Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. is the selected organization based in Cleveland, Ohio. The Company produces welding equipment and consumables, cutting equipment, and regulators. Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc.’s mission is to ensure that it offers high-quality goods and services that meet the demands of clients and meet its vision. Therefore, the needed change within this organization is to focus on enhancing employee engagement and satisfaction by providing a positive and supportive work culture. Also, this change will be attained by adopting an effective leadership style which will adopt an implementation strategy characterized by creating cross-functional groups that offer training and development and promote an open communication culture that aligns with the Company’s goals. Therefore, this paper seeks to use Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. as an example to show how the journey to successful organizational change can be long and requires demonstrating a leader’s innovative leadership skills to support sustainable change.
There are various leadership styles in the context of the organizational culture and proposed change. One of these leadership styles that I have explored is the transformational leadership style, which describes leaders who use optimism, intelligence, charm, and other important personal qualities to transform employees in an organization to high-performance levels. Transactional leadership is another leadership style discussed in the context of the organizational culture and proposed change. This leadership style involves the leaders focusing on exchanges between them and the followers or employees in the workplace.
According to Aydin (2018, p. 271), the transactional leadership style is one in which the leaders promote compliance by followers through rewards and punishments. Furthermore, the rationale for considering these two leadership styles is that they are essential in the context of the organizational culture and proposed change in most organizations. First, these two leadership styles will play a significant role in aligning with the organizational culture. Transformational leadership focuses on inspiring and motivating employees through a shared vision and values. Therefore, this will be effective for an organization like Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc., as it has a culture that values innovation, creativity, and continuous improvement.
On the contrary, transactional leadership entails setting clear expectations and providing rewards or punishments according to performance (Aydin, 2018, p. 271). Therefore, this leadership style will create a task-oriented culture at Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. Additionally, the two leadership styles are effective and crucial for the organization to navigate the complexities of change initiatives. Transformational leadership is vital during change as it helps leaders articulate a compelling vision and communicate the need for change. Also, this will motivate the workers to embrace the change by aligning it with their values. Moreover, transactional leadership, emphasizing task-oriented performance, will provide structure and stability during times of change by ensuring that tasks are carried out efficiently and effectively.
After assessing Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc.’s need for change, I recommend transformational leadership as the best style to support change. Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. maintains a solid focus on sustainability and social responsibility by driving forces to quality products and services. Therefore, transformational leadership will promote sustainability by creating an organizational culture whereby the leaders and followers will focus on advancing each other to a high level of motivation, promoting high-performance levels (Shahzad et al., 2022, p. 2).
Additionally, a transformational leadership style will support sustainable organizational success within Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. by empowering its workers and making them work collectively. The workers will be inspired by their leaders’ charisma and vision (Shahzad et al., 2022, p. 2). Another notable aspect of this leadership style is that transformational leaders typically enhance organizational sustainability, which plays a significant role in influencing organizational performance. Also, organizational performance will be achieved by the transformational leader creating a knowledge-sharing environment that will successfully integrate and support different strategy implementation models (Shahzad et al., 2022, p. 9). For instance, this leadership within the Company will promote sustainability by creating an environment characterized by job engagement whereby the employees will have respect and confidence in their leader, which will motivate them and result in improved performance (Vila-Vazquez et al., 2018, p. 10).
Transformational leadership focuses on the changes within a company that result in the enhancement of the organization’s goals. Moreover, integration into the Company’s vision and mission will be through the leader influencing change through the adoption of open communication, which will play a significant role in ensuring that there is a flow of information while maintaining meaningful connections between the management and workers (Ligon, 2020, p. 2). For example, Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc. leaders will integrate into its mission and vision by creating cross-functional groups, providing training and development, and promoting an open communication culture that will align with the Company’s goals. Therefore, this leadership style will be able to integrate into the Company’s mission which is to provide high-quality goods and services that meet the demands of clients that will enable meet the vision.
In conclusion, transformational leadership will increase value for stakeholders through competitive advantage. After ensuring sustainable organizational success, this type of leadership will ensure the Company gains a competitive advantage over competitors and the clients due to their products, values, and high-quality products, among others. Moreover, competitive advantage will allow the leaders and workers to treat shareholders like “owners and partners,” leading to the best outcomes (Ligon, 2020, p. 25). Also, it will increase the value for stakeholders by ensuring change management that integrates Lincoln Electric Holdings, Inc.’s goals and ideas from distinct shareholders. For example, through the transformational leadership style, the leader will integrate the Company’s goals with the resources. Therefore, it is important to argue that the transformation will result in the collaboration of all stakeholders to achieve the organizational goals and objectives and will add value to the stakeholders as there will be enhanced outcomes in the effectiveness and organizational efficiency.
Another example is that transformational leaders will establish open lines of communication, focus on feedback and concerns, and show empathy toward their team members (Ligon, 2020, p. 36). It will foster a positive work environment based on trust, respect, and collaboration, where team members feel comfortable sharing ideas, opinions, and feedback. Trust and positive relationships will contribute to stakeholder value by promoting teamwork, innovation, and a supportive culture that enhances productivity and performance.
References
Aydin, B. (2018). The Role of organizational culture on leadership styles. MANAS Sosyal Araştırmalar Dergisi, 7(1), 267-280. https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/578231
Ligon, A. (2020). The Role of transformational leadership in organizational innovation and sustainable success. Murray State’s Digital Commons. Retrieved April 19, 2023, from https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1292&context=bis437
Shahzad, M. A., Iqbal, T., Jan, N., & Zahid, M. (2022). The Role of Transformational Leadership on Firm Performance: Mediating Effect of Corporate Sustainability and Moderating Effect of Knowledge-Sharing. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.883224
Vila-Vázquez, G., Castro-Casal, C., Álvarez-Pérez, D., & del Río-Araújo, L. (2018). Promoting the sustainability of organizations: Contribution of transformational leadership to job engagement. Sustainability, 10(11), 4109. DOI: 10.3390/su10114109
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