M1A4 Journal: Empowering Your People

M1A4 Journal: Empowering Your People

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

M1A4 Journal: Empowering Your People

Introduction

Leadership philosophy plays a foundational role for any leader. It provides a clarity and focus to achieve the goals and objectives. A person with a proper philosophy will be more consistent in his or her behavior and actions. However, the progress of any organization depends on the leadership philosophy its leaders practice. At the same time, it also reflects that what is more preferable objective for a leader while leading the organization?

Moreover, the company which is chosen for this assignment on the basis of its strong leadership philosophy and powerful actions is Verizon Communications. The Chief Executive Magazine (2013), ranked Verizon Communications among the top five companies for “Best Companies for Leaders”. All the credit goes to the ex-CEO Lowell Mc Adam who served the organization with an example and led as a role model for other business entities. However, he offered his services for the company till August 1, 2018. He is replaced by Hans Vestberg, a potential leader with notable leading experience at various organizations. Previously, Mr. Vestberg was serving as a Chief Technology Officer at Verizon and he was the president of Global Networks.

The aim of this paper is to look into the leadership philosophy of Verizon Communications and analyze the leadership practices by the CEO of the organization.

Discussions

Verizon is best known for its leadership philosophy of customer first approach with core values of Reliability, Admiration, Performance, Quality and Liability. Mr. Mc Adam had well-defined leadership capabilities. By utilizing all those skills he introduced different programs to improve the leadership skills of individuals at all levels of the company. At the same time, he strongly demonstrated on self-commitment and engagement in developing the executive-leadership. Therefore, the company has been recognized by several forums for its leadership programs and practices. All the employees of the company are informed about the revenues, and operation reviews by the CEO quarterly. This is an incredible strategy to get the employees in confidence and make them feel valued. Companies which are customer-oriented usually more concerned about the products or services they deliver. Therefore, the senior leadership is more concerned about the ability and capacity of the employees. Hence, companies like Verizon are bringing the leadership development programs for different levels of leaders within the company. These programs help the teams to enhance their skills.

Moreover, Mc Adam also came up with the strategies to build up the leadership abilities of administrative bodies at every level within the company. At the end of the programs, everyone is assessed by using different assessment tools. Moreover, this shows that the CEO of Verizon is following the participative theory of leadership. According to participative leadership theory, a leader is more concerned about the performance of employees, also takes suggestions from the employees and gives them a chance to share their opinion or ideas (House and Mitchell, 1975). The senior leadership of the company is more concerned about the quality of the products so the CEO encourages the employees to perform well. However, this might increase a workload or stress on the employees. It can be considered as a weakness of the organizational culture of Verizon. Commit to provide service excellence can create a stressful environment for the workers.

In addition, the changing of CEO of Verizon supports that company is seeking new ideas and innovation to advance the services of the company. These services will be according to the demands and needs of the current world. Therefore, Vestberg is working for the 5G development in the United States. While aspire to remain ahead, the current CEO is very much conscious about the 5G development.

Furthermore, when internal communication is over-looked, all the methods of the communications are practiced in the organization. In downward communication practice, the CEO broadcasts the information regarding the progress and challenges of the company to all the employees of the company four times in a year. Technology has made communication easier for the organizations. Moreover, for horizontal communication with every worker, there is intranet. Face-to-face meetings are held for senior leaders and once a year there is a meeting between all the senior leaders with CEO. They discuss goals and objectives along with procrastinating for the whole year. However, there are very rare face-to-face communications of senior leaders with the employees. Technology has replaced the face-to-face communication and it can be quite helpful and accessible for the employees to convey their message to higher authorities. Employees prefer emails or instant messaging because it is easier for them to discuss the problems with a shielding effect of the computer (Turnage and Goodboy, 2016).

However, there will be minimum chances of direct interaction of leader-employees and employee-employee because of the methods of communication. Face-to-face communication builds trusting relationships between the management and the employees. Face-to-face communication is a rich medium to exchange the information by increasing the frequency of connections among the employees (Lengnick-Hall and Lengnick-Hall, 2003).

Conclusions

Verizon Communications has earned awards for its best practices of leadership. The customer-oriented values have directed the leaders to focus on employee performance and quality services. The Participative leadership philosophy may lack to minimize the work load or stress of the employees because of customer-oriented practices. Thus, Charismatic leadership style will best suit the CEO of Verizon Communications and it will influence the workers to make things happen. Charismatic leadership style increases the organizational performance (Hu, Weng and CAO, 2015). At the same time, Face-to-face communications within the organization needs to be increased for creating a warm and learning environment.

References

2013 Best Companies for Leaders - Top 5. (2013). Chief Executive. Retrieved from https://chiefexecutive.net/2013-best-companies-for-leaders-top-5/

House, R. J., & Mitchell, T. R. (1975). Path-goal theory of leadership (No. TR-75-67). Washington Univ Seattle Dept of Psychology.

Hu, H. J., Weng, Q. X., & CAO, W. (2015). The relationship between charismatic leadership and performance: a meta-analysis. Chinese Journal of Management, 12(2), 223-230.

Lengnick-Hall, M.L. and Lengnick-Hall, C.A. (2003) Human Resource Management in the Knowledge Economy: New Challenges, New Roles, New Capabilities. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.

Turnage, A. K., & Goodboy, A. K. (2016). E-mail and face-to-face organizational dissent as a function of leader-member exchange status. International Journal of Business Communication, 53(3), 271-285.