Individual Paper - Shadows of the leader Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Individual Paper - Shadows of the leader - Essay Example When leaders practice these, their followers will also be likely to do the same and as a result, the organisational culture will originate from the shadow cast above. This is especially because it is very difficult to try to correct one’s follower’s mistakes if you are their genesis. An example of how such leadership shadows can affect a company is Enron, it started n energy and network-providing firm that experienced unprecedented growth levels in the mid 90’s. After this, they hired the best business school graduates and the best talent in any field (Jickling, 2002). The culture was highly competitive with success being rewarded individually while failure was shunned. However, most of the focus was on the short rather than long-term success. As a result competition between individuals became acute and everyone more so the senior managers were ready to do anything to â€Å"make it big†, people were motivated by financial gain and consequently a culture of keeping business secrets and hiding losses in fictitious offshore ventures became rampant. Profits were inflated to keep the firm looking successful and even after it was nearly going bust, its shares were selling at $90 and the directors had assured the shareholders they would hit 120 although m ost of them sold off theirs. When Watkins, one of the executives blew the whistle on the illegal financial practices, the share price for the firm went down to $15 and the company declared bankruptcy resulting in millions of shareholder’s money being lost, careers and lives brought to ruin. This was caused by several of the shadows discussed above, by manipulating the accounting books, the leaders practiced deceit, which was copied by their juniors and became prevalent in the entire firm (Barreveld, 2002). Inconsistency was engendered in their tendency to say one thing to shareholders then do another, they promised increased share price but went on with practices