Macro and Micro Leadership – The essential leadership roles for sustainability of an organization
Student’s Name: Shaikha Majid Alshamsi
Student’s ID No.: 12437
Every leader performs two roles in the organization, one is macro leadership role and the second one is micro leadership role. This article focuses on understanding the functions of a leader at macro and micro level and attempts to compare these two types of leaderships. Building a right environment and culture in the organization is an essential ingredient of macro leadership and analyzing and implementing the strategies on a day-to-day basis by monitoring every activity by doing an in-depth management is micro level leadership.
Macro is generally considered to be the ‘Big Picture’ of the leader and micro is considered to be the ‘task’ accomplishment of the leader.
At the macro level, the leader is more focused on bringing a transformational change in the organization by carefully monitoring the external and internal environment of it. The leader develops a long-term strategy by visualizing and anticipating the changes in the external environment and makes the structural changes required in the internal environment of the organization to synchronize the external changes.
Macro Leadership:
This leadership level or role is a strategic one. The leader thinks from a very broader perspective by scanning the business environment and suitably adapting the organization to the dynamics this external environment, keeping the vision, mission and objectives of the organization in mind.
The leader makes plans to expand the business by looking at various opportunities of investments. Keeps trying to innovate by launching new products, entering into new markets, making modifications to the existing products and services, and modifying the organizational strategies to deal with all the external stakeholders of the organization. Depending on the need, the leader also modifies the vision, mission and objectives of the organization from time to time. All the actions of the leader at this strategic level of leadership are oriented towards achieving sustainability of the organization. Therefore, at the macro leadership level, the leader plays a ‘transformational’ leader role.
Micro Leadership:
At this level of leadership, the leader tries to build the capacities of the organization in terms of manpower, finances, and other resources like machinery, equipment, and facilities. The leader also develops relationships with employee teams, lays out plans to complete the tasks, provides all the necessary support and motivation. The leader brings clarity to all the departments and functions by assigning them their roles and responsibilities in accomplishing the given tasks. All these actions match with the information gathered from the external environment at the macro leadership level.
The leader displays the necessary attitude by encouraging the employees to put their efforts to reach the goals for completing the tasks. The leader provides the required support to achieve the objectives of the organization.
Finally, for any leader to be a successful leader it is essential to display the leadership qualities at both the levels i.e., Macro and Micro.