Willa Seldon at Tides Centre

Willa Seldon at Tides Centre

1. Using your knowledge of leadership, describe and critically assess Wila Seldon's leadership at Tides centre?

Willa Seldon was a very dedicated person, with high dedication towards moral values. She loved to work in a participative style, where she involved various people in the work conducted in favor of organizational goals and objectives. When she faced Tides Centre, she had to face many issues as the company had fired many employees, she had to hire people so organization could perform its task efficiently. She also had to manage the financial issues of the company efficiently as she had to find financers for the company. Following her participative style of Leadership, when she joined the company she started meeting new people and the management of the company to understand the processes and practices of the organization.

Leadership can be defined as "the process of influencing the activities in relation to the functions of the members of a group." It can also be defined as the process of planning, organizing, directing, control and influence the activities of members of the group related to the activities to achieve a specific goal (Strassman, 1990) .

The first systematic effort of psychologists and other researchers to understand the leadership was an attempt to identify the characteristics of leaders. This conception of leadership (leaders are born, not made) still enjoys wide acceptance (although not among the researchers).

In search of leadership traits, the researchers adopted two respects: 1) tried to find the traits of those who emerged as leaders with those who did, 2) attempted to compare the characteristics of effective and ineffective leaders. The generality of the studies devoted to the leadership belongs to the first category, and these studies have failed to discover the traits that distinguish a clear and consistent leader and followers. The leading group is slightly higher, brighter, more outgoing and self-confident. However millions of people have these features and most of them never occupied a leadership position.

People use various Leadership styles to manage and run their organizations, but Willa Seldon adopted a participative and customer centered style to manage the organization. This leadership style places great emphasis on employee involvement in deciding the course of action of group and contributing their knowledge through information sharing and participating in setting goals of the team/group. In this type of leadership, people are directly involved in the decision-making; team leader encourage team members participation in providing input. Although the final decision making authority lies with the team leader; however, decision is made on the consensus of the group. Participative leadership- style promotes responsibility sharing, collaborative approach, delegation practices, and continual concern towards agreement decisions.

This approach is utilized when team members have sufficient knowledge and have ability to contribute in the goals achievement by their involvement in decision making and communicating their suggestions and feedback to the team leader. It not only improves the efficiency of decision making as leader himself may not be able ...