The Role of a Manager in Creating Personal and Professional Fulfillment of Employees
Discuss about the Leadership Theories Principles and Styles.
The success of an organization depends on the qualities and attributes of a manager who has the ability to create personal and professional fulfillment of employees which makes them energized for the job (Hersey, Blanchard, & Johnson, 2008). Since management involves coordination the functions of the organization, then a good manager can be described in the form of relationships build with employee through trust, commitment and engagement. The role of the manager is to get things done by planning and organizing organizational resources to achieve the desired outcomes. For better results, a good manager must learn how motivate employees and ensure that tasks are completed with enthusiasm effectiveness, on time and with energy to perfume more tasks in future.
Leadership questionnaires have been used to assess the management abilities of leader by looking at orientation towards results, assertiveness, delegation and leadership (Jung, Wu, & Chow, 2008). Orientation towards results is focusing on organizational goals, while assertiveness is the boldness to take on any issues affecting the organization. In addition to that, delegation entails distributing organizational duties within the organizational team for efficiency and effectiveness. Lastly, Hackman (2009) adds that the leadership attribute is the ability to direct and motivate others towards the desired direction for achieving organizational goals. The attribute consists of other traits like drive, orientation and effective communication use to achieve the intended results. This means that there is no single characteristic that defines a good manager but rather psychometric tests are used to measure different dimensions like thinking structure, source of motivation resistance to stress and leadership qualities to shed light on the tendencies and behaviors ion the individual about organizational needs and processes.
On the other hand, Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhard (2012) suggests that the organizational strategy, objectives and working environment determine the kind of manager that the business needs. There are different management styles like democratic, directive, consulting or achiever that are used by different people. This means that the nature of the organization defines the individual attributes needed to define a good manager. In summary a good manager can be said to have a good fit with position, team and the organization. This is coupled up with skills, knowledge, personality and experience which shape the effectiveness of the team.
Leadership is the process of providing direction through plans and motivation of followers to achieve the desired results. The qualities of a leader are based on the ability to enlist support and followership of others in achieving common tasks. This is defined mostly in traits that individuals have which are used to define the leadership styles that they use. A good leader is the one that balances personality styles, conflicts at work and follower interests to define the right way of handling people (Judge, Bono, Ilies, & Gerhardt, 2014). Different theories of leadership have been used to define and characterize attributes required for a good leader. These theories define how people become good leaders by defining them as either having leadership traits, environment related variables, situational and behavioral attributes that define how they approach issues. Each of the theory has its own characteristics that are used to define the attributes and characteristics of a leader.
Assessing Managerial Abilities through Leadership Questionnaires
Therefore, the most important ability of a leader is to organize business challenges, propose solutions and develop strategies to meet these solutions. Montana & Bruce (2008) adds that communication, decision-making ability, mobilization, team management skills, and accountability are used to define a leader. Analysis of leadership theories indicates that there is no specific leadership style that can be used by a leader but rather good leaders combine several attributes of different leadership styles. This has made scholars to acknowledge the value of situational leaders who can manage situations as they arise. Howell (2012) suggests that although psychometric tests focus on measuring certain attributes of the organization, leaders can be born or made. This means that a combination of inborn traits and other developed attributes make situation and transactional leaders the best characteristics of leadership. Therefore, a good leader is defined through the way they align their attributes to organizational processes to achieve the desired goals. In performance management, leadership is measured through the ability to achieve organizational goals by rallying the effort of others to achieve the desired results.
According to Schultz & Schultz (2010) different strategies have been used to motivate employees within the organization. One way that a manager can motivate employees is through use of rewards or positive reinforcement. This strategy borrowed from the theory of reinforcement where positive incentives like salary increments and bonuses can be used to increase productivity. This process have been widely used to improve productivity in organizations where tasks are straight that is there is a clear point between one stage and the other. Employee output is improved since employees work to achieve the desired results to receive the incentive.
Training and development has also been widely used motivate employees by empowering them with skills that are required in the organization. By training employees, manages reduce turnover and increase productivity (Katz & Shahar, 2015). Empowered employees feel recognized by the organization and work harder to pay back the investment that the organization makes on them. Training and development aligns employees to organizational goals thus making them more productive and organizational oriented. The outcome is motivated employees who have the relevant skills that the organization needs.
However, Herzberg’s two-factor theory states that there are motivational and hygiene factors that employees rely on to be comfortable in an organization. These are intrinsic factors that relate to the organization and the job itself (Amanchukwu, Stanley, & Ololube, 2015). The rise of part-time work and virtual offices has created autonomy in the workplace where employees are free to check in the time they want so long as they can achieve the organizational targets. Autonomy at work increases productivity by allowing creativity at the workplace. Employees who enjoy autonomy are free to try out every idea that they have thus leading to improved business processes. This type of motivation works in tasks that are not linear where employees rely heavily on their critical thinking abilities to achieve the intended results.
Management Styles and Organizational Needs
Organizations where people do not have line managers but own the organization and work collectively are based on the democratic leadership style. This style borrows from the participative management theory where power is redistributed between managers to encourage involvement (Stefanovska-Petkovska, Bojadzijev, & Mucunski, 2015). This style allows people to make collective decisions through voting or any other means of participation that they use to make decisions within the organization. In such like organizations leadership can be through direct democracy or indirect democracy. In direct democracy, all the members have the right to make decisions on what affects them and the majority will always have their way. Here all members have equal right and no one is better than the other. On the other hand, indirect democracy is where leaders are chosen from the rest of the members through voting. The chosen leaders represent the rest and are charged with the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of the rest of the members. This type of organization lacks functional leaders but rather relies heavily on the opinion of every member of the organization.
Meuser, et al. (2016) suggests that this leadership style presents different opportunities and challenges that can be applied within the organization. One opportunity that this style presents to the organization is collective decision-making that allows all members to participate in management of the organization. By voting on the issues that affect them, members are allowed to decide what best suits the organization and meets the needs of all the members. By bestowing the powers of the organization in the people, it means that the people have the right to make any decision and can weigh all the available options before making a decision (Vasishth, 2013). This increases accountability since all members participate in unanimous management of the organization. Here members are presented with the opportunity of managing their organization and taking part in every leadership process. The issues that affect the organization are discussed openly by all members after which a decision is made through voting. Unlike the functional system where management takes the sole role of making decisions, democratic leadership style respects the view of everyone.
However, leadership is a challenging activity that requires a combination of both leadership and management abilities to make the right decisions for the organization. The reason why most management structures take the bottleneck structure is that decision-making is a critical component that requires an analysis of the issues affecting the organization and putting proper strategies in place to address them (Rolkova, 2015). Such decisions are sometimes made using management models or formulas that determine the best option that can be taken. Such strategies make it difficult for the democratic approach since it does not allow for specialized knowledge to work. The use of models and standards of decision-making make leadership and management complicated to allow every owner of the organization to participate in the process. Through specialization, functional systems allow shared responsibility within the organization thus simplifying the decision-making process to functional areas of the organization. This means that involving all owners in management creates chaos by derailing decision-making and making management difficult.
Defining Leadership Qualities and Styles
One advantage of this organizational structure is improved quality through unanimous participation in the organization. By allowing all employees to participate in decision-making within the organization, quality becomes a group effort since the ownership level has increased in the organization (Scouller, 2011). This allows feedback from everybody rather than the bottle neck system where decisions and orders come from above. By allowing all employees to participate in the leadership of the organization, quality management becomes a group element where all employees manage the organization at all levels.
Luthan (2011) adds that this style reduces the cost of supervision and management that the organizations pays the top layer of leadership. Research has shown that top management include CEOs drain organization with the higher salaries that they are paid all over the world. The ratio between the CEO’s salary and what the lowest ranked employee receives has been reported to be more than 100% because most organization do not disclose the salary. This leadership structure reduces this cost and spreads the benefits to all organizational owners. By giving an opportunity to all people in the organization, the status that comes with every job opportunity is broken since all people are equal and have the same status in the organization.
Another advantage of this leadership style is its ability to fit in any business environment. Since the basis is participation, then the strategy works in all organizations that exist. Participative decisions reflect the views and concerns of all members and allow review of the process at any time that people feel like reviewing it (Singh & Rani, 2017). The business characteristic of allowing all members to take part in decision-making processes creates room to fit in any organization.
Lastly, ownership of decisions making is another characteristics that this structure enjoys. Since employees or owners take part in decision-making, it means that the unanimous nature of the decision increases its acceptability to all members. Once members have voted in a decision, it reflects the views of the majority rather than in the functional system where it represents the views of the top layer of the organization which are passed down to the rest of the members.
The biggest disadvantage of this organizational system is slowing down of decision-making. The magnitude of decisions within the organization depends of the issue being addressed. Some issues require instant decisions while other can wait. The rigorous process of accommodating all the views of every member and then voting to make a decision can create challenges for the organization. This process slows down the decision-making process thus inconveniencing management of organizational decisions (Razi, Mohebbi, & Rostam, 2016). The higher the number of the participants in the decision-making process, the longer the time taken to decide. The time taken for inputs and feedback derails the whole organizational decision-making process. This is the reason why top management in organizations takes the bottle neck as a way of reducing the time taken to make decisions. Bottleneck structures reduce the cost of involving all members within the organization which leads to improved decision-making time. The time taken to build consensus reduces the overall decision-making process thus delaying the needed results.
Motivational Strategies for Employees within the Organization
Hackman (2009) argues that one disadvantage of the participatory approach is confusion and creation of chaos in management. Leadership requires bestowing powers in one individual and allowing the rest of the members to follow the leader. Through delegation and sharing responsibilities, the leader or manager distributes the decision-making abilities to other members in the organization thus leading to improved business outcomes. However, participative processes lead to confusion and chaos as members struggle to be heard. The use of input from every members and verifying its effect in the organization creates chaos in managing all member issues. This will largely depend on the number of people involved in the whole decision-making process thus the higher the number of people, the bigger the problem of making decisions and the chaos that are created.
Critics of the democracy and participative process have argued against it based on its idea that it involves the views of all the members even if they do not understand what the issue being discussed. Organizational management is a technical process that requires people with the right skills and experience to handle the issues related to the business environment (Razi, Mohebbi, & Rostam, 2016). Being an owner means one can be a shareholder but not necessarily giving one the ability participate in decision-making. This process involves incorporating the views of every member even if the idea that they are giving is not relevant.
The fact that all members of the organization are involved in decision-making makes the nature of the decisions uncertain. Uncertainty comes in when members attempt to decide by involving all members. Stefanovska-Petkovska, Bojadzijev, & Mucunski (2015) suggests that the degree of involvement and the validity of ideas that members contribute has been criticized in this process since the validity of all the members cannot be validated. Uncertainty of decision-making is based in the fact that the outcome that the members will make is based on the vote that taken rather than the real issues affecting the organization. This uncertainty in decision-making makes it difficult for the right decision to be taken even if the required decision is clear.
Further, this leadership style leads to apologetic tendencies where the issue of involving all the decisions becomes tricky. Sometimes the decision that the members vote as the best can fail to meet the organizational needs and standards (Rolkova, 2015). The fact that members decide through voting rather than situational analysis, it means that those responsible have to be apologetic to when the decision that the rest of the members have taken fails to meet the intended needs. The decision that members have made cannot be reversed since it’s a final decision from all members.
References
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