Leadership Principles. Dilemma of today`s work organisations - Essay Example

?Over-Managed, Under-Led: A Dilemma of Today’s Work Organisations Introduction Warren Bennis has firmly argued that management and leadership are twoquite distinct concepts. He stated in 1977: “Leading does not mean managing; the difference between the two is crucial. I know many institutions that are very well managed and very poorly led” (Rost 1993, 133). Related arguments surface in several of his other scholarly works. Bennis, along with Nanus, stated in their 1985 work (Hickman 1998, 100): The problem with many organisations, and especially the ones that are failing, is that they tend to be overmanaged and underled... They may excel in the ability to handle the daily routine, yet never question whether the routine should be done at all. There is a profound different between management and leadership, and both are important. “To manage” means “to bring about, to accomplish, to have charge of or responsibility for, to conduct.” “Leading” is “influencing, guiding in direction, course, action, opinion.” The distinction is crucial. Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing. The difference may be summarised as activities of vision and judgment—effectiveness versus activities of mastering routines—efficiency. This paper explains, discusses, and critically evaluates the above arguments of Warren Bennis. The next sections generally present the difference between management and leadership, and the concepts of ‘overmanaged and underled’, in contemporary work organisations. Leadership and Management Historians, academics, and researchers have frequently differentiated leadership and management. Management, to some, is a negative concept linked to all the weaknesses of a particular organisation. However, leading and managing are not independent concepts, nor is the differences between these two are definite (Fairholm 1998). Yet, leaders and managers perform distinct tasks in an organisation. Managers supervise and maintain the status quo; leaders attempt to transform it. Moreover, organisations have distinct requirements for each of those functions at particular times and at specific levels in their evolution (Dessler 2000). Leaders are more expected to be visionary, creating measures to attain the vision, and motivating and empowering followers to be committed to that vision to surmount employee, bureaucratic, and technical obstacles, and accept change. Leaders are not risk-averse, particularly if they discern substantial returns from a plan (Hunt 1992). They eagerly wield power for control and influence, attracting followers rather than using force to command obedience. Leaders dynamically pursue conflicting perspectives to distinguish alternatives to a plan. On the contrary, managers are more prone to prioritise resource allocation, supervising and organising other subordinates, evaluating outcomes against predetermined objectives, and pursuing the existing vision for the organisation. Managers work to bring order to the organisation and resolve issues while making certain of the dedication of others to the goals of the organisation (Rayner & Adam-Smith 2005). Managers are less willing to take risks compared to leaders. They exploit existing punishments and rewards, together with their understanding of group dynamics and individual motivation, to create expected attitudes and behaviour (Rayner & Adam-Smith 2005). Generally, according to Napier and Gershenfeld (1999), although numerous managers are leaders, and vice versa, managers are individuals who formulate plans and create budgets, supervise employees by communicating procedures, and implement by evaluating outcomes against the objective. The senior leader, management, and administrative functions in organisations can espouse diverse conditions for leadership and management. Several tasks entail just management. Other tasks demand significant levels of leadership with modest requirement for management. Yet some require a combination of management and leadership. A prerequisite of an organisation for leadership and management will shift as the forces influencing organisational change (Western 2007). Since leaders are major catalysts of change, they perform important tasks when the outside environment is evolving rapidly just like the new market environment. An organisation does not basically require a strong agent of change if very few are evolving around it. In contemporary work organisations it is crucial to understand that primarily, individuals cannot be managed, people are ought to be led. A management scholar perhaps perfectly captures the distinction between leaders and managers, differentiation leadership and management: “Management’s about arranging and telling. Leadership’s about growing and enhancing” (Hickman 1998, 126). Work organisations of today are fast evolving and require leaders who can effectively and efficiently lead people. To be effective in the face of circumstances stemming from the changes, Hickman (1998) adds, challenges, and progress in current work organisations, leaders should deviate from a ‘managing’ approach to a ‘leadership’ mode. First, the main function of a leader will be to improve and educate people, not only command or exercise power. Second, they have to empower employees for them to become independent or self-reliant. Third, leaders must take part in and promote cooperation where necessary. Fourth, they must foster prompt decision making by those personnel directly involved in the circumstances. Fifth, leaders must support risk taking, innovation, and change to deal with the constantly evolving forces confronting organisations (Rost 1993). Ultimately, they should view employees as strengths, not weaknesses, and leaders have to allocate more resources, effort, and time in the training and improvement of their human capital. Management, although most vital, relates to processes and actions required to deal with difficulties and challenges (Gill 2006). Leadership, vital as well, but dissimilar, relates to dealing with change. A leadership scholar stresses that the requirement to transform from ‘management’ to ‘leadership’ implies that current work organisations do not only require strong leadership from executives but from, as stated by Kotter (1990 as cited by Bender 2009, 59), “hundreds of individuals below the plant manager level.” Organisations nowadays are more likely to be over-managed and under-led, due to the fact that numerous current leaders were educated to make sure everything is under budget and punctual. Nevertheless, leaders nowadays understand the fast developments in globalisation, technology, and workplace diversity necessitate a leader who has the ability to create a vision of how to contend with these adjustments, a measure to execute the vision, and the capacity to communicate and motivate people to take part in that course of action (Northouse 2011). The need for greater leadership does not imply that competent managers are not required as well or that leadership is more superior to management. Organisations, undoubtedly, require both exceptional managers and exceptional leaders (Northouse 2011). In truth, stabilising these two kinds of tasks, without compromising one for the other, may be the means toward organisational success and strong leadership. Since the introduction of ‘scientific management’ by Frederick Taylor, literature on organisations has prioritised management strategies founded on the scientific method. Scholars and practitioners alike have enforced exact science on many human endeavours, such as management ones (Bender 2009). The attempt has been to introduce management as a scientific discipline: inimitable, exact, and quantifiable. This scientific emphasis has governed the theory of management, practice and processes for decades. Leadership, as well, has been dragged to the domain of the scientific method because a number of people view leadership as merely another ability or instrument of management (Rosenbach & Taylor 1998). Even people who view it as an independent role have employed scientific procedures to develop their theories. Previous descriptions of leadership reflected those of theoretical management, objectives, and practices. The Gradual Shift Current work organisations have experienced transition from charismatic leadership to extensive management approach. Management depends on existing rational uniformity, reliability, and subordination (Fairholm 1998). In all present-day social institutions ranging from religion to the industry, the transformation has been from the unpredictable leader to the rationally fixed, conventional, and structure-driven manager (Fairholm 1998, 18): We have kept (albeit in adapted forms) the ceremonies, procedures and customs that have served to keep subordinates at a respectful psychological distance. Where the ancient leader once held symbols of power, managers now hold them. Today’s managers have adopted the ceremonial robes and perquisites that were formerly assumed by tribal chiefs, priests and generals. These almost sacred leadership symbols have only been changed to conform to the needs of modern managers and contemporary civilisation. Today instead of fancy robes, headdresses and mystic ceremonies, we see them today in academic gowns, perquisites of office, $1,500 business suits, showy offices and the fostered illusion that the manager has ‘the word’ and is the centrepiece of the communication network. The above passage claims that work organisations in the past have already experienced a transition from leadership to management. For a great deal of the contemporary period management was viewed as much more of an issue of symbol than of vision and personal traits. The charismatic leader in the armed forces has been replaced by the logistics specialist (Gill 2006). In governmental agencies, the transition has been from the transformative, traditional, or chosen leaders to the dominating, power-driven, risk-averse managers of the present. The demise of leadership and the emergence of modern management have varied outcomes. This development has permitted people to achieve significant material advancement. Contemporary management has generated remarkably complicated organisations, which are capable of dealing with the diverse requirements and demands of an increasing and demanding population. Yet the toll is substantial as well. With the absence of the unity genuine leadership builds, the current period has produced a working population typified by isolation, disaffection and anomie (Dubrin 2006). Management can generate concrete outcomes very proficiently. It is less proficient at developing empowered, motivated, individuals. People can only be led in important social tasks. Management theories and practices are not intended for self-reliant follower behaviour (Belbin 1996). Instead, managers are effective if they are able to guide aimed behaviour, sanction defiance and curb resistance. This predisposition toward control through regularity is discerned in present-day organisational systems, reports, functional structures and management techniques. However, as the influence of management extends throughout the organisation, value weakens (Sims 2002). Management avoids quality. It survives on recurrent outcome intended at the weakest employee. It survives on regulated weakness. Contrary to the development of management over time, contemporary management theory or scholarship has a short evolution (Engleberg & Wynn 2000). Its origins can be traced back to the advent of the new millennium. Early efforts to develop a logical account of management theory were founded on the idea that there are universal rules behind successful management (Dessler 2000). Specifically, management should be viewed as a widespread and basic endeavour. This was the fundamental principle of scientific management. Conclusions If the arguments about management presented earlier are fairly truthful, it proves that successful management is greatly prized by organisational stakeholders and members. If individuals are eager to take the risk to dispose of poor management; if individuals think that the capacity to acquire desired products/services from high-quality management of work organisations is vital to a quality life; and if they plan for transformations, partly, to depose ineffective managers and a poorly performing management structure and to have the liberty to appoint exceptional managers and an improved management structure, then managers are certainly a crucial agent in today’s organisations. Management is a course of action greatly esteemed by individuals who fail to successfully use it and do not have the authority to replace either the management structure or the managers themselves. Successful management is quite broadly regarded as the standard protocol in industrialised societies that it is frequently overlooked. The defamation of management should be discontinued. People should reassess the attributes of management and its importance to the functioning of highly intricate societies and the institutions that contribute to these continuous societal operations. The assumption that management is weak if it is not combined with leadership is objectionable as a theoretical perspective. That perception adds to the misunderstanding over what the true nature of management and leadership is (Williams 1998). If people cannot be managed successfully without instilling leadership, then indeed there is no underlying difference between management and leadership. Academics do not have to embellish the framework of management by associating it with the more accepted and applauded notion of leadership. Basically, management is indispensable and critical to the quality life, and per se it has as much essence as leadership has. It must be significantly respected for what it truly is, not for what a number of theorists argued it to be. Compromising management for leadership has unfavourable impacts in the commonplace domain of work organisations. People rely on valuable management on a daily basis, and that core life reality should encourage people to probe deeper into the essence of management in order to cultivate and advance its general application in manoeuvring work organisations productively and successfully (Williams 1998). Over-management and under-leadership, and vice versa, is a negative paradigm. The problem with some of the arguments presented above is that they condemn management and extol leadership. Leaders are not the solution to all the problems of an organisation. Leadership may, in several instances, be a component of the solution. Management, if correctly recognised, is also an ingredient of the solution. And theory of leadership that reveres leadership to the detriment of management has to be flawed (Hunt 1992). Extolling leadership by denigrating management is an innately defective way of recognising the essence of either idea. Another dilemma is that some theories claim that leadership is exceptional, useful, and productive at all times. There is, as claimed by these theories, no useless or poor leadership. Once more, this view of leadership may be sufficient for emblematic myths, yet it does not fit with the actual experiences of people since the notion of leadership emerged as a general practice (Dessler 2000). Incorporating an efficacy element in the knowledge of leadership produces all forms of theoretical and actual dilemmas in any effort to understand the essence of leadership. This is also valid for management, apart from the fact that most individuals do not routinely associate management with efficacy or quality. The realistic outcomes of obliging leaders to be exceptional or effective are already evident. It fails when people attempt to grasp the difference between managers and leaders. The theoretical outcome of such a perspective is that either leadership should integrate management since leaders are managers that are highly useful or management cannot be successful, because every time it becomes successful, it transforms into leadership. Management becomes an indispensable but insufficient component in identifying leadership. In that case, what becomes of the description when individuals encounter leadership in an arrangement in which nobody is a manager and management practices are not taking place? The description immediately becomes invalid. The realistic outcome of such a perspective is to oblige all managers to be a leader since leaders are completely crucial to each and every concept of leadership. Sticking to management or leadership alone makes one unproductive. Hence, being a leader turns out to be critical to the self-esteem or self-worth of all managers, evidently an implausible undertaking, or else a callous obligation, for large numbers of individuals. Ultimately, such a perspective actually renders leadership as an idea superfluous. If leaders are good managers, the notion of leadership is unnecessary since management as a concept had a long and celebrated concept development. As stated by some scholars, leadership as a notion is comparatively recent, whilst the idea of management or power is relatively ancient. Therefore, over-management and under-leadership of today’s work organisations invites more failure than success. References Belbin, R.M. (1996) Management teams: why they succeed or fail. UK: Butterworth Heineman. Bender, M. (2009) A Manager’s Guide to Project Management: Learn How to Apply Best Practices. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: FT Press. Dessler, G. (2000) Management: Leading People & Organisations in the 21st Century. 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