Organizational Leadership: Everything You Need To Know

Organizational leadership is a management approach through which leaders motivate teams to meet their organization’s mission or strategic goals. Organizational leaders promote cooperation and teamwork by utilizing a team’s strengths to accomplish tasks.

This page explores the ins and outs of organizational leadership, including key skills required, available careers and related degrees.

What Is Organizational Leadership?

Organizational leadership is a management style involving setting strategic goals for an organization and motivating team members to achieve them. This management style focuses on inputs and outputs, an organization’s structure and task delegation to accomplish goals.

Organizational leadership demands a strong leader, as it involves overseeing an entire company or a significant department within a company. This overarching management style focuses on end goals for a company’s success. Strategy sessions must begin with the end in mind.

Organizational leadership is people-focused. Leaders must understand and utilize team members’ individual skill sets. These professionals must be decisive to solve problems under pressure. They should also be able to communicate well, maintain a high level of business understanding and foster functional and healthy team qualities.

Key Skills for Organizational Leadership

A Deep Understanding of Business

Organizational leaders need an in-depth understanding of their business, including its internal functions, dynamics, its context within the market and the influences of external factors. Understanding market trends aids in creating and tweaking short- and long-term organizational plans.

These factors allow organizational leaders to create a comprehensive vision for their team and motivate members to persevere and adapt to various challenges.

Effective Change Management

Organizational change is inevitable for businesses in every field. As such, organizational leaders must work through changes toward successful outcomes. Effective change management involves preparation, implementation and follow-through.

Change is necessary to execute an organization’s vision. Interpersonal skills like communication, transparency and empathy ensure seamless and effective organizational changes.

Interpersonal and Communication Skills

As organizational leadership is people-focused, strong interpersonal and communication skills are paramount in leading a group to achieve shared goals.

Active listening, adaptive communication, leading with curiosity and open body language all play essential roles in organizational leadership. Accepting feedback as a manager fosters trust and respect among your team.

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness leads to clearer communication and confidence and builds stronger workplace relationships. Improving as a leader involves identifying strengths and areas of improvement and applying feedback effectively.

Maintaining a growth mindset can also help maximize leadership skills. Seeing challenges, feedback and criticism as growth opportunities improves effective organizational leadership.

Organizational Leadership Careers

Below we explore careers in organizational leadership. We sourced all salary data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Chief Executive

Median Annual Salary: $179,520
Projected Job Growth (2021-2031): -7%
Job Description: Chief executives are companies’ highest-level leaders. These professionals focus on big-picture visions and goals, create long-term plans and provide direction to achieve these goals. They often report company performance to a board of directors.

General or Operations Manager

Median Annual Salary: $97,970
Projected Job Growth (2021-2031): +7%
Job Description: General and operations managers work for businesses and nonprofit organizations. Duties vary based on organization but may include overseeing day-to-day operations, creating company policies, managing employees and securing and allocating resources.

Human Resources Manager

Median Annual Salary: $126,230
Projected Job Growth (2021-2031): +7%
Job Description: Human resources managers are top executives in HR departments. They manage organizational procedures like hiring and firing, compliance, creating policies and rules, setting compensation and benefits and resolving interpersonal workplace disputes.

Project Manager

Median Annual Salary: $94,500
Projected Job Growth (2021-2031): +7%
Job Description: Project managers oversee projects in fields like construction, healthcare, business and the nonprofit sector. Throughout each project’s life cycle, these managers handle budgeting, staffing, scheduling and all issues and concerns that arise.

Organizational Leadership Degrees

Bachelor’s in Organizational Leadership

Prospective organizational leaders can pursue a bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership to prepare for upper-management roles. These programs teach aspects of organizational leadership through topics like project management, resource allocation and organizational ethics.

Some schools also offer a business administration bachelor’s with a concentration in organizational leadership. These degrees provide a broader understanding of business concepts like accounting, finance, marketing and economics, and feature management and organizational leadership courses.

Most undergraduate programs require around 120 credits and take full-time students four years to complete.

Master’s in Organizational Leadership

Students can also pursue an MS in organizational leadership or an MBA with a concentration in organizational leadership. These graduate programs require 30 to 45 credits and last one to two years.

MBA programs provide an overview of business foundations, while MS programs delve deeper into organizational leadership topics. Possible coursework in MS programs includes social psychology, leadership theory, advanced leadership and data analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) in Organizational Leadership