Question

Based on the final lecture material (PPT #6), kindly answer the following:

• What are some cultural restraints on "charismatic leadership" in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia?
• Differentiate between servant leadership, authentic leadership, and positive leadership.

Answer 1

The culture in Saudi Arabia reflects the word caution in the truest senses. The businesses show a higher affinity for rigid control structure and managers show a higher reliance towards authority and low delegation of decision making responsibility. While this might not imply a lack of favorability for charismatic leadership, we can correlate the lack of an entrepreneurial outlook combined with the manager’s showing being averse to innovation and risks make charismatic leadership the worst possible approach to be taken by them. The government shows the same level of centralization of functions that the businesses tend to take after, and the fear of failure, especially at the corporate level makes it hard for the leaders or the managers to be charismatic and lead with intuition.

Servant leadership is a follower centric approach whereby the leader’s sole responsibility lies in their duty towards the betterment of their subordinates. This can easily be considered as the leader’s role to serve. Employees are given more chances, more authority, more autonomy, and the leader makes sure they can do everything in their power to enable their employees, doing what’s best for their growth.

Authentic leaders take after professionals that represent experience and absolute knowledge in their field of application. This means that their leadership power comes from their skills and abilities, rather than their position. For example, while a sales manager has positional power, if they have vast knowledge, skills, and experience to provide value to their followers that can learn from them and be helped by this experience and skills, it would synonymously result in them developing admiration and respect for their leader, translating to their authentic leadership powers.

Positive leadership drives on the basis of positive energy that the leader projects. The consideration is therefore given to modeling the follower’s experiences by purposefully enhancing and influencing them through appealing to their emotions. Positive leadership is therefore a newer field of research and provides a viable strategy for newer leaders to try and implement this structure, in order to ensure higher morale and functionality within their area of governance.

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