When organizations decide to institute changes, they can not do so without guiding the employees in a way that helps them see the value in the proposed transformations. This type of guidance takes skills and dexterity. Successful organizational changes can occur when organizational leadership is employed to help employees understand the reasons for the changes and the benefit of moving the company in a new direction.

Organizational Leadership

According to the June 2008 issue of “Administration in Social Work” journal, organizational leadership is a leadership style that is heavily utilized by companies that want to develop and implement structural changes. These types of leaders are often thought of as visionaries. They can create images for how an organization should look, based on what the organizational goals are. From there, organizational leaders have a talent for designing ways to reach those goals through a series of organizational transformation processes. Organizational leaders are equipped with backgrounds in behavioral analysis, process improvement and project management expertise.

Organizational Culture

Before a leader can lead an organization through any changes, the leader must first understand the organizational culture and behavior. According to the 2010 edition of the Free Management Library, organizational culture is the organization’s personality. It is comprised of all the variables that make up any other type of culture, such as behaviors, norms, values, expectations and general similarities. Organizational cultures can be detected by the type of clothes employees wear, their level of professionalism, how they behave and what they talk about. This is why organizational cultures can be perceived as a company personality. However, organizational culture is more than just a personality or behavior. In fact, it can influence systems and processes within the workplace. Due to its strong influence on an organization, organizational leaders must understand the ins and outs of the culture in order to get the culture on board with the proposed transformations.

Organizational Behavior

According to the 2010 update by the Reference for Business, organizational behavior is the relationship between how people behave and how their behavior affects the performance of the organization. It is not about how the organization behaves. The reason that organizational leaders invest time and energy into studying organizational behavior is because organizational behavior can be based in organizational culture. Together, these variables can create barriers when organizations wish to make structural or procedural changes. By examining organizational behavior, organizational leaders can determine a strategy to be able to shift the structure of the organization with minimal challenges or barriers from staff.