B121

Chapter 13

Leadership, Management and Motivation

Leading for results

Management involves far more than planning, implementation and the exercise of co-ordination and control. If an organization is to operate successfully in the wider environment, effective leadership and management of people, informed by an understanding of what motivates people to work, will be vital to an organization's ability to meet externally-imposed competitive demands and pressures.

Leadership

Leadership – the ability to communicate a vision, influence others and gain their trust – will be crucial to achieving your objectives as a manager, and in turn, those of the organisation.

What makes a good leader?

Leadership can be described as the way a person guides, shows the way or holds a group together.

Approaches to understanding leadership:

The trait approach

Situation theories

Social process accounts

Transactional leadership

The transactional leader influences others by appealing to their self-interest, primarily through the exchange of valued rewards for services or other desired behaviors.

The relationship between leader and follower is seen as a series of rational exchanges or transactions that enable each to reach their own goals.

Transactional leaders supply all the ideas and use rewards as their primary source of power.

Transformational leadership

The transformational leader – sometimes described as the charismatic, or visionary, leader – inspires followers to do more than originally expected.

Transformational leaders motivate followers to work towards goals that transcend immediate self-interests – to strive for higher-order outcomes.

Competencies of transformational leaders

As described in Table 13.2, four major competencies have been found to be common to transformational leaders: the management of attention, meaning, trust and of self.

Leadership as negotiation

Strategic issues

Task issues

People or maintenance issues

A contingent approach to leadership and management

It is one in which the appropriate leadership style will depend on local circumtances.

The leaders own style will be but one factor in this.

Other factors are:

The style that the staff expect

The job that has to be done

The organization culture.

Fayol’s management processes

Forecasting and planning.

Organizing.

Leading.

Coordinating.

Controlling.

Mintzberg’s management roles

Interpersonal

Informational

Decision making

Management by objectives

It provides a framework for supervision in pursuit of agreed goals.

The essence of MBO is that instead of telling people exactly how to do their work, managers provide staff with tasks and assignments which have targets or objectives to be reached.

Using SMART framework to set objectives

Specific

Measurable

Agreed

Realistic

Timed

Motivation

Needs theories

Expectancy theories

Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs

Hertzberg’s two-factor theory

Expectancy theory

The psychological contract

It represents the mutual beliefs, perceptions, and informal obligations between an employer and an employee.

It sets the dynamics for the relationship and defines the detailed practicality of the work to be done. It is distinguishable from the formal ritten contract of employment which, for the most part, only identifies mutual duties and responsibilities in a generalized form.

Employee empowerment

Employee empowerment is a strategy and philosophy that enables employees to make decisions about their jobs.

Employee empowerment helps employees own their work and take responsibility for their results. Employee empowerment helps employees serve customers at the level of the organization where the customer interface exists.

Reasons for involvement & empowerment

They can bring about enhanced commitment from employees.

They can encourage all workers to pull in the same direction.

Increased competition, instability, uncertainty in the global economy mean that managers can no longer have the capacity to issue command which simply require unquestionable implementation.

The cost of maintaining hierarchies are increasing

Six steps towards empowerment

Define & communicate

Set goals & strategies

Train

Adjust the organization's structure.

Adjust the organization’s systems

Evaluate & improve.