Discuss whether leadership involves influencing.

Leadership involves influencing other people to achieve organization goals. Nowadays the leadership styles and management practices adopted by any organization’s leaders has been paramount in determining the direction of the organization and influencing the success factors of the organization. Leadership is one of the key determinants of the success level of any organization. It therefore plays an essential role at the heart of the decision-making process influencing the styles applied and the effectiveness of the process. The manner and approach used in providing directions, delegating roles, implementing decisions and motivating staff influence the organization’s culture and affect the performance of the organizations.

The impact of the styles of leadership is felt both in small and large organizations. The level of participation and involvement of employees and other important stakeholders influences the results achieved in the organization and defines the direction of the particular organization towards its objectives.

Leaders are responsible for making decisions in the organization. They should do this under organized structures and process that are defined and laid out. The process adopted and structuring of the process of decision making impacts customer satisfaction, execution and the general effectiveness of the organization. Management should decide on what levels decision making takes place, how much input from other stakeholders is required and lay out a concrete roll out and implementation plan that defines the timelines and level of employee participation (Karina Nielsen, 2011). It is therefore important to carry out research linking leadership and organization management

The purpose of this research therefore is to investigate various leadership styles that may have a negative effect on the decision-making process within educational organizations. This research will add on to previous research focusing on management practices and their impact on organization but will provide a unique perspective by examining how impacts of styles of leadership trickles down to the employees influencing the execution process of a decision and generating measurable impacts on the recipients of the decision, in this case, the students.

Statement of the problem

Many schools lack effective leadership training in decision-making leading to poor institution management, success, and productivity. This research focusses on a school setting by comparing the management and leadership styles adopted and determining the success by focusing on the success indicators such as performance, employees’ satisfaction and discipline of the students. Great schools do not exist apart from great leaders. Many schools and education facilities face challenges of settling on the best administrative structures, bureaucratic systems and determining the appropriate levels of leniency and strictness in engagements with staff and students all the same. The complex nature of a school setting that facilitates close daily interaction between the business, its leaders, employees and clients (students) calls for the need of a system of leadership and decision making that caters for all involved stakeholders while taking into consideration the diverse and dynamic characteristics of the decision recipients.

Research in this area of study has been conducted focusing on the correlation that exists between different school variables and the performance of these institutions (Hanushek, 1997). Among these variables are recourses, teacher qualifications, diversity, racial tolerance and parental contribution (Melvin V.Borland, 1992) (Erick, 1981) (Darrow, 2003). These reports have established the importance of assessing these variables together as alone, they barely amount to an influence over the institution. However, the case of leadership is quite different. The relationship between a principal, the teachers is a heavy determinant on its own and has even more significance and influence on the school’s performance when assessed in conjunction with the trickle-down impact of the relationship between the staff(teachers) and students (Price, 2011). These relationships are determined by the management styles applied, whether democratic, inclusive, dictatorial, overly bureaucratic etc. (Garyl Yukl, 2009).

Intended Audience

This research will be of great help to prospective organization leaders; particularly, those involved in educational institutions who seek practical guidance in determining the level of leadership, structuring, hierarchy establishments and delegation levels to use in their organizations in order to adopt a work culture that is not too soft to allow misdemeanor and yet is not too bureaucratic to create fear and suppress or inhibit employee and other stakeholder’s contributions. It will help define relationships between leadership and various stakeholders while defining limits and codes of engagement which should be established to govern engagements and avoid overstepping beyond mandated levels (Kark, 2012). This research would find audience among both leaders and employees in all organization types as the general concepts and findings underlined by this research have a broader scope of application and can be adopted to any organization seeking to use the recommendations and suggestions of this research to evaluate its leadership and influence necessary changes.

Value to the audience

The reader of this research is bound to benefit from the widely researched empirical results that this research will arrived at. One will be able to access practical approaches where effective organizational leadership styles has been used to solve organization problems leading to desired outcomes. Besides this, this research shall instill in the reader great knowledge of organizational structures and levels of leadership, expound on their appropriateness and reveal as experienced by the researcher first-hand, the appropriateness of each management leadership style contingent to the different environments and needs of the organization. A reader is able to acquire some of the most important leadership qualities and management guidelines which will make him/her suitable to manage an actual organization.

Meta-analysis Methodology

Meta-analysis methodology provides a qualitative analysis of different resources that have used first-hand data or data derived from other sources so as to develop a list if various hypotheses which are related to the main topic of research. Meta-analysis method provides a comprehensive qualitative analysis of articles and other publications that focuses on the value of training leaders in ensuring effective sound decision making in schools. Most importantly, it gets to examine the history of leadership styles and how it has been used in the corporate world over the past decades, its trends, and the effect it has on organization success or failure. The selection of different resources and generation of this methodology was based on thematic meta-synthesis.