All 12 entries tagged Le

Respect!

WaveRiders as a company (the way I have depicted it to be in my PMA) is quite lagging in its leadership style as it does not empower the workforce to be creative and innovative in its approach.

If anything, MBE has taught me (up till now) the value of the workforce and how they need to be treated fairly in order for an organization to gain long-term success. No company or organization can gain success with an unhappy workforce. There will be no creativity or will to work within an organization if this was the case.

It’s fairly logical. Observing organizations with a high turn over of employees it is obvious it is because the workforce is not happy and wishes to find better means of employment. Gone are the days when money used to hold highest value when it came to worker motivation.

Scientific management is quite outdates even though some of its principles are still applicable in most countries today it developed economies they are less likely to work.

In todays highly educated and fast paced work environment organizations need to LEAD their work force and not manage them like cattle. Workers need to be inspired to motivate them to work. Money is not the answer to everything.

Leaders need to realize the necessity of being an inspiration to their subordinates and to involve them in every phase of the company’s progress towards success.

In my opinion, managers and leaders should treat their workforce the way they would WANT to be treated in order to make them more motivated in the long run.

Aasma Sagheer : 23 Mar 2013 17:16 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leaders and the workforce

If anything, the evolution of the workforce has taught us it is that no workforce can be forced to become more efficient from the use of threats by management. The workforce has rights and over the past century they have become more aware of their rights and it is due to this reason that the classical styles of management do not apply to today’s workforce or work environment.

There needs to be a good relationship between the leaders and the workforce in order for efficiency to occur. This is not just the opinion of one scholar. It is the opinion of a majority of modern scholars in the field of management of the workforce.

The workforce needs to feel appreciated by their leaders in order for them to put their best efforts in to the success of a company. If there is no trust then there will be no way the workforce would try to improve its performance in the long run.

Aasma Sagheer : 21 Mar 2013 16:36 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leadership styles from the top to bottom

According to DuBrin (2007), the Transformational leaders role in the way an organization is transformed is by the following methods:

1. Raising people’s awareness
2. Helping people look beyond self interests
3. Help people search for self-fulfilment
4. Help people understand need for change
5. Invests managers with a sense of urgency
6. Committed to greatness
7. Adopt broad perspective
8. Build trust
9. Concentrate resources where most needed

In my opinion these 9 roles of a transformational leader are the stepping stones of what makes an ideal leader and how that leader empowers the workforce and creates a sense of trust and mutual goals between the leader and the workforce.

The workforce should be able to trust the leader if it is to work hard and devote all its energy in making the organization perform better. There needs to be an environment of teamwork and not to achieve selfish interests of the individuals in the organization.

This method of leadership is far superior to most of the methods of leadership out there as the leader tries to address the workforce as team members and to try to create a sense of mutual goals which should be achieved not out of the need for monetary gains for the workers but because they want to perform better and make their leaders aim achievable.

Reference: DuBrin, A. J., 2007. Leadership: Research Findings, Practice and Skills. 5th Edition ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company .

Aasma Sagheer : 19 Mar 2013 20:38 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Manager or Leader? How important it is to spot the difference

There are an abundance of leadership theories out there but not all are applicable to the WaveRiders Company and how its management can be made effective.

In my scenario I have described the character of both the WaveRIders CEO and director to build a background picture on which I shall base my reasoning as to which style of leadership or approach would best suit the organization in achieving success through efficient and effective leadership.

I would first like to classify the difference between a manager and a leader as most people would consider them t o be the same when in fact they are NOT!

According to Bennis & Nanus (1985), a manager is someone who makes the workers perform more efficiently. On the other hand a leader is someone who is effective and motivates a workforce and inspires them in achieving a certain goal.

So as you can see there is a clear difference between the two and this is why a leader is so important in an organization to guide the workforce towards efficiency and innovation in the long run.

Based on this I have come to realize how important it is to be an effective leader for the success of an organization in the long run. Organizations tend to focus on the cost of production and other such factors in order to make the organization more effective.

In my opinion through all the literature I have gone through there is a reason why the behaviour of the workforce and its contribution to the organization is so important. The workforce should be able to contribute to the organization in order for innovation and efficiency to come about. And this is only possible is the leader creates an environment within the organization which would promote efficiency and learning within the organization.

Aasma Sagheer : 10 Mar 2013 16:31 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ahoy matey…!!! :P

The Black Swan…and her treasures.

The black swan exercise gave my team members and I a great and fun way to learn about how to strategies the different potentials in our team to reach to a positive outcome. Our leader Jessica played a great role in overviewing all our processes and not getting knee deep involved in the process herself (which is what a good leader is supposed to do…Lead!).

Ade and I were good at Finance and so we did the gross profit calculation in a jiffy.

Vijay emerged as a leader during the process… (a natural born leader in my opinion)

We all played a vital part in our teams success and everyone helped out in anyway they could and in the END… Teamwork made us prosper…

The outcome of this simulation again confirms my beliefs in teams work and the delegation of roles to best suited team members.

Aasma Sagheer : 07 Feb 2013 17:57 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Communication skills (With a twist)

The simulation we did about counseling was a fun way of learning how to guide subordinate (or even colleagues) if there is something bothering them, which would most probably affect productivity. During the game Maria and I were paired up and she had to guide me in my time management problems. I decided to play a very stubborn character with a depressing story line (which incidentally made Maria quite flustered as she had no idea what she could say to change my mind and make me positive towards life).

I pretended to be a workaholic with time management issues and the reason for me being tired and overworked all the time was that my personal problems (one after the other).

I must admit it was a bit funny as we were both laughing over it in the end. But it was a great learning point. The reason being that in the real world there will be points where a leader has to step up and communicate with a work force member if productivity is lagging. Be it someone’s emotional/ personal problems it is the duty of the leader to guide the work force to think in a certain way (at least in the work place).

Good Communication is KEY.

Aasma Sagheer : 07 Feb 2013 17:49 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Hotel Simulation

The simulation today was quite exciting and a great learning tool about methods of leadership and being part of a team which handles a company, or in this case a hotel. Being part of a team responsible for making the hotel reap profits and becoming successful in the long run was invigorating.

All the team members were assigned individual tasks which we had to perform and make the hotel start earning profit.

It pleases me to say that we were the first group to actually have a positive gross profit figure. A motivational approach by our team leader was the main reason I believe why we were performing so well. However, with the changing of the leaders the situation began to change and we were slowly loosing our edge. But we were still making a positive gross profit.

In the end we ended up in 3^rd place which was not that bad but we could have done better. The basic I’m of this exercise was to establish the complexities of leadership. The observers were able to judge what the teams lacked in their approach and the leaders became observers after one round.

As our instructor mentioned an efficient leader is one who observes his team and through that observation is able to make the most efficient decisions.

Aasma Sagheer : 05 Feb 2013 21:17 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Assertiveness VS Encouragement

There is no point in being a leader who enforces his/her own ideas on to the subordinates. We had a discussion in class about the effect of a leader on the work force and how it is the easiest thing in the world to get the work done in an organization through the use of authority.

In todays class I was assigned the role of being a leader of a firm which has a serious issue of employees spilling coffee on a new and rather expensive company carpet. The office was meant to be a place where high profile company personalities often visited and of course stain on the carpet would not have a good impression on them.

I was assigned with the task to resolve a employee conflict issue. I decided the play the role of an autocratic leader to make my employees feel pressured in to something they didn’t want to do. My team members also decided to be uncompromising in their approach. Of course it started out with a lot of screaming and shouting but sadly in the end my personality gave in and I became the understanding and compromising one.

This little experiment leads me to a conclusion. It is something I believe in but this experiment confirmed my belief. Listening and supporting your subordinates will reap far better results than trying to enforce your decisions on them.

The aim of any organization to motivate and inspire their work force… not to oppress it and build a relationship of fear. That would only lead to conflict.

Aasma Sagheer : 05 Feb 2013 21:09 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Leading with purpose

The basic aim of every leader is to lead his/her subordinates in a single track so that they do not loose their way and are focus on a particular goal. It necessary that this goal is achieved for organizations to be successful in the long run but it can be really hard to define the “ideal” method of leadership. Its necessary to have a particular strategy in mind when a leader makes a decision as strategies are pre-planned and are not a decision made on a whim.

It is obvious that most managers/leaders in organizations make decisions on pure authority and whim. This is the reason why their subordinates become demotivated. There needs to be a concrete plan in order to achieve a certain goal with an organization and the sooner leaders let go of their authoritative attitude and start getting involved in teams and team work the work environment in any organization can drastically change for the better.

Aasma Sagheer : 03 Feb 2013 22:09 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

People are our greatest assests

Leaders and leadership have come in to prominence in the last few decades because in order to become more efficient an organizations leaders need to be encouraging and helpful instead of being rigid and autocratic.

Its not easy to maintain a certain level of authority in the eyes of your subordinates and still be helpful but if one thing countless research’s and authors on the subject have discovered is that it is necessary to stress upon leaders to be encouraging. In the 1950s Peter Drucker came to talk about the importance of people in the work force as the most important assets in his book “Management challenges of the 21^st century”. Even Edward Deming came to the same conclusion as he was more focused on trying to organizations to start working as teams.

As the saying goes there is no I in team. Managers have to start letting go of their autocratic ways and start focusing more on listening to their subordinates and giving them guidance instead of fear.

Aasma Sagheer : 02 Feb 2013 18:46 |  Tags: Le |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem