Leadership
James (1997) defines leadership as the attempt of influencing the activities of their followers, through a process of communication, towards the achievement of a goal. A leader provides the most appropriate environment in which the members fell more comfortable to improve performance and accomplish the specific objectives of the group. Leadership in quality based in an extension of quality principles, provides a flexible method to manage complex issues in TQM. Basically, organizations oriented towards quality are organization in the learning process. Management must harvest a leadership culture from the higher levels of management, to every other level within the organization where measures are promoted for team leadership.
The situational theory of leadership by Hersey and Blanchard (1978), is focused more on followers than on leaders. It is based on the fact that leadership must be subordinated to the maturity of its followers (degree of responsibility that followers take for their own actions through elements of motivation, and work-related knowledge and abilities).
Their model presents four types of leadership:
• Telling - control lies on the leader; he provides the what, how, when, and where… (elevated task orientation - low interaction between people).
• Selling - providing both a manager behaviour as well as providing support to people for them to carry out their tasks (elevated orientation of people - elevated interaction between people).
• Participating- sharing decision making and work-related information, a leader facilitates and leads, instead of managing (low orientation of tasks - elevated interaction between people).
• Delegating - Subordinates do not require management and support from the leader (low task orientation - low interaction between people).
Of these, no one style is considered optimal for all leaders to use all the time. Effective leaders need to be flexible, and must adapt themselves according to the situation
Self-leadership
The application of TQM techniques reduces the levels of hierarchy in an organization. As a result, this reinforces the lower levels of responsibility to grow. In a quality-oriented organization, this translates into people or groups of people performing higher roles of leadership, both for themselves as well as for the people they work with. In some cases, this encompasses the total application of leadership in groups, rather than individuals leading a group. Self-leadership implies that actions and activities are designed to provide people with the skills, education, commitment, knowledge and motivation to carry out work-related tasks on their own; to know what they need to consult, and coordinate group effort to orient their objectives.
Self-leadership is a management philosophy and technique that leads to a higher performance of individuals, groups and the organization itself.
