Contemporary Hospitality Organization - Strategic Leadership Styles

Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh

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B.A International Hospitality and Tourism Management

ITM-IHM, OSHIWARA, MUMBAI

Strategic Leadership in Hospitality & Tourism Industries

2015– 2016

Word Count :  2373

A Contemporary Hospitality Organization is classified as an establishment providing meals, light refreshments, drink or accommodation with short term and transitional lodging for the guest. The core of an organization lies with a strategic leader. A leader is one who heads a company to achieve his goals by setting goals for himself and his employees. There are various strategic requirements like business goals, leadership visions, integration of leadership development with talent and global consideration and most importantly plan to maintain the same. Any company could fall apart whether there is a strategy or not but without a leader to implement it is very easy. Attaining a better operational performance and encouraging employee breakthroughs in performance is a must of every leader. There are different types of leadership styles each that provide effective work on the circumstance, attitude, beliefs, preferences and values of the people involved. These styles are further bifurcated as follows -

Autocratic - these type of leaders insist on doing their work by themselves. They have the power, make decisions and often do not tell any one else about what they might be doing. They often maintain an authority by force, intimidation, rewards, threats and position. Such a leader has an effect on the organization leading to distrust of ideas and  protection of position. A very important autocratic leader in the corporate world was Leona Helmsley of the Hamsley Hotel Chain. Her combative style earned her the name of ‘Queen of the Mean’. Her style of leadership lead to popularity of this chain but her demands of perfection, her extracting ways scraped the dignity of everyone in her team whether it may be the cleaning staff or top executives. One example of her firing someone was because that employee even though has worked for eight years was removed because she used the Helmsley Palace dry cleaner to remove an accidental spill on her own clothing. A lot of employees had gone against her claiming tax evasion, extortion and kickbacks against her which lead her to spend 21 months in prison and fines