Humanistic Approach, Leadership and Motivation, Machiavelli, and Conflict Resolution and Vision - Essay Example

? Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Preface 3 Humanistic Approach 4 Leadership and Motivation 7 Machiavelli 11 Conflict Resolution 12 Preface The subjects examined in this essay are Humanistic Approach, Leadership and Motivation, Machiavelli, and Conflict Resolution and Vision. My personal experience in this class is fathomable in that I have had a great opportunity to learn about management, leadership, motivation, and conflict resolution. I found the topic of leadership and motivation very interesting because it helped me understand the world we are living in. Specifically, I learnt that leaders may be born or made. This research helped me understand examples of leaders who are born with power and leadership and those who are made leaders. I also learnt that motivation is crucial in enhancing work performance, productivity, and satisfaction. I believe that this class has increased my knowledge in management. I will use this knowledge to impact those around me by helping them understand human behaviours and how they can foster motivation and effective leadership. Humanistic Approach Humanistic management is the process through which different streams of humanisms are linked or connected. It focuses on the field of economics and business as the primary force that drives the society. The humanistic approach to management helps to understand human beings as absolutely self-serving or independent individuals. We understand the concept of humanistic management on the basis of three dimensions. The first thing is that human beings deserve and expect their dignity and worth to be respected under all circumstances. Secondly, businesses and organizations must embrace ethical decisions that promote the well-being of employees and staff members. The last thing is that embracing corporate responsibilities is crucial in strengthening and maintaining an ongoing relationship with the stakeholders. According to Murray, Markides and Galavan (2008), it is appropriate to apply human approach in business context where dignity and respect of every individual is the foundation that builds and maintains interpersonal interaction. This approach helps the management to embrace every individual in the organization regardless of where he comes from or what he owns. The integration of ethical reflection into the business is the key process from which effective and quality decisions are made. The solitary managerial decision on where an action is ethically sound depends on the humanistic approach to management. However, the approach may not be appropriate in providing excessive freedom. It is important to note that, the humanistic theory make some assumptions about human nature, which are not accepted as solid or complete. One cannot adequately argue that every individual should be given freedom to choose what he wants or not. This is because some people may make negative choices even when right solutions are staring at them. These facts plague the humanistic approach to management and therefore establish the need to offer sufficient guidance for positive change to occur. Still, it may not be appropriate when managers are mean and misunderstand how their employees perform their assigned duties. When managers treat their employees like this, they get depressed and sad and thus become unproductive in the workplace. Since humanistic approach to management is based on the self and client centred therapy, then it benefits people to discover and identify their personal capacity that stimulates self-assessment and self-development. This approach creates a ground for people to understand their strengths and work hard to improve on their weaknesses. However, this approach requires people to understand the root of their problem before building or fixing the solution. With this, this approach may not perfectly work for everyone since some people may be threatened and challenged to find out the root cause of their problems. Still, this approach regards that human beings must understand that they are hold responsible of their lives. For instance, some people may not be ready to take on personal responsibility and thus becomes hard to dictate their lives. What is meant by not crossing the line in the humanistic approach is that you can hang out for lunch and have fun with with a manager or co-workers, but when it comes to work there is respect and dignity. In other words, crossing the line means doing what should be done at the tight time, place, and time. For instance, work should be done excellently and when out for lunch one should have fun to the fullest. Friendship should be maintained but this should not create any room for laziness or low performance in the work place (Murray, Markides & Galavan 22). The main advantage of humanistic over the quantitative approach to management is that, humanistic approach creates a strong ground for employers or managers to know their employees and what they can accomplish. Unlike the quantitative approach, the humanistic approach takes into account fulfilling psychological, emotional, and basic needs to promote a healthy working environment. The quantitative approach is best used when managers lack experience on how to solve a certain problem. This approach works best for the measurable problems. For instance, deciding how to allocate resources among departments. In this case, a manager may begin by determining which department may be more profitable and likely to bring more profits. Emotional intelligence is outlined as the ability to monitor one’s feelings. An individual emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in the attribution linked with person’s judgment and perception towards life. Human beings become more effective when they understand their influence on learning behaviour. They are able to make better decisions that enhance a pleasing lifestyle that is based on decisions that are based on emotional quality judgment. Individualism is a term used to describe one’s uniqueness or independence. When used well, this term can enhance productivity in cases where employees are given a chance to air their thoughts and ideas on how to augment growth in the organization. At this point, individualism should only be allowed in the workplace when it is facilitating growth in the organization. With this, it is important for the management to perceive emotions, facilitate thoughts, and evaluate employees’ input and thoughts towards the progress of the organization. Humanistic psychologists based their argument on the fact that every individual has their unique way of understanding the world. Abraham Maslow’s view on human needs is more complex than other theorists in that he acknowledged that people have different needs that differ in their level of immediacy. In his research, Maslow believed that people who satisfied all their needs become excellent and remarkable people who fulfil their potential completely. This theorist believed that needs should be met accordingly starting from the basic needs to secondary and tertiary needs. Overall, my perception about humanistic approach to managing is that it is crucial to manage people based on their needs and psychological makeup. The humanistic approach to management helps an organization to understand what motivates employees and staff members to be more productive in the work place. Out of the management thought processes we discussed, the humanistic and quantitative approaches are the most beneficial in that they create a strong ground to facilitate an excellent working environment. Leadership and Motivation Leadership is the ability to lead, forecast, or evaluate a policy and influence the followers towards achieving the said strategies. A true leader shares his vision with his followers and encourages them to work hard towards achieving the set goals and objectives. True leadership involves taking responsibility for one’s actions and being able to motivate people to work as a team. It revolves around having clear visions, direction, ideas, and inspiring other people to do things without dictating. It is also a process of giving meaningful direction to collective attempt, and causing people to work hard to achieve a common or an intended purpose. It is the art of influencing others to their maximum ability or performance to accomplish their assigned duties, tasks, or projects. Leadership is important in implementing decisions effectively. It guides and leads people toward the common path of success. Leadership is crucial function of management and it maximizes efficiency and productivity in the workplace (Murray, Markides, & Galavan, 2008). For decades, the issue of whether leaders are born or made has been a contentious issue. Although most researchers agree that leaders are either born or made, it seems that true leaders are born. The concept that leaders are born is supported by Trait theory and Great Man theory. Trait theory demonstrates that an individual’s personality has psychological characteristics that dictate how a person interacts and reacts with others. There are some of the traits that differentiate non-leaders and leaders. People are born with equal talents and abilities to lead. The great man theory explains that leaders are born with wisdom, intelligence, and power to make decisions. In support of these theories, Prince William of England, Emperor Akihito of Japan, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, Queen Elizabeth, and Martin Luther King are perfect examples of leaders who were born. Regardless of their personality or characteristics, there individuals were born into positions of true leadership. On the other hand, Napoleon is a perfect example of a self-made leader who achieved greatness by his perseverance and unaided effort. Against the odds and challenges that he went through, the opportunity to become a great leader beckoned him. Other leaders include De Gaulle and Churchill who depended on the chance to fulfil their potential. These leaders emulated other leaders who led by example in the society. They improved in leadership by getting feedbacks and help on how to handle complex situations. They recognized to learn from experience and become best leaders. It is important to note that, there are different behavioural patterns between leaders and managers. For instance, managers administers while leaders innovates. Manager copy, maintains, relies on control, and imitates. However, leaders focus on people, building trust, and try to do the right thing that positively affects followers. A perfect example of a manager is Atul Singh who served in the Coca-Cola Company as the deputy president for operations in the South West Asia and India business unit. Atul is a managerial manager who in his leadership has served the coca-cola company in stewardship. However, an example of a leader is President Barrack Obama who in his leadership strives hard to gives the desired results on Americans. President Obama works hard to do the right thing that positively affects the entire country. If I had a choice of being a leader, I would desire to be a steward leader because such a leader inspires people to change. A steward leader leads by example based on services and in all he does, he view himself as a servant. In so doing, such a leader inspires people to work hard towards being the best. He motivates people to work as he leads by an example. A steward leader is always in the move of impact his followers with services that impact their personal life such as kindness, honesty, and politeness among others. If I had a choice of managing, I would desire to use participative approach to manage as this encourages followers to air out their thoughts and suggestion. Such a manager encourages followers to participate in leadership and decision making process, which in turn creates a sense of belonging. In my opinion, the concept of effective leadership is so crucial that every organization should embrace. Effective leadership enhance better results, increases work performance, augment a sense of belonging, increases work productivity, and gives a sense of direction. Effective leadership increases innovation and this helps an organization to attain the best foundation and practices for a lifelong success and earning potential. Effective leaders learn from their mistakes, errors, trails, and experiences. When something fails, an effective leader from this experience and fixes the situation in the years to come. Effective leadership demands leaders to seek out for opportunities and development that sharpen their new skills and abilities. Motivation results from external and internal factors that stimulate energy and desire in people to be continually committed and interested to a subject, role, job, or efforts to attain goals and objectives. Motivation derives from the interaction of both unconscious and conscious factors like incentive or the reward of the goal, intensity of need or desire, and expectations to achieve the intended results. These factors explain why an individual behave in a certain way. A perfect is a student who spends extra time studying for an exam because he or she wants to get better grades in the class. Motivation is the driving force that gives a sense of direction or purpose to human behaviours, which operate at subconscious and conscious level. Motivation is a two-way street. This implies that, it is not only the responsibility of a leader to motivate his followers, but it is also the responsibility of the latter to provide encouragements and support to their leader or manager. Motivation involves the equal measure and effort of both the team and the boss to push and encourage one another to attain the set goals and objectives. The two parties should work hard to ensure to create a positive work culture that motivates and enhance a sense of belonging. Many theories have emerged to explain and predict what motivate individuals to behave in a certain way. The most impressing theories include Two Factor Theory by Herzberg, McClelland Need theory, and Expectancy theory. According to Herzberg, the two factors that affect motivation are hygiene and motivators factors. The hygiene factors are things that when one takes them away dissatisfies people. The motivators’ factors are those whose presence encourages people to behave in a certain way. This theory is applicable in life in that the hygiene factors determine dissatisfaction while motivators enhance satisfaction. Influence works by providing both the motivators and hygiene factors in life. A perfect example of hygiene factors is a long-term addict who may be motivated to take heroin to get normal. An example of a motivator factor is a good salary package that may motivate an individual to perform well in the workplace. McClelland’s theory helps managers and leaders to identify what drive members of the team. If one is leading or managing a team, it is important to consider what motivate people, how they respond to praise and feedback, and the tasks that fits them effectively. This theory is important because it helps people to give feedback and praise effectively. It also in assigning suitable tasks and keeping them motivated. Using this theory is important since it enables a leader to understand his team effectively and appreciate it as per their motivational drives. Lastly, the expectancy theory explains that employees’ motivation is an outcome of how an individual desires a reward. This theory states that expectancy is influenced by various factors such as availability of crucial information, right resources, appropriate skills for performing tasks, and adequate support to complete the job. Machiavelli Born in 1469 and died in 1527, Italian Niccolo Machiavelli is one of the most notable philosophers of all time. His concept of motivation of the state indicated that the state in its simplest form is motivated by the interests of the governors and rulers of the state. The government work hard to stabilize the state, preserve, and expand the state. This philosopher believes that most people have primary interest in themselves, many are concerned with their honour and property, and others motivated by financial greed. This philosopher inspired Thomas Hobbes and Nicky Barnes who in their beliefs articulated that human beings by their nature are self-centred. The concept of Machiavelli about motivation is great in content as it clearly demonstrates how many people engage into politics for selfish gain. In brief, the documentary about Leroy Nicky Barnes indicates that he was one of the famous drug dealers during the 1970s in New York. Barnes helped starting a criminal organization referred as “The Council” that contained the largest share of the heroin trade. At a tender age, Barnes started distributing and selling drugs. Machiavellian influenced Barnes with his biblical fury of brutality, betray, and brotherhood. Barnes established the need to change his life. In 1998, Barnes started a new life with the new identity. In conclusion, motivation is a strong drive that influences behaviour. It increases work performance, productivity, and satisfaction. It is important for a manager to motivate his team and create a favourable environment to perform the best. Motivation is an integral factor to foster strong relationships between the boss and the subordinates. Lack of motivation may cause disagreement or conflict. Conflict Resolution A conflict is a serious argument or disagreement between individuals. Conflict may cause confusion, decrease morale, work performance, and productivity. In most cases, conflicts occur when members are not in agreement with one another. The difference between a constructive and destructive conflict is that the former may strengthen the parties in conflict while the latter may destroy relationships. A constructive conflict is one that focuses on the subject while the destructive conflict focuses on both the individual and the subject. One of the sign of a destructive conflict is lack of communication, harassment, and use of vulgar language. When handling conflicts, managers should utilize the BCF statement that defines conflict in terms of behaviour, consequences, and feelings. It is important to understand this statement when resolving conflict as it helps the negotiator to come up with the best strategies to deter the disagreement. Reference Murray, J.A., Markides, C., & Galavan, R. (2008). Strategy, Innovation, and Change: Challenges for Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Read More