Mcgregors Leadership Theory - Essay Example

While leading in an authoritarian manner a leader has to provide step by step direction to the followers regarding how the tasks are to be completed (Hermone, 1998). Furthermore, this form of leader quite closely supervises the activities of the followers and even punishes them and threatens them in order to make them work. This kind of leader does not involve the employees in decision making and rather decisions are made at the top and followed by the employees. McGregor categorized the second kind of leaders as leaders who follow theory Y. These leaders are those who believe that employees are interested in working. These leaders empower their employees and provide them with the responsibility as well as the authority to make decisions and implement them in order to complete tasks (Jewell et al., 1994). Unlike leaders who follow Theory X, these leaders do not believe in the excessive supervisor of the followers and believe that followers should have the freedom to work on their own. Due to empowerment as well as a lower level of supervision, followers feel motivated to work on their own and they solve problems as well as perform tasks in a creative manner.

The leadership style that James Cain of Water Brands Group follows is the open-minded leadership style. This leadership style is based on McGregor’s leadership theory called theory Y. McGregor proposed that leaders who follow theory Y leadership tend to empower employees. Similarly, Cain who follows an open-minded leadership style provides empowerment to his followers and employees (Pandit, 2005). He does not believe in making decisions on his own. Instead, Cain involves his employees in the decision making process by carefully listening to them and then involving their ideas in making decisions and solving problems faced by the organization. Theory Y states that employees are naturally interested in working and are ready to take responsibility. Cain is following theory Y because he believes that the people working for him and his followers are the assets of his organizations. This means that he has immense trust in the followers and is quite confident about their knowledge, skills and abilities. Due to this trust, he allows his employees to take responsibility and even allows them to carry out these responsibilities on their own.

Furthermore, Cain is even following theory Y because he has informed his employees regarding the organization's mission and vision. Theory Y promotes the idea of decentralization and states that employees are the ones who should be making the decision regarding what needs to be done in order to make the company successful. Cain has informed all his employees regarding the mission and vision of the organization because he perceives that knowledge of the mission and vision will allow the employees to make decisions that are consistent with the organization's aims and objectives (Shah, 2009). Furthermore, when all the employees are made aware of the mission and vision then each and every employee works towards the achievement of a common goal. Irrespective of the department in which employees are working, when all the departments are aware of the organization’s mission and vision they work to attain those goals.

According to Theory Y, employees have a desire to work and work on their own and this desire motivates them to work hard for the organization.