Visionary leadership Essay Example for Free

Visionary leadership Essay When discussing the values of Christian leadership, one book that we could not readily ignore is the book of Nehemiah. Many of the most popular Christian values could ready be found in this early book of the Old Testament, only to be reiterated in various events all throughout the Bible. And since before we delve into the New Testament we shall be focusing on Old Testament teachings for they shall provide the background of many of the leadership styles that we would be encountering later on, perhaps it would be a good idea for our paper to first magnify this book in section as an example of leadership (Woolfe, 2000). The book of Nehemiah highlights visionary leadership through prayer. The need to share a vision and to enable and empower others to become involved in making things happen, as well as the need to maintain leadership through periods of conflict and opposition. The book highlights the character Nehemiah, a cupbearer of the Persian emperor. The cupbearer, in case one has no idea of the historical significance of such a position, is an important position of trust for a member of the Jewish minority in the Persian court. It is through his leadership that Nehemiah had enabled established credibility amongof the Jewish people through his example. During that time, it had already been more than a century past sinces the Persians had conquered Jerusalem in many of the Jews at that time had been in exile. Through Nehemiah’s example, the Persian court had recognized the importance of having Jews deter percent minority. However, perhaps the most notable event in Nehemiah’s career as a cupbearer of the Persian court was when he had shared his vision with the king of Persia. The result of sharing the vision mildly end in a nonviolent way had had a positive effect on the king of Persia, again exemplifying that the cupbearer that he had chosen have been supportive of his campaign and many of the requests of Nehemiah had been granted by the king. When the vision was shared to other characters, the response had been different, and Nehemiah had facilitated a more assertive stand, still not one that is confrontational and could have created violent results. When Nehemiah arrives at Jerusalem, he creates a strategic analysis of the situation before sharing his vision with the Jews that had been left in Jerusalem. Of course, being one of the countrymen, the response was positive and in favor of him (Woolfe, 2000). Modern business leaders and managers need to understand that most of the concepts of leadership today, including the model of the transformational leader, had first been rooted in the actions of this biblical character. Many leadership books in the present highlights the importance of transformational leadership, a method of leadership and management where leaders not only give commands to theirhis or her followers in order for them to follow and execute (Bass, 2005). Rather, a transformational leader recognizes the fact that in order for followers to achieve their full potential and create the highest output levels for the company, that the vision of what the company should do it should ought to be shared. In fact, this could be easily recognized in many of the large corporations today where we find ceilings and walls written with their vision and mission statements, together with the values they recognize in the company (Thousand Oaks, 1993). Of course, we should also identify that not all companies follow such values orientation. Transformational leaders are rarely found today in large businesses because of their single-minded purpose of profit. And in a world where in it is either you gain the maximum level of profit, or you perish, it would perhaps be safe for us to assume that transformational leaders are nearing extinction. However, this does not necessarily mean that we should stop looking for such leaders and training such leaders. In fact, if we are indeed to do anything about it, we should focus our energies and goals in order to produce such leaders in the future. Again, if you are to use our FMCG Company as an example, transformational leadership may play an important role not only in the continuous profit maximization of such a company, but also in the values integration and achieving of the vision of the business venture. As we have earlier discussed, because of the quantities that is produced by such fast-moving companies, it is also guaranteed that the amount of labor and human capital involved in the production, distribution, and sales of the products would be extremely high. In modern management dynamics, we recognize the fact that as more and more people are employed into a business venture, organization, or company, the efficiency of leaders must also be proportional to the number of employees involved. Still another popular leadership method and leadership theory that we may be able to apply in this case is the team leadership theory. It basically classifies leaders and heads as managers, holding their ability to manage specialized human resourcesin the highest regard. The team leadership model states that the most effective leaders of our time art does not necessarily with the highest level of skill nor specialized abilities. Instead, the team leadership model reiterates the need for leaders which could identify those members in society and organization which are valuable because of their specialized tasks, or any other advantage that they may pose. The job of the team leader is to organize and collate such members of society and group to formulate a team aimed at accomplishing a certain task. S Wing in the journals of team performance management stated the essential role of team leaders in order to bring out the best in human capital. He points out in his article that often people do not view themselves as capable unless others in a higher position than them point out their capabilities. Also, his article points out the importance of being able to collate people into a unified whole affair according to recent statistics that he had cited in the Journal, the output inner slopes rise exponentially and not just the sum of its parts. (Wing, 2005) Now that we had identified the virus leadership models, if it had not been obvious or ready to the reader of this paper, we could claim that the model of visionary leadership that is offered by characters and stories in the Bibleare combinations of the two popular leadership models in management dynamics today. In fact, if we observe closely the stories we have identified as well as the many other stories and parables that could be found within the text, elements of transformational leadership as well as the leadership could be found. So that we may avoid the pitfall of praising the Bible too much, let us point out that perhaps many of the stories found in the Bible are idealized versions of historical accounts. The fact remains, however, if we refers strictly and believe absolutely that counts within the Old Testament books, we discover that our leadership models fit perfectly into combination with the characters that have been highlighted. FMCG companies are usually small in scale with respect to higher-level management but large in numbers for employees (Newcomen Society, 1957). And because of that high average variable costs involved in continuing the operation of the company, it would not be able to afford more section managers and overseers. And logically, what we substitute for quantity is quality. In a company with only a handful of people in management positions, it would be perhaps essential for such companies in such leaders to be able to hire or trade existing managers towards a transformational leadership style. Like our example in the Bible were in wisdom and the sharing of vision must be integrated into leaders, but overall effect of a transformational leader had been modern businesses would have the same effect as that of the story in the Bible.