumption underlying the study of leadership is that leaders affect organizational performance. Leaders, through their actions and personal influence, bring about change. People who control organizations – the very top executives – make the same assumption. A frequent antidote to major organizational problems is to replace the leader, in the hope that the newly appointed leader will reverse past performance problems.
An example of this assumption in action is the frequent replacement of athletic coaches after one or two losing seasons. The belief that leaders actually influence organizational performance and morale is so plausible that very little research and opinion even deals with this issue. According to some theories, leadership may be irrelevant to most organizational outcomes. Situations cannot be overcome by leadership, but must be carefully analyzed. High level leaders only have unilateral control of very few of the organization’s resources. The leader’s control of these resources is limited by obligations to stakeholders. Thus a downturn in global or other large influences cannot be responded to by the leader themselves and they cannot exercise enough control to single handedly make things better or worse if the organization is to respond competently.

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