Leadership Qualities of Managers
Question:
Describe about the role of manager in an organization.
The business research proposal talks about certain qualities that the manager of a business should have to lead his managerial team. In today’s world almost all business organisations face stiff competition from their rivals. Hence, all the business organisations have the goal to remain at the top in this competitive market (Robbins, et al., 2013). The managers of the business organisations are the leaders whose duty is to deliver good quality services to their clients or customers. The role of a manager is to guide the organisation keeping in mind the values and objectives of the organisation. The managers of a business organisation play important roles in maintaining a smooth flow of work in the business environment (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2014). Hence, it is necessary to understand and discuss about the leadership qualities that the managers should have to effectively guide their respective teams. In the business research proposal the author would discuss the essential qualities that a manager of a business organisation should have to run the business effectively and successfully. The research proposal also discusses how a manager can improve his managerial skills by knowing his shortcomings and strengths.
Many researchers and scholars have conducted extensive studies to understand and discuss the roles of the mangers in the business environment. Moreover, many scholars have also thrown light on the leadership qualities that the mangers of the business should have in their articles and journals. The studies reveal that management is the art of extracting the desired work from the right person in an organisation (Dubrin, 2015). Hence, managers in the business firms need to be very effective and skilful in getting the job done by the employees of the firm right on time. The managers are the leaders who would guide their team members to move in the right track while doing their jobs (Simons, 2013).
Some of the qualities that the managers of a business organisation should have include supervision of the jobs done by the employees, leading the teams and supplying desired and adequate resources to groups of employees. Scholars and researchers claim in their study that the managers need to be innovative, flexible, punctual and proactive in their day to day activities. The leaders should have a strong personality that would help them guide their teams in the right direction even in unfavourable conditions (Hislop, 2013). All the members of the company, including the directors, the stakeholders, the customers and the employees would derive the advantage of the leadership qualities of the manager.
The extensive studies of researchers and scholars highlight the effectiveness of the managers in allocating appropriate tasks to the employees taking into consideration their skills and expertise in doing the job. Being good leaders, the managers of the firm should have the ability to communicate with each of his team members clearly and effectively (Scott & Davis, 2015). Studies reveal that apart from leadership skills, the managers of the business organisation need to have the following qualities as well:
- Decision making ability: The managers of the firms often need to make the right decision at the right time in order to prevent the company from suffering from monetary loss or loss of reputation and goodwill (Hill, et al., 2013).
- Strategic planning: The managers of the firm should have the ability to strategise and plan effectively to facilitate smooth functioning of the business (Northouse, 2015).
Other Qualities of Managers
In view of the above discussion, the researcher wants to highlight some research questions that are discussed below. The researcher tries to find answers to these research questions by collecting data from relevant sources, analysing them and conducting a research.
- What, according to the employees of a firm, are the essential qualities that an efficient manager should have?
- How important is it for the manager to be aware of his skills and weaknesses to be a good leader?
- What are the ways in which the managers of the business organisation can improve their managerial skills?
The literature review gives a clear understanding of the topic. The literature review of the topic helps the researcher frame his research questions and work on them.
The research methodologies and techniques describe the process how the research work would proceed. The research methodologies for this business research proposal would include the following steps:
- Defining aim and objectives of the research: The researcher would first clearly state the objective and goal behind doing the research. The researcher would clearly explain the topic of the research in this part.
- Designing the research: The researcher would then design and frame the research procedure. The researcher decides on the steps that he would follow to complete the study (Brue, 2015).
- Sampling: The most important aspect of conducting a research is to sample the desired information from the relevant sources. The researcher would employ appropriate probabilistic random sampling techniques to gather the information.
- Data collection: the researcher collects the desired data from the sources that he had sampled in the previous steps.
- Data analysis: The researcher would analyse the data collected to answer the research questions that he posed.
- Drawing conclusions: This is the final step of the research in which the researcher reports and states his findings. The researcher draws the appropriate conclusion in this step (Bryman & Bell, 2015).
The following diagram shows the steps that the researcher would follow to complete the study.
The Gantt chart would describe the important milestones of the research process. The Gantt chart gives the time at which the literature review, the data collection and analysis and the final report submission would be due.
Task |
Start date |
Duration |
End date |
Literature Review |
13th June |
15.00 |
28th June |
Data Collection |
29th June |
60.00 |
29th Aug |
Data Analysis |
30th Aug |
55.00 |
25th Oct |
Final Report Submission |
26th Oct |
30.00 |
26th Nov |
To conduct the research, the researcher first applies a probability sampling technique to select the samples of his data (Lewis, 2015). The researcher would conduct the study in a team consisting of five members. The team would consist of three male members and five female members belonging to the age group of thirty years. The researcher would observe the eight members for two weeks. In each week the researcher would spend twenty-five hours to closely follow the interactions of these workers with their managers in making important decisions in the business.
The researcher would conduct interviews of the managers of the different departments of the business organisations. The researcher would conduct the interviews with the help of the questionnaire (Tracy, 2013). The questionnaire contains questions that the managers need to answer about their views regarding the qualities that they should possess to lead the teams efficiently. The questionnaire also contains questions that would require the managers to share their views about the necessity to be aware of their own strengths and shortcomings. This is the primary source of data that the researcher would use in his study (Myers, 2013). The researcher interrogated the Compensation Manager, the Human Resource Manager, the senior coordinator of human resources and the volunteer of the human resource for collecting the data. Then the researcher would analyse the data collected from the managers by employing suitable qualitative data analysis techniques.
The researcher would collect the primary data by interviewing the respective managers of different departments through the questionnaire. Then from the data collected the researcher would perform a test that would provide him the reliability scale of the answers given by the interviewees (Taylor, et al., 2015). The experimenter made some underlying assumptions while performing the test. The analyst would test if the responses that the interviewees gave would conform to those assumptions. The analyst ensures that the responses of the managers do not violate the assumptions of the study. The analyst would perform the following two tests to analyse the qualitative data:
- Conflict Mode self assessment test (KTI) due to Thomas Kilmann.
- Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) Psychometric Test (Smith, 2015).
These two tests would help the researcher understand and find the answers to the proposed research questions.
After conducting the research, the researcher expects that he would get the answers to the questions on which this study is based. The outcomes of the research would help the managers to understand what qualities they should develop to perform their job better. The findings of the research would create awareness among the managers about their strengths and drawbacks (Daft, 2014). The researcher expects that the results of the research would find new ways for the managers to improve their leadership qualities and their managerial skills.
Conclusion
From all the above discussions, the author is of the view that the business organisations run on the efficient managerial skills and the leadership qualities of the managers of the different departments. One can conclude that the research proposal would contribute significantly to both the employees and the managers of a business organisation. One can conclude that the development of the leadership qualities of the managers would improve the overall performance of the business organisation.
References:
Brue, G. (2015). Six Sigma for Managers, (Briefcase Books Series). McGraw Hill Professional.
Bryman, A., & Bell, E. (2015). Business research methods. Oxford University Press, USA.
Carroll, A., & Buchholtz, A. (2014). Business and society: Ethics, sustainability, and stakeholder management. Nelson Education.
Daft, R. (2014). The leadership experience. Cengage Learning.
Dubrin, A. (2015). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Nelson Education.
Hill, C. W., Cronk, T., & Wickramasekera, R. (2013). Global business today. McGraw-Hill Education (Australia).
Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford University Press.
Lewis, S. (2015). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Health promotion practice, 1524839915580941.
Myers, M. D. (2013). Qualitative research in business and management. Sage.
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Robbins, S., Judge, T. A., Millett, B., & Boyle, M. (2013). Organisational behaviour. Pearson Higher Education AU.