The knowledge of leadership models and the role of culture helps raise the effectiveness of organizational changes and improve the banks employees performance.
Leading Change in an Organisation
Without a doubt, leadership is an indispensable component of every companys performance, be it a commercial bank or a factory. The chosen leadership technique strongly manifests its significance when an organization undergoes changes (Schedlitzki & Edwards, 2018). I have noticed that one of the most popularly used theories to guide organizational changes in bank where I am employed is Kotters change model that consists of eight steps. To put it briefly, the success of a change depends on its urgency, the existence of a coalition that supports it and clearly realizes what the final goal looks like and how to achieve it. Additionally, a leader should communicate his or her vision to the subordinates and create the wins that could be achieved in the short-term perspective because it would motivate them and help maintain the feeling of involvement. Thus, the results of any organizational change heavily depend on the extent of a leaders effectiveness in communication with employees and their trust. I have noticed that communication helps staff members to reduce fear of the unknown and grants understanding on how to work and behave in the new environment. Finally, the leader should anchor the change to the corporate culture of the organization. The adherence to these principles assisted me to contribute to the successful introduction of organizational change in the Banque Nationale d’Algérie in Algeria.
The study conducted by Kansal and Chandani (2014) reveals that the main causes of failures of organizational changes lie in the lack of communication between administration employees, the absence of a system of rewards and short-term wins, and the absence of a clear understanding of what is expected to achieve. Models of Kotter, Lewin, Kubler-Ross, and Prosci target these problems and, hence, adherence to one of these models is the key to success. Still, the issue of the previously described Kotters model is that it is entirely focused on the role of the leader and ignores the significance of financial aspects of organizational changes as well as the possible impacts of external forces and the third parties.
The Relevance of Culture to Leadership
Culture plays a critical role in the operation of an organization and, thus, leaders should not downplay its significance. Thus, leaders should dedicate a lot of attention to the management of cultural differences between employees and use a neutral language if a company is multi-cultural (Kansal & Chandani, 2014). Besides, numerous scholars, including Nazarian, Atkinson and Foroudi (2017), for example, emphasize that national culture affects organizational culture and this, in turn, affects the overall performance of a company. From this, it could be inferred that a leader should be concerned with searching for a balance between national and organizational cultures. The personal experience shows that the primary reason why culture might affect the quality of a companys performance is that the mismatch of values and worldview might be a reason for a conflict between employees and a hindrance to their engagement and cooperation.
The example of the commercial bank of Algeria Banque Nationale d’Algérie shows that the leader should pay attention to culture even if the employees are homogeneous. More precisely, even though more than 90 percent of my colleagues in this commercial bank profess Islam, the administration of the bank forces managerial personnel to participate in workshops on culture because it assists them in communicating with foreign partners whose worldviews differ from their own.
Reference List
Kansal, S., & Chandani, A. (2014) ‘Effective management of change during merger and acquisition’, Procedia Economics and Finance, 11, pp. 208-217.
Nazarian, A., Atkinson, P., & Foroudi, P. (2017) ‘Influence of national culture and balanced organizational culture on the hotel industry’s performance’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 63, pp. 22-32.
Schedlitzki, D.& Edwards, G. (2018) Studying Leadership, 2nd Edition. London: Routledge.