Leadership in Management - Chapter 8

integrity

Holding to principles like honesty, loyalty, and fairness

Why is integrity an important trait for a leader?

In order to ensure they can be trusted by all of their employees.

Character

Includes displaying honesty, sincerity, and candor in all situations. Is always ethical and moral. Inspires employees to trust the manager or leader. Allows managers to lead by example.

Planning and Organizational Skills

Involve the ability to effectively and efficiently: create and manage teams, coordinate with other departments, control quality of goods and services, strategize, set deadlines, save time and money.

Name two disadvantages of working in teams:

1. Lots of ideas that want to be chosen. 2. No one is in charge, the managers act as team members

Free Reign Leadership (Laissez-Faire)

A style of leadership in which managers and employees are given goals and then left alone to get their jobs done. • Give authority to employees • Allow employees to work with minimum interference from management • Occur in organizations where communications flow horizontally among group members and leaders • Grant as much freedom to employees as possible • Exemplify the statement, "do it your way"

Democratic leadership

A style of leadership in which managers work with employees to make decisions. • Hold the final responsibility, but delegate the authority to others • Require active communication throughout the organizational structure • Require employee commitment due to high employee participation in the decision-making process • Exemplify the statement, "let's work together"

Motivational Skills

Allow managers to inspire their employees by: gaining respect, setting an example, conveying ideas. Involve displaying confidence and excitement. Are conveyed through the charisma or an individual.

Personal Drive

Allows a leader to stay energized. Inspires employees to follow example. Encompasses the idea of being goal oriented. Includes being intrinsically motivated.

Communication Skills

Allows managers to accurately convey thoughts, feelings, goals and objectives to employees. Facilitate good company morale with clear communication. Involve communicating verbally and non-verbally with other as well as listening. Ensure easy coordination with other departments and employees

Management Styles

Are methods of leadership which are practiced to some degree by most individuals. Include the: autocratic style, democratic style, laissez-faire style/free rein.

Interpersonal Skills

Are used in working with others. Are the measures of a person's ability to operate within business organizations through social communication and interactions. Involve the relationships which are established from manager to employee, manager to team and manager to department.

Management

Comprises the directing and controlling group of people for the purpose of coordinating and harmonizing the group toward accomplishing a goal.

Micromanaging

Employees are told in detail how to do something. They are not allowed to deviate (change any of the process) from those instructions. Employees are constantly watched. Employees feel as if they are not trusted.

Knowledge

Encourages managers and other employees to become life-long learners through the use of: professional associations, trade journals, workshops and training seminars. Allows leaders to study, prepare and seek challenging assignments. Facilitates quick thinking and problem solving. Enables individuals to be able to logically create ideas and methods to reach other individuals

Delegating

Give employees the power to run things and make decisions.

Vision

Involves looking at the small and big picture. Allows for priorities to be established. Consists of not only organizational skills, but also creativity and thinking "outside the box". Plays a large role in the inspiration of employees.

In what situation is an autocratic style of leadership useful?

It is useful when it is most important to obey orders without question. Firefighters and police officers may use this when they have no time to ask questions.

What is the difference between being a manager and a leader?

Leadership means providing direction and vision for a company. Being a manager isn't the same thing as being the leader. Managing is a job, leading is a skill. Managers focus on specific tasks and make sure the work gets done. They give orders and carry out orders. Leaders have visions. They see the big picture and never lose sight of their goals. They manage others by inspiring rather than ordering. It's possible to be a good manager but not a good leader. To be both a good leader and manager takes several qualities.

Leadership

Providing direction and vision

Initiative

Taking action to get things done

Human Relations

The ability to communicate with people

Give reasons for a manager to delegate authority.

You do not have time to run everything yourself, you can focus on more important work, it gets your employees more involved, it gives your employees a chance to develop their own potential

Autocratic leadership

a leadership style in which one person runs everything and makes all decisions without consulting others. • Hold all the authority and responsibility • Are normally found in organizations where communication moves from the top to the bottom • Assign employees specific tasks and expect orderly results • Are very directive and military in nature • Exemplify the statement, "my way or the highway"

Self-managed teams

work groups that supervise themselves

Self-Managed Teams

• American companies started using this after getting the idea from Japan • In a self-managed team, the leader is a team player rather than a boss • The leader does not have to answer to an upper management so the team is freer to get the job done • Team leader makes decisions with the team rather than alone • This leader learns a range of jobs rather than just one • Team usually works on a single project - this way the project is more goal-oriented rather than task-oriented

Organization of Self-Managed Teams

• Organized in two ways: 1) each team member has a special skill. 2) the team selects one team leader. • A team leader isn't always your manager as much as a team captain. If you are a team leader, your job isn't to give orders but to motivate your team and get the members to work together towards a goal • Advantages - they're more goal-oriented than task-oriented, faster and more efficient, team members have a chance to learn each other's jobs and obtain new skills, Simplifies the decision-making process, team members learn to participate and cooperate with each other, self-managed teams learn to solve their own problems.