Letter for Engineer Magazine 2012

8/2/2019 Letter for Engineer Magazine 2012

1/5

The big question of the industry, all time but difficult to answer is to find good leaders and

managers. You might not feel significant difference between a leader and a manager because

both apparently do more or less the same task in an organization.

Leadership and management must go hand in hand. Workers need their managers not just toassign tasks but to define purpose. Managers must organize workers, not just to maximize

efficiency, but to nurture skills, develop talent and inspire results. Some experts in the industry

believe that leadership and management are necessarily linked and complementary. Any effort to

separate them is likely to cause more problems. Another group of experts in the industry believe

that the managers job is to plan, organize and coordinate, while the leaders job is to inspire and

motivate.

As suggested by famous trait theory of leadership, successful leaders must have interests, ability

and personality traits which are unique for that person. These traits are not responsible solely to

identify whether a person will be a successful leader or not, but they are essentially seen aspreconditions that endow people with leadership potential.

A leader is best

When people barely know he exists.

When his work is done, his aim

fulfilled

They will say:

We did it over selves.


2/5

Perhaps there was a time when the calling of

the manager and that of the leader could be

separated. A foreman in a factory probably

didnt have to give much thought to what he

was producing or to the people who were

roducing it. His job was to follow orders,

organize the work, assign the right people to

the necessary task, coordinate the results and

ensure the ob ot done as ordered. The ocus

Role difference between manager and leader

True Leader ManagerCreate the vision and sell it to the organization

The leader has a long-range perspective. Show

courage in trying new ideas

The leader focuses on people.

Take risk then Seek , through the processimprovement ,to built something better for all stake

holders

Built trust, loyalty and commitment among

employees.

See themselves as servant leaders.(Who bear the risk

and absorb shocks while facilitating others to

perform)

Make the detailed plan and implement the vision

The manager has a short-range view

The manager focuses on systems and structure

Make certain that the work/job implementation orchange process is proceeding according to

schedule and budget, sometimes at the expense of

new ideas.

Ensure that all employees are knowledgeable andcan provide the information required so that

leaders can weigh the alternatives and make the

decisions.

Set the stricture in place to ensure tactically, that

continuous improvement occurs.

Prepare plans to ensure that organization values

develop incrementally over a period of specified

time.

Core Traits (suggested

by researches as mostrelevant in leadership)

Achievement drive:person with high

level of effort,ambition, energy and

initiative.

Leadership motivation:Person with intensedesire to lead othersand take calculated

risks.

charisma, creativityand flexibility

Cognitive

ability: Capable ofexercising good

judgment, stronganalytical abilities,and conceptually

skilledSelf confidence:Person who has

confidence on hisabilities and ideas.

Honesty andIntegrity: Person

who can trust,reliable and open not

bias or attached toanybody

Knowledge of

business: Knowledg

e of industry andother technicalmatters

Emotional Maturity: welladjusted, does not suffer

from severepsychological disorders.


3/5

Where value comes increasingly from knowledge of

people, and where workers are no longer

undifferentiated cogs in an industrial machine,

management and leadership are not easily

separated. People look to their managers, not just to

assign them a task, but to define for them a

purpose. And managers must organize workers, not

just to maximize efficiency, but to nurture skills,

develop talent and inspire results.

The situational leadership style.

The more recent development in leadership theory says, there is no single "best" style of

leadership. Effective leadership is task-relevant and that the most successful leaders are those

that adapt their leadership style with maturity, which is developed by Prof. Paul Hersey and Mr.

Ken Blanchard in their situational leadership theory. Success of the leadership depend on the

capacity to set high but attainable goals, willingness and ability to take responsibility for the task,

and relevant educational background and experience of an individual or a group they are

attempting to lead or influence. That effective leadership style varies, not only with the person or

group that is being influenced, but it will also depend on the task, job or function that needs to be

accomplished.

When characterize the leadership style of a leader, task behavior and relationship behavior play a

vital role. A leader with task behavior will normally assign necessary tasks to the members of the

team while a leader with relationship behavior uses the relationship with the members to get the

work done.

A leader with task behavior normally tend to use the telling or selling strategy in the process

Telling: leader defines the role of the individual or group and provides the what, why,

how, when and where to do the task

Selling: While the leader still providing the direction, he or she is now using two way

communications and providing the socio

emotional support that will allowthe individual being influenced

to buy into the process.

A leader with relationship behavior tend

to use the participating or delegating

strategy in the process

Participating: This is how shared

decision making about

aspects of how the task is

accomplished and the leader is


4/5

providing less task behaviors while maintaining high relationship

behavior.

Delegating: The leader is still involved in decisions; however, the process and

responsibility has been passed to the individual or group. The leader stays

involved to monitor progress.

A wise leader should always use the correct mix of strategy for optimal results. Effective leaders

need to be flexible, and must adapt themselves according to the situation.

Good leaders always try to develop self motivated and independent followers who can work

without much follow up and guidance. In this case competences and commitment of the staffmust be improved. It is well known fact that the leaders high, realistic expectation causes high

performance of followers while, the leaders low expectations lead low performance of

followers.

The theory states that instead of using just one leadership style, successful leaders should change

their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they're leading and the details of the

task. Using this theory, leaders should be able to place more or less emphasis on the task, and

more or less emphasis on the relationships with the people they're leading, depending on what's

needed to get the job done successfully.

Maturity level of thepeople(followers) in the

organisation

M1 People at this level of maturity are atthe bottom level of the scale. They lack theknowledge, skills, or confidence to work on

their own, and they often need to be pushed

to take the task on.

(Unable but willing)

M2 At this level,followers might be willingto work on the task, butthey still don't have the

skills to do it successfully.

(Unable and insecure)

M3 Here, followers are ready and willing tohelp with the task. They have more skills thanthe M2 group, but they're still not confident in

their abilities.

(Capable but unwilling)

M4 These followers are ableto work on their own. Theyhave high confidence andstrong skills, and they'recommitted to the task.

(Very capable and confident)


5/5

The Hersey-Blanchard model of leadership theory proposed to map each leadership style to each

maturity level, as shown above. Leader must select the most appropriate leadership style

considering the situation.

Leadership Style Examples

Case 1:

You're about to leave for an extended holiday, and your tasks will be handled by an

experienced colleague. He's very familiar with your responsibilities, and he's excited to do the

job. Instead of trusting his knowledge and skills to do the work, you spend hours creating a

detailed list of tasks for which he'll be responsible, and instructions on how to do them. The

result? Your work gets done, but you've damaged the relationship with your colleague by your

lack of trust. He was an M4 in maturity, and yet you used an S1 leadership style instead of an

S4, which would have been more appropriate.

Case 2:

You've just been put in charge of leading a new team. It's your first time working with these

people. As far as you can tell, they have some of the necessary skills to reach the department's

goals, but not all of them. The good news is that they're excited and willing to do the work.

You estimate they're at an M3 maturity level, so you use the matching S3 leadership style. You

coach them through the project's goals, pushing and teaching where necessary, but largely

leaving them to make their own decisions. As a result, their relationship with you is

strengthened, and the team's efforts are a success.

Referances;

1. Hersey, P. and Blanchard, K. H. (1977). Management of Organizational Behavior: Utilizing Human Resources(3rd ed.) New Jersey/Prentice Hall2. The One Minute Manager: The Quickest Way to Increase Your Own Prosperity(with Spencer Johnson, William Morrow & Co, 1982)ISBN 00600857973. http://www.mindtools.com 4. http://www.leadership-central.com/situational-leadership-theory

Participating,supportingstyle.

Delegatingdeadershipstyle,

Selling/coaching style.

Telling/directingleadershipstyle.

M1: Lowmaturity

level of thefollowers

M2:Mediummaturity,limitedskillsM3:Mediummaturity,

higherskills butlackingconfidence

M4: Highmaturity

level of thefollowers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0060085797http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0060085797http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0060085797http://www.mindtools.com/http://www.mindtools.com/http://www.leadership-central.com/situational-leadership-theoryhttp://www.leadership-central.com/situational-leadership-theoryhttp://www.leadership-central.com/situational-leadership-theoryhttp://www.mindtools.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0060085797

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Letter for Engineer Magazine 2012