Leadership Studies in an Organization

Leadership Studies in an Organization

 

Introduction

Toyota Motor Corporation has exuded success in its operations where it has demonstrated ability to penetrate different markets. There are several factors that helped the corporation to remain a global leader in the automotive industry. One of the success factors has been its corporate culture. Unlike its competitors, Toyota’s organizational structure has been very flat. This has resulted in good communication between the managers and the front-line employees. Moreover, the organization has always insisted on the importance of collaboration among all its employees irrespective of their leadership position and responsibility. This has enhanced consultation and corrective measures in cases of defects. Consequently, the corporation has been able to maintain consistency in its products’ quality. The corporate culture has been developed over time by the corporate leaders of the organization (Gorman, 2010). Although the aforementioned factors have contributed to the success of the auto maker, the most crucial factor that has prevailed over the years is the leadership of the corporation. The leaders in the organization crafted the current corporate culture, strategy and provided the resource for production. Therefore, the leadership element of the corporation has had greater contribution to its success than other factors. Corporations have recognized the need to develop their leaders so that they can continue to be competitive (Easterbay-Smith and Lyles, 2011). The decision to focus on leadership development for Toyota came in 2002. It could have been prompted by the process of globalization and the competition that accompanied it.

Toyota Institute

In 2002, Toyota decided to establish the Toyota Institute, which was its main training tool. Toyota Institute was intended to reinforce the integration of Toyota globally by educating its stakeholders about the Toyota way. Toyota Institute offers two programs, which are management development program and global leadership program. By setting up the institute Toyota Corporation aims at instilling leadership qualities in middle-level managers who are the link between the operations and the strategy. The program targets to improve the corporation’s overseas and domestic operations.

The global leadership school is charged with developing a capable executive human resource that can provide global leadership. The managers who go through the school acquire enhanced leadership skills and abilities that are based on Toyota way. Secondly, they are trained on advanced management skills and knowledge in the field of business. Moreover, managers are trained on human networking across the globe. Candidates for both the global leadership school and management development school are chosen based on a certain criterion. This criterion is job performance. One of the company’s core values is quality enhancement. To maintain high levels of quality, all the people in the organization and especially managers should be very skilled and trained. The job performance evaluation is conducted up to four times in a year. The evaluation highlights the weak areas where the candidates can benefit with advanced training. Those attending the global leadership school are also trained on job performance evaluation. Moreover, their knowledge on promotion and positive reinforcement is enhanced. The school emphasizes the importance of the leaders to reward good performance to motivate performers.

Candidates who attend Toyota Institute are equipped with dispute and conflict resolution skills. This course is offered with the full view that conflicts are bound to occur especially where people of diverse cultures work together. Since Toyota is a multinational organization, it has a diverse workforce. As such, the conflicts that may arise need quick and fair resolution so that mutual respect, harmony and appreciation between parties can be achieved.

Diversity is a key concept that Toyota institute teaches. The importance of this concept to Toyota cannot be overemphasized. One of the corporation’s objectives is to dominate the international automotive market. This dominance requires its workforce to be diverse in order to operate in the different regions of the world. Education on diversity highlights the importance of a diverse workforce such as diverse problem solving methods (Mintzberg, Dougherty, Jorgensen, and Westley, 2006). Moreover, those attending the leadership training are made aware of the different stereotypes that lead to discrimination. Methods of reducing the stereotypes and enhancing cultural tolerance and appreciation are also explored.

There are two major aspects of diversity that Toyota institute has concentrated its training on. These are the women and disabled people. In 2002, Toyota started a project that aimed to incorporate women in its leadership and work programs. The project acknowledged that there was a shift in the labour force where more women were joining the labour force (Pringle, 2008). The project also acknowledged the challenges faced by women who yearned to build their careers and become leaders with different organizations. To enable them achieve their dreams at Toyota Corporation the organization designed programs to minimize the challenges. One of the initiatives aimed at building women leadership in the organization is the creation of baby care program to take care of its female employees’ babies. Baby care provides mothers with ample time to participate in their careers and engage in learning (Kirshenbaum, 2003). Secondly, the corporation has flexible time schedules for mothers with small kids and opportunities to sometimes work from home. This creates a good environment for the women to nurture their leadership dreams.

The other aspect of leadership nurturing that Toyota Corporation undertook was the inclusion of disabled people in its team. The corporation targets to create autonomy for the disabled people by nurturing their leadership qualities through the provision of equal chances. They are offered special treatment depending on the degree of their disability.

Leader Development Process

To evaluate the leadership development program at Toyota Motor Corporation, it is imperative to explore literature and models that relate to the process of leader development so that the strengths and weaknesses can be identified. The identification of the gaps that may exist in Toyota’s managerial and leadership development will help in designing a strategy and plan for improving it. According to Van Velsor, McCauley and Ruderman (2010), the process of leader development is comprised of three specific elements. These elements include assessment, support and challenge. The purposes served by these elements include motivating people to concentrate their attention on growth, change and learning (Clegg, Komberger and Pitsis, 2004). Secondly, the elements provide observations, information, and reactions from various people. These reactions results to increased understanding of the world. The presence of these elements in the leader development process makes developmental experiences more effective. The three elements of leader development process and their purpose are discussed below.

Assessment

Successful developmental experiences have been found to contain assessment as one of its elements. This assessment can be both formal and informal. The formal assessment comes from performance appraisals, organizational surveys, customer evaluation and many other processes that are formally conducted within an organization (Griffin, 2010). Moreover, formal assessment can be in form of personal evaluation to determine areas that one ought to improve. Informal assessment comes from less structured methods such as requesting colleagues for genuine feedback (Mabey and Lees, 2007). There are critical reasons why assessment in a leader development process is important. First, assessment acts as a benchmark for future development. Assessment enables a person to understand his or her current performance, effectiveness, strengths and primary developmental needs. Moreover, information derived from assessment provides an individual with the current state of affairs (Schein, 1992). The individual is then able to measure the gap that exists between the current status and the ideal status. Therefore, assessment can provide a person with self drive towards attaining an ideal status. In the work environment, there are conflicting goals and expectations. The organization’s expectations may not match those of an individual. Moreover, social expectations at the workplace may also differ with both organizational and personal goals (Shukla, 2009).  As such an assessment identifies the gaps that exist between the expectation and the ideal status. The existence of these gaps is the basis for growth, learning and change that developmental experiences motivate.

Although the process of assessment has been widely accepted as an element that enables the development of a leader, it has different impacts and operates differently with depending on the context within which it is applied (Finch, 2005).  For instance, cultural differences may have different impacts on how people accept feedback from the assessment. Moreover, the leadership attributes that are acceptable in one organizational setting may differ depending on the cultural backgrounds of the people involved.

Support

In the learning process that culminates to an effective leader, there are various challenges that individuals encounter. These challenges may either provider learners with motivation of kill their morale depending on the support they receive from others (Tompkins, 2005). The challenge in the developmental experiences may be moral, material or technical. If people fail to get the expected support, the same challenge that is aimed at motivating them may be overwhelming and frustrating. Support in the developmental experiences comes from bosses, friends, families, coworkers, coaches and mentors. The support provided by these people is very different, but it helps the individuals to endure with the challenges and frustrations (Martin, 2009).  For instance, bosses have been found to provide immense support especially reinforcement for the desired development. Moreover, bosses are involved in resource allocation for various projects within an organization. Their support can, therefore, be in form of resources required for successful learning that eventually leads to change. Support can also come from organizational cultures. Organizations that value learning and development have developed systems within their corporate cultures that enable people to continuously learn and develop (Singla, 2006). Such organizations acknowledge that continued learning and development of their employees is the success drive for the organization. These organizations develop systems that assist employees to identify their needs for development and craft plans to address the needs. These supportive cultures also identify the need to reward the results of learning to encourage employees to further their learning and development (Yost and Plunkett, 2009). As part of the organization culture, people are encouraged to form cross-group sharing platforms. These groups encourage knowledge sharing and learning based on previous mistakes. Therefore, developmental experiences require support from various people and settings. When people are encouraged, they get assurance they are moving in the right direction (Zaccaro and Klimoski, 2002). Moreover, support provides motivation, especially when the challenge is   enormous.

Challenge

Developmental experiences that have the biggest potential for growth are that that have a challenge component in them (Russell, 2005). Under normal circumstances, people do their work habitually using already established skills and capabilities. As such, they have little to learn from their daily routine jobs. People working on comfortable assignments use their assumptions and perspectives to achieve the goals of the assignments. Therefore, they see no need to develop new perspectives. Therefore, people working within their comfort zones have no challenge to stimulate them to develop. Challenging experiences initiate a state of disequilibrium in people (Kotler, 2001). The current skills, assumptions and frameworks can no longer deal with the challenging experiences. As such, people begin to evaluate their adequacy in different skills. The challenging experiences have potential for development when the challenges being face are novel and have not been experienced before. Another source of challenge is difficult goals. These goals can be either personal or set by others. Difficult goals not only require an individual to work hard, but also to change their way of doing things and thinking (Hacker and Roberts, 2003). Difficult goal challenges the current skills and knowledge and calls for new ways of doing things. Conflicting situations pose a challenge to people, prompting them to develop new perspectives (Avolio, 2009). To effectively resolve the conflicts, individuals are challenged to consider other people’s opinion, question their perspectives and make decisions based on new conclusions. Such conflicting experiences, therefore, lead to development of new skills on solving problems based on new skills. Losses of different kinds are a source of challenges to people (Bertocci, 2009). When people have lost something crucial to their lives such as a job, they are faced with multiple challenges that result from the loss. To overcome the challenge, people are forced to evaluate new means. Eventually, they learn and develop new skills.

Strategy and Action Plan for Improving Toyota’s Leadership Development Program

From the literature reviewed on the leader development process and Toyota’s managerial leadership program, there are aspects that have been incorporated in the corporations program. Though the incorporation may not have been as direct as described in the leader development process, it has been crafted to fit the specific context of Toyota Corporation. The corporate culture of the corporation is very supportive of the developmental experiences since it encourages personal development and cooperation among employees. Leaders interact freely with subordinates, which show clear support to the efforts of the subordinates in developing their careers (Knights and Willmott, 2007). By conducting about four evaluations each year, the corporation acknowledges the importance of assessment. Although the corporation has several aspects in place for developing leaders, there are improvements needed.

One of the improvements that need to be incorporated is the corporation’s program is the element of challenge. Toyota has a long established system of doing things. This standard way of carrying out activities does not give enough room for people to try out new ways. Therefore, work is very routine and repetitive. This may inhibit development since people use the already learned skills. The difficulty of incorporating such challenges is the insistence of the Corporation on quality. No mistakes are accepted I manufacturing of Toyota’s products. As such, trying novel practices may face resistance from the management of the organization.

The skills learned at Toyota institute should be accompanied by challenging assignments. Theoretical learning on advanced management may do little compared to the impact a challenging experience may have on the development of the employees (Srivastava, 2005). Since the people who attend the training have experience working with the corporation, the fear that that may compromise on quality while trying out novel challenging venture should be minimal.

The current leadership development program is not holistic in its aims. There are three purposes that leader development strives to fulfill. These are succession management, performance improvement and organizational change (Bruce, 2010). At Toyota Institute, the target employees for the program are the middle level managers. Therefore, the corporation seems to be only concerned with performance improvement in its manufacturing. The program should incorporate Training for corporate management positions for succession management purposes. This way, the good culture developed within the corporation will be assured o continuity. Moreover, training corporate managers will ensure that the organization is ready for change since the top level managers champion the change.

Conclusion

Toyota Motor Corporation’s managerial leadership development program is unique due the context within which the organization operates since it manufacture vehicles that depend on quality for their sales. For fear of compromising on quality, it fails to provide challenging developmental experiences for its employees. Moreover, the program concentrates on training middle level managers instead of being inclusive of all the whole management team. The action plan has highlighted on the places the program needs to improve and has provided reasons to warrant such improvement.

 

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