Introduction
In this essay, one of the most appropriate organizations to be analyzed for remote-working leadership styles is Lockheed Martin (Anon, 2021). The company has both presence-required (industrial) and remote-possible (technology) operating branches, so the leadership should be executed in different styles (Javaid et al., 2020). The main objective is to analyze the leadership functioning in a virtual workspace.
Leadership Challenges in Remote Environment
First and foremost, Lockheed Martin is a security-oriented company that solves aerospace issues for both private and government entities. Consequently, the vast majority of the workforce are technologically advanced people who can work both in an “offline” and remote environment. Regular department briefings strictly settle deadlines, and virtual documentation is the factor that helps the employees to achieve the company’s goals (Eikenberry, 2018). However, even though the technology-oriented departments do not experience significant changes in remote conditions, the industrial branch has faced many challenges throughout the ongoing “lockdown” work shifts. Some of the most important functioning factors were negatively affected by providing restrictive measures.
For instance, the technical documentation on the assembly lines is usually maintained in a paper format, even though general and final documents are transformed into a numerical format. As a result, most of the details concerning working process difficulties or scrap details spots are missing until the project is finished. This aspect creates many issues that may result in delays in production during the frequent shift changes. Thus, the company leadership should be executed in different styles for the “technical” and “industrial” parts of the company. Moreover, the main challenges of such leadership conditions are significant interdepartmental communicational gaps and limited progress-tracking possibilities.
Traditional Leadership: Traits and Practices
When analyzing leadership styles, it is crucial to consider the diversity of traditional leadership styles interpretation. As a result, the four most popular and widespread types of traditional leadership will be analyzed in this paragraph.
Firstly, authoritarian leadership is one of the most ancient styles in leadership theory. This is because it is usually associated with first-known “leaders,” such as kings and emperors. The main advantage of implementing such a style into practice is that there are no destructive discussions, and there is only one decision-making person (Zhang et al., 2017). By applying this method at the beginning of the operating activity, the company experiences a high efficacy in raising its value due to the primary importance of focused and determined allocation of resources rather than the “right” one.
On the other hand, when the enterprise has sufficiently increased its value and the number of employees increased exponentially, the authoritarian leadership implementation would destructively affect the operational activity. This is due to the fact that in developed companies, people are required to collaborate with each other to not only retain but also strengthen their market position. In this case, the authoritarian leadership style will eliminate creativity and the worker’s sense of “contribution.” In a remote environment, such leadership will discourage workers from virtually collaborating, resulting in a loss of communication during the working process.
Secondly, delegation leadership is one of the most passive traditional leading styles. In this case, the leader’s main task is to effectively estimate the project’s requirements and choose the appropriate person who can execute it with the best efficiency. Moreover, by applying this approach in the operating process, the team is significantly encouraged to demonstrate self-efficiency and creative approaches to problem-solving (Dennison, 2021). In other words, the workers are given the general plan of the project and some responsibilities, but the development of methods becomes the additional employees’ responsibility. In this environment, the remote team of professionals has the most appropriate conditions for maximizing workers’ efficiency (Bagwell, 2020). The employees execute the project whenever they want so that the project becomes “adjusted” to the personality type of the people themselves. However, the vague responsibility distribution and the lack of control might negatively affect remote working efficiency (Jokisaari et al., 2018). As a result, unless the delegation leader does not establish specific reporting requirements and fields of responsibility, the company, especially large-capitalized, might experience serious internal conflicts and execution delays issues.
Thirdly, Transactional leadership is usually interpreted as the most “classical” type of relationship between a leader and their team. The most notable characteristic of this style is the simplicity of the company’s internal hierarchy. More specifically, the leader is considered a “customer” who establishes a specific contract with their employees. As a result, the workers execute an order due to strictly settled instructions and deadlines, which also facilitates the result-evaluation process. In a flexible work environment, this type of leadership helps maintain the work atmosphere and deadline compliance, which is the most widespread reason for applying this style in practice in “lockdown” conditions (Afshari et al., 2016). However, in a constant stream of special requirements and fixed deadlines for their execution, sharp individuals cannot fully disclose their potential since it is not previewed by the transactional leadership model. On the contrary, “order” compliance is evaluated on how effectively the employees followed the instructions. Any, even positive, deviation from the project’s initial scope might decrease the worker’s total rating or even position in the corporate hierarchy.
Last but not least, participative or democratic leadership is the most “balanced” leadership style among traditional approaches. The main advantage of applying this method into practice is observing the free-to-speak employees’ performance while having the right of the ultimacy of “choice.” As a result, the democratic leader is motivated to demonstrate personal competitiveness and teamwork simultaneously but in different time frames. More specifically, people are instructed about some “speaking” sessions and “listening” ones, where all of the employees might share their own opinion. The participative method is considered the most productive in terms of workforce efficiency since people solve problems themselves (Akpoviroro et al., 2018). However, while the final decision always belongs to the same leader, it becomes evident that the enterprise will not work without the leader’s presence since there is no person to whom employees should “promote” the ideas. This factor might create significant obstacles for the operating process in a remote environment, where the leader cannot be present in every part of the project.
Traits-Oriented Comparison of Traditional and Contemporary Leadership Styles
First and foremost, transformational leadership stands for inspiring employees to change their working methods which leads them to successful project execution. This method represents adopted by the most successful chief executive officers in the world. This is because, under transformational leadership, the workers try to fundamentally rethink the value of their processes and increase it in case of possibility (Afsar et al., 2016). Consequently, the workers’ effectiveness usually rises exponentially since the employees were not told specifically to increase the efficacy for X %. In the remote-working environment, the communication process becomes harder, so the leader must increase the regularity of briefings to track workers’ implementation of new approaches properly. In addition, this style requires the leader to be the most competent person in the company who possesses profound knowledge of every part of the company’s operating process. As a result, it is difficult enough to implement the transformational leadership model in a company with a significant diversity of specialization. Moreover, in some cases, the conflict of interests might negatively affect an employee’s perception of the leader’s advice. For instance, when the leader emphasizes the importance of spending extra time to improve the project’s quality, the workers feel that they might be exploited, directly influencing leader-employee relations.
On the other hand, the charismatic leadership style is supposed to unite workers and leaders during the operating process. More specifically, charismatic leaders create an “image” of their goal so that most of the workers might visualize the outcome, and the main emphasis is put on achieving the jointly settled goal (Shamir et al., 2018). The most important factor for charismatic leadership is the communication process so that the main idea is settled around the quality of dialogue and discussion among different employees. Thus, the communication process in such an organization is rather emotionally encouraging than” rational.” In remote work environments, such leadership type might significantly help work teams with significant communication gaps and those who experience some social contact obstacles.
As a result, certain people may feel the most comfortable in front of a camera at home rather than in an office while speaking in public, which is a frequent problem in technology-progressive individuals. However, it becomes much harder for most leaders to maintain the charismatic style in companies who work with sophisticated technologies. This is due to the fact that even though a leader should be familiar with the company’s functionality, they cannot have more profound knowledge in specific fields of science compared with employees. Consequently, this leadership type is one of the most emotionally-hardest since it is crucial to demonstrate high motivation even if its level is close to zero. Moreover, in a remote environment, it is much harder to transmit a positive settlement for the task, so the worker’s motivation frequently experiences “deadweight loss” in lockdown status.
Turning to the comparison part, it is crucial to distinguish traditional and contemporary styles of leadership on general and specific levels. In fact, traditional leadership is aimed at settling the specific goal for the group, which should be done by the leader, and ensuring the effective execution of the demanded work. On the other hand, the contemporary style is urged to cement interpersonal relations and solve every issue collectively.
On a specific level, two theories that would be interesting to compare are transformational and negative ones. While both of them describe a leader as a person with strong selective methods and psychological knowledge, they have some serious misalignments concerning the leader’s role in the working team, which might significantly influence a specific group’s efficiency. First and foremost, it is the level of engagement in employees’ practice improvement. From a delegation leader’s perspective, the workers are professional enough to execute the task effectively since only the individual might fully understand personal needs, which usually adjust to the task requirements. On the contrary, transformational leadership representatives agree that employees might adjust their work so that the maximum level of efficacy will be achieved. However, the sharp leader who observes workers’ activity might find some way to fundamentally improve their effectiveness since they will see the issue from another perspective. Based on personal experience and developed savvy, the leader’s engagement in the project’s execution might help some workers to rethink their activity, which will be possible in a remote manner when it comes to technological departments. By applying the theory into practice, it is evident that the transformational model is generally more appropriate for the Lockheed Martin corporation since a wide specialist in the aerospace industry manages it both from the business and practical perspective.
Finally, after profound leadership style analysis and comparison, it becomes possible to determine the appropriate leadership solutions and their possibilities of implementation into practice. More specifically, Lockheed Martin’s chief executive officer, who is the formal leader of the company, should apply democratic leadership, which is the more traditional approach, and transformational leadership for a generalized technological branch (Anon, 2021). Different theories were chosen since the “industrial” generalized branch is in significant need of providing a standard for all documentation processes and other communication details easing (Gregg et al., 2019). As a result, by applying participative leadership into practice, the leader becomes an “actively engaged observer” with a high capacity to derive a straightforward analysis of the current situation (Kerrissey et al., 2021). On the other hand, the transformational approach interprets leadership as a multi-side discussion process without a structural hierarchy of positions (Khaliq et a., 2021). This would create an indispensable atmosphere that encourages self-expression and interpersonal dialogues to derive the needed decision even in a remote environment. Consequently, the leader would have more possibilities to correct the workers’ direction of project execution. What is the most notable, in this case, is that employees do not suffer from a virtual type of communication, and the whole operating process “milestones” might be stated in the special company’s project management application.
Conclusion
To conclude, choosing the appropriate remote leadership activity is a complex process that requires a profound analysis of the work group’s structure. After that, when comparing traditional and contemporary leadership techniques, it is critical to distinguish them correctly: traditional leadership is for decision-making, contemporary one is for teamwork and discussion.
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