There are good managers and bad. Managers sometimes think they are good leaders or that managers and leaders are the same thing. They are not. The 7S model shows the differences between leadership and management. Managers tend to use strategy, structure and systems whereas leaders use style, staff, skills and shared goals. The model is more for leaders than managers. Managers might never master all 7. Managers can be leaders because of their position in a hierarchy. There is no guarantee though as leadership has been defined in terms of attempted as well as successful and effective. It might be a focus on power and use of power levers.
The question is often asked are leaders born or made. There are lots of answers from both sides. There may be certain inborn talents in some people but they need to be encouraged and developed at least. Managers can be educated and trained. There are limitations to the traits approach that raises the question. No conclusive evidence exists to support it. Some correlation between leadership and certain personality types have been identified for example intelligence, effectiveness, supervisory ability, individuality and initiative. At the same time other research has produced no such correlation. Another perspective is look at the functions the leader or manager has to perform rather than the personality of the leader and another to look at the task/relationship orientation and whether production or people should be given top priority.
Management style can be broadly classified as autocratic or democratic. This continuum can be subdivided into telling and selling, consulting and joining. It defines the degrees of freedom for managers and subordinates. Some managers make the decisions which everyone else has to accept but in other situations the decisions may be made consultatively together. Important decision making forces are involved when deciding which type of management style is most practical. They are to be found in the manager, the employees and the situation. The effectiveness of the decision depends on the quality of the decision and the employees' acceptance of it giving due consideration to the time involved in making it. The path-goal theory of leadership suggests the performance of workers depends on the extent to which the leader/manager satifies their expectations. The expectations include getting positive rewards and avoiding negative outcomes. Workers see leadership behaviour as motivating. Poor leadership will not get many followers. Claims of unfair dismissal show a breakdown of communication between manager and staff and could be a sign of the last in a series of management mistakes.
The employee should be an important variable when considering management style. The 'readiness to follow' continuum goes from willing and able at one end to unable and unwilling at the other. These attitudes can be matched to a management style made up of a combination of task/relationship behaviour. The manager can adjust the style to tell, sell, participate or delegate depending on the employees involved. The focus on the individual may also give signs as to which workers could be effectively developed.
There may be an ideal future state. Transformational leadership may help to attain it. Transformational leadership aims to engender higher levels of motivation and commitment, and generate vision and to appeal to higher ideals and values, and create a sense of justice, loyalty and trust. Coaching will bring our the best in people and a mentoring relationship will involve sharing, guidance and getting feedback.
If there are good managers and bad managers, appropriate and inappropriate styles of management behaviour, management education might help raise the level. Learning is for managers as well as other employees. Education and training can give explanations and enlighten. There is a large literature base on the subjects of knowledge management and the economics of knowledge that can guide an individual, manager or director in making a decision about learning more. Learning new behaviours and actions and gaining new knowledge and understanding can increase effectiveness and still be economical.
1 comment:
I have some disagreement with your post, Kirk.
The whole issue of being a manager or a leader is a waste of time.
Managing is simply a term that applies to the effective use of a resource or a function such as money management or supply chain management or what-have-you. People are a resource and they must be managed like any other resource, but obviously the tools are different for each resource.
Leadership is a term that applies to people and consists of sending value standard messages to people which they then follow/use. Conformists or you might call them followers receive these messages from what they experience in the workplace,most of that being from the support provided by their boss. Support is training, tools, discipline, direction, parts, material, information and the like. Thus we say that conformists have been "led" in the direction of those standards. Leadership is therefore one side of the coin called values, the other side being followership.
Leadership is not a process any manager can change. It happens inexorably every minute of every day because of the way people are. The only choice available to a manager is the standard (good, bad, mediocre or in between) which employees will follow.
For instance, the top-down command and control technique is a specific method by which to manage people . This approach totally fails to meet the basic needs of every person to be heard and to be respected. Thus top-down by its nature demeans and disrespects people and in so doing it "leads" them to demean and disrespect their work, their customers, each other and their bosses resulting in very poor performance.
If you want to lead employees to very high performance, treat them with great respect and not like robots, thus leading them to treat their work, their customers, each other and their bosses with great respect.
Managers should never select a management style. They should provide to their employees what each needs to do a better job because only in that way can the boss unleash the huge amount of creativity, innovation, productivity, motivation and commitment inside each employee's brain. Treat them as if they are valuable and they will become valuable.
Lastly, anyone can learn to do this correctly as I proved in my 30+ years of managing. I started out using top-down and after 12 years began to move away from it. The farther away I got, the better my people performed. Helping them to convert from being conformists to being self-directed caused them to unleash their full potential on their work. For me this was managerial nirvana with employees literally blowing away competitors and loving to come to work.
Best regards, Ben
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