Knowledge Sharing

1. Leadership vs. Management

Knowledge Sharing  

Leadership For Career Growth

December 12, 2020

From 10:30 AM                                                       Via Zoom

Aims of this sharing

Assist alumni learning to be more effective in executive roles at work places, when we require cooperation with colleagues or management of subordinates.  It is vital to

• aware of it is more than the role and authority of an individual,
  • understand the power to inspire, influence and guide others for the accomplishment of a common goal,
  • know about
    • the main theories and styles of leadership
    • the important leadership and management skills
    • the methods to evaluate own performance
    • the common barriers

The Main Leadership Theories

They were developed by psychologists

1. The Great Man

Leaders are born (genes) with the attributes, such as wisdom, charm…

    They are not developed.

2. Trait

Leaders have certain natural characteristics, such as good listeners, good communicators…

3. Behavioral

     How leaders react to the environmental responses?
  I.e. the conditioning

    

4. Transactional 

    It is also a management theory:
Leaders demand subordinate compliance thru the
systems of rewards and penalties

 

 

5. Transformational

    It is also a relationship theory.  
Leaders motivate and inspire others thru their
passion and enthusiasm.
The others transcend their self-interest for the good
of the company.

6. Situational

   Leaders can be flexible and adaptable to changes based on situations.

The Common Leadership Styles

Researchers developed leadership styles based on their studies of leadership theories.  

Leadership style is the leader’s method of giving directions, carrying out plans to actions, providing team with a reason for doing the right thing.

1. Coach

   Help others to set goals and provide feedback

2. Visionary

   Help others thru inspiration and progress – focused

3. Servant

   Humble, protects others and do things for them

4. Autocratic

    Result – focused and with little input from others

5. Hands off / Laissez-faire

   Delegates tasks with no supervision

6. Democratic

   Considers the opinions of others for collective decisions

7. Pace Setter

   Set standards for others to follow and performance Focused

8. Transactional

   Supervision, organization and performance – focused and hierarchical

9. Transformational

   Performance and result – focused

10. Bureaucratic

   Duty and procedural-focused

Importance of Understanding Leadership Theories and Styles

• To evaluate our own skills
• To identify what qualities we possess i.e. strengths
• To know what qualities we could develop i.e. weaknesses

We can practice a single style or a mix based on the environment or situation

• What theory and style shall we apply when the sales team must meet a sales quota in two months?
• What theory and style shall we apply when an operational procedure must be changed from manual to automatic for a group of very busy workers?

Leadership is A Vital Component of Effective Management

• Leaders help themselves and others to do the right things.
• Leaders decide in favor of something among possibilities in a given situation.
• Leaders map out where they and others require to go as a team or a company

The leaders choose to be transformational, are the people

• Create inspiring vision (the goal for the future and how to get there) by focusing on the strengths. For personal career assessment, SWOT Analysis is helpful to identify own strengths, own weaknesses, the opportunities available and threats to own self at current moment. The measuring tools for organizational strengths for innovations include Porter’s Five Forces, PEST Analysis, USP Analysis, Core Competence Analysis.
• Motivate and inspire others to be engaged with vision, thru Expectation Theory (Expect the happenings and rewards as the result)
• Manage the progress of the vision
  Coach the team to achieve the vision

The Important Leadership Skills

No work place can work more efficiently without effective leadership. The most important skills to be an effective leader at workplace are

1. Inspiring motivation

The motivation should be beyond appraisal.  It includes offering team members tangible and intangible rewards, thru recognition of their effort, more independence and responsibilities with their work.

2. Communication

Leaders have good presentation skills, open to criticism and able to solve problems.

3. Positivity

Leaders have empathy and friendliness at stressful time and be able to handle internal conflicts positively.

4. Delegation

Leaders know the strengths and weaknesses of their colleagues.  They use expectations, performance and resources to help their colleagues to accomplish the work as a team.

5. Creativity

Leaders have courage to make a new or less common decision, after something being evaluated thoroughly.

6. Trustworthiness

Leaders show integrity, be honest and accountable for the team.

7. Responsibility

Leaders take full responsibility for the actions of the team and seek solutions.

8. Time Management

Leaders can control the completion of work by providing realistic deadlines, communicating them clearly to colleagues and understanding the needs for change, when require.

9. Positive influence

Leaders can influence and support team members to improve productivity by encouragement.

10. Decisiveness

Leaders know how and when to make right decisions

Managers

Managers are skillful to manage people to do things right.
verse
Leaders use intuitive knowledge to lead and direct the right things

Management skills

Hard skills

They are technical skills, learnt from school and thru job experience.

Soft skills

They developed over time such as organization, problem solving, time management and communication.

• Managers also require leadership skills to coordinate tasks ensuring work be completed right and on schedule. Their leadership duties include the evaluations of subordinate performance quickly and to provide answers to questions promptly.

Transformation of a Manager to a Leader? Or Combination?

1. The key is creating an inspiring vision;
2. Motivate the inspired people to feel confident and eager to do the right thing;
3. The inspired people enjoy the expected rewards, as the result;
4. Leaders also use management skills and their strong relations with the inspired people to guide them to the right destination.

Evaluate Leadership Performance

Most leaders may not have superiors to do regular evaluations on them.  There are some ways for leaders to evaluate their own performance

1. Open communication

• Asking for feed back

2. Self – reflection

• Write down your discoveries
• Quiet reflection creates effective action
• Ask yourself the right questions

3. Vision clarity

• Ensure the team members not only understand the vision but feel inspired and motivated

4. Vision engagement

• Focus on the outcome of the engagement of the inspired team

Common Barriers to Leadership Growth and Development

6. Not believing

• People are in denial about the need to be a leader.

7. Not learnt from mistakes

• People ignore mistakes that are useful for their learning journey.

8. Not ask for help

• People need coach to be on the right track and others to do things.

9. Not asking what they need

• People require to plan first and then know how to ask what they need in order to do the right things.

10. Not to delegate

• People require to maintain a team environment where team do its work

11. Not credible

• People do not have enough expertise for the functional work and no wider view for the completion of work

12. Not to let go the bad things

• People cannot treat others with bad memory.  They adopt “forgive and forget” approach in order to move forward

13. No courage to be modernized

• People do not feel comfortable to make change and put up resistance.

Common Barriers to Female Leadership

Increasing female leaders in the westernized cultures

A small number from the non-westernized places only

In paternalistic (father knows the best) culture such as India and many Muslim countries, people hinder female from knowing how to develop themselves and fails to educate the male.

For the lack of knowledge, many women are prevented from reaching their goals.

Ethical Leadership

1. How right are the things we do?

• In today’s complex world and work place, it is not easy to examine how right is the actions.  But it is rather how we learnt from the lessons of the right actions and make improvements

2. Act ethically at every step

• Ethical leadership is the leader’s ethical concerns with the value and moral principles.  

• Not only at work place, leaders have the obligations to make ethical decisions to do right and good things

• Good things are the positive things we can do making us feel better about ourselves, and be good to others and walk with them together now and in the future.

Let’s Recap

An effective leader creates a right vision, build a team and inspire others to be engaged with the vision. For accomplishment, leader requires a broad band of management skills

Verse

An effective manager requires not only good management skills but also leadership abilities to work right with others in order to accomplish the vision right

Leader leads thru inspiring and motivating others to expect right happenings and have rewards as the result

Versus

Manager manages others thru setting objectives, supervision and systems of performance measurements in order to do the work right

Managers lack of the skills to inspire and influence others to work eagerly towards the accomplishment of work, are not leaders.

Transactional and transformational styles are commonly in use in the work place