How Can Managers and Leaders Use problems as Source of Learning - Research Paper Example

Executive Summary In the face of intense competition in the globalised marketplace, need for organisational excellence is highlighted and demands placed upon managers and leaders to be effective in their relevant functions and roles has increased. However UK as a nation seems to have failed in developing its managerial cadre to gear up to the new challenges posed by modern organisational management paradigms where soft skills related to people handling has become a major skill deficit. Thus, management and leadership development on a continuous basis has become a prerequisite for achieving not only organisational level but also national level competitiveness. The report analyse the possibility of using daily organisational issues encountered by managers as a means of learning to facilitate continuous development. 1. Introduction In the face of growing business environmental pressures stemming from process of globalization and the advent of the knowledge economy, the demands placed upon managers and leaders to be effective in their relevant functions and roles has increased. Therefore, management and leadership development on a continuous basis has become a prerequisite for staying in business. While management designations may be limited, organisational success would largely upon its ability to develop the managerial and leadership skills at every level of the employee participation. As such skills development is based on a continuous learning process, managers and leaders need to use problems they encounter in everyday operations as a source of learning. In UK alone, the demand for high caliber managers with professional qualifications is in the rise and over 100,000 new management positions are being created as per estimates. But survey statistics points to poor management and leadership skills at all levels and relating `2to many areas such as delegation, choosing appropriate style of management and inability to involve the subordinates in to the decision making process (Managers & Leaders 2002). The report aims to analyse the need for managerial and leadership development and propose a conceptual model for the same. 2. Importance of Management & Leadership Development To understand the importance of Management & Leadership development, one should see the distinction between concepts such as management/leadership education or training which is in-effect associated subsidiary aspects of the overall effort of Management & Leadership development. While Management and Leadership education will take more of academic stance, the training will be more related to specific informal and formal delivery of programs developed under the overall effort of management and leadership development. Such efforts should be undertaken at both macro and micro levels and target to address widespread need gaps in managerial and leadership skills imperative of designations and positions of workforce. Assessing the widespread need for managerial and leadership development in UK, the statistics indicate that there is a marked lack of prominence given to the need of management and leadership development from national to organisational level. Compared to other countries in the region, UK’s average investment per capita is only €1,625 for the purpose of mnagerial skills development which is half that of what Germany is spending (Mabey & Matias 2004). While it’s well accepted that high caliber managerial and leadership performance contributes to organisational success, UK lags behind in terms of resources allocated to number of firms focusing on this aspect when compared to a host of other European nations. The study cites three key areas of importance when considering how the management and leadership development can be made effective. “For management development to be effective it needs to be fully integrated into the business strategy; it needs to be thoughtful and take a long-term view. And most importantly, managers at all levels need to believe that their development is being taken seriously” (Mabey & Matias 2004). 3. Overview of Management & Leadership Leadership is defined by Mescrn, Albert and Khedourn as “the ability to influence individuals and groups to work toward attaining organizational objectives” (Weiss 2003) and this definition is more aligned with the aspects of leadership in the context of today’s Organizational and Business Leaders. Theories on leadership have developed from initial trait approaches to behavioral and contingency approach. However the latest developments focus on transformational leadership styles in which the leader inspire and elevate its followers’ performance to higher levels. In basic terms management refers to the act of handling, supervising or control of people and or resources. In the context of organizational and business studies, the term management is simply defined as a process of getting work done by others. This definition however covers only one aspect of management involving supervision. Modern day management has many facets to it and key functions include planning, organizing, leading and controlling (Leadership Vs. Management 2007). Management practices too have evolved over time from its classicla and sienctific approaches to human relations and human resource development stage. 4. Analysis of Management & Leadership Skills Although the trends indicate the number of people acquiring management qualifications have increased, there still exists marked lack of managerial and leadership performance in organisations (Prosperity for All…2006). This may be the result of management skills deficit which is highlighted by the revealing statistics from the WERS (Work Place Employee Relations Survey) 1998 which states that over 24% managers were poor at “dealing with work problems” while 34% were poor at responding to suggestions from employees (Managers & Leaders 2002). Most of the other statistics revealed deficits in managerial and leadership skills such as delegation and practicing participative style of management. It can be noted that most of the managerial and leadership skills lacking today are related to the soft aspects of managing people in contrast to the administrative activities associated with management. This may be attributed to the fact that administrative aspects of management are mostly covered by standard and traditional management training and education programs . Therefore, the importance of EQ or emotional IQ concept proposed by Daniel Goldman should be taken in to consideration in developing managerial and leadership development programs. Goldman suggests that, although a certain degree of analytical skill is a minimum requirement for success, what is called “emotional intelligence” (Weiss 2001) may be the key attribute that distinguishes outstanding performers from those who are merely adequate. 5. Using Problems as a Source of Learning In the process of management and leadership development, day-to-day problems, which are encountered, can be used as a source of learning. In order to promote such learning, the organisational culture and environment should be transformed to one of learning organisations, which promote empowering people, promoting innovation (Peters & Waterman 1982) and continuous learning. By applying the concept of a learning organisation proposed by scholars such as Peter Senge, Garvin or other Organisational Development (OD) theorists such as Nonaka, Handy or Argyris, managers today can treat problems as the starting point of quest for answers and solution (Nonaka, 1991). As per Argyris, organisations usually adopt a “single loop” learning, where the learning involves detection and corrective actions. However he also identifies that organisations develop “double loop” learning, which involves modification of existing status quo of the organisation based on feedback available and thus facilitate organisational learning (Argyris and Schön 1978). Applying the above concept in to managerial & leadership development aspects of the organisation, a manager can identify a problem related to managerial or leadership skills deficit and then take corrective action by identifying how such a problem can be resolved. An example of this process can be given by taking a problem situation where a manager lacks skills in mentoring his subordinates through identifying talent and leadership potential, training and planning career progress for his subordinates and grooming and coaching through delegation and mentoring process. The resulting day to day problem would be the manager being overloaded with work which he fails to delegate, his subordinates being low caliber and unable to handle situations in his absence and lastly, the manager not being able to focus on broader issues of strategy crafting and implementation. Final outcome of all these problems will be ineffectiveness of the manager’s performance affecting the organisational performance and collectively contributing to the national level low productivity. However if the manager is aware of the importance of managerial and leadership development on continuous basis, then he or she will identify this problem and then also identify the set of skills in deficit which has to be acquired and practiced. This will involve acquiring of skills managerial skill set related to human resource development, which involves delegation, training and mentoring. However if the manager fails to treat the problems as a source of learning and take proactive action but take a negative view of the problem and take disciplinary actions against his subordinates who fail to perform in his absence or allow himself to be a victim of managerial stress and overload, then the opportunity of converting the problem in to a source of learning is lost. Lastly the practice of learning from day to day issues should be linked to learning from within as well as from outside experience. Tapping in to outside experience is promoted through practices such as benchmarking and application of best practices (Senge 1990). 6. Proposed Conceptual Model for Management & Leadership Development Having discussed the importance of Management and Leadership Development (MLD) efforts, a conceptual model is proposed for the development and implementation of MLD programs at macro and micro levels where daily issues are taken as a source of learning. Please refer to Figure 1 next page. Evaluating the proposed conceptual model for Managerial and Leadership Skills Development, following points needs to be considered. . Changing External Factors in Business Environment Creating Need for High Calibre Managerial and Leadership Skills. Through a PEST analysis one can establish environmental trends which will pressurize the UK national needs for greater managerial and leadership skills. For example, with greater political and economic integration and opening up of economies, the process of globalization has accelerated and competition faced by UK economy and companies have changed dramatically. Therefore, in order to stay competitive, managerial and leadership skills need to be developed at a macro level. Government Policy Planning should therefore take in to consideration the national level needs of both public and private sector and address these through implementation of programs directly with public sector; in collaboration with private sector and through academic institutions. At Micro level, the organisations and managers need to identify the managerial and leadership skills gaps existing within the organisation in relation to the context unique to individual organisations. Depending upon organisational structures, type of business and level of knowledge work being carried out, the degree, width and depth of managerial and leadership skills development needs of an organisation will vary. For example, some companies with autonomous work group configurations and knowledge based work outputs will need leadership development at almost all levels of hierarchy which will be rather flat to start with. Daily problems and issues are treated as a source of learning where the relevant skill gaps should be identified which leads to the problem. Having identified the gaps, the objectives of a Leadership and Management Development effort should be set with quantifiable outcomes as targets. This is essential so that the resource allocations can be justified and results can be measurable. The objectives should be at individual level as well as organisational level. In developing programs, and learning opportunities for skills acquisition, the uniqueness of the situation should be taken to account. The development of leadership styles and managerial functions should be diverse so that depending upon situations, organisational needs different levels of hierarchy, (CEO can be transformational but middle managers may need to be behavioral while project managers may need to exercise situational styles of leadership) the skill acquisition differs. Finally the key to successful implementation of programs will depend upon monitoring and evaluating through feedback, which should be used to modify either or both objectives and programs so that the development efforts stay in alignment with the changing needs and conditions of the micro and macro environment. Figure 1 – Proposed Conceptual Model Outlining the Macro and Micro Level Managerial & Leadership Development Efforts in UK Feedback Feedback Feedback 7. Conclusion In conclusion, it can be noted that leaders have a big responsibility in driving organisational success and leading the people towards the achievement of a common goal. Managers should strive to improve their leadership qualities so that the follower are inspired and committed instead of being supervised and forces in to producing the targeted outputs. The concept of super leadership (Weiss 2001) which identifies that leaders while becoming self leaders should also facilitates the followers to become self leaders is applicable for today’s agile and autonomous self directed work team structures. Learning through problems can be incorporated as a useful mean of managerial and leadership development on a continuous basis not only by individual managers but as an organisational practice. It is hoped that through implementation of such learning the managerial and leadership improvement efforts, UK will rise from its current lagging position to become a global leader in organisational productivity through excellence in managerial and leadership performance. Bibliography Argyris, C. & Schon, D. (1978) Organisational Learning: A theory of action perspective, Massachusetts:Addison-Wesley Reading. “Leadership vs. Management.” (2005) Changing Minds .Org. Retrieved on March, 04 2007. from http://changingminds.org/disciplines/leadership/articles/manager_leader.htm “Leadership & Management : Changing Paradigms of Management” (2006). Retrieved on March, 04 2007 from www.ku.edu/~kunrotc/academics/401/Lesson 2 Class.Rev01.ppt “Managers & Leaders” Raising Our Game”(2002). Council For Excellence in Management & Leadership. Retrieved on March, 04 2007 from http://www.managementandleadershipcouncil.org/downloads/summary.pdf Mabey, C. Dr. & Matias, R. Dr. (2004) “Developing Managers: A European Perspective” Chartered Managemnet Institite. Retrieved on March, 04 2007 http://www.managers.org.uk/client_files/user_files/Woodman_31/Research%20files/EuroPerspectiveSummary.pdf Senge, P.M. (1990) The Fifth Discipline. New York: Doubleday. Senge, P.M. (1990) “Leaders New Work: Building Learning Organisations,” Sloan Management Review, Fall. Nonaka, I. (1991) “The Knowledge –Creating Company,” Harvard Business Review, November-December, p. 97. Peters, T. J. & Waterman, R.H. Jr. (1982). In Search of Excellence. New York: Harper & Row Publishers Inc. “Prosperity For All In The Global Economy - World Class Skills.” (2006). Final report of the Leitch Review of Skills. Retrieved on March, 04 2007 from http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/523/43/leitch_finalreport051206.pdf Weiss, J.W. (2001) Organisational Behavior & Change, 2nd ed., Ohio: South-Western Collage Publishing. Mumford A. and Gold, J. (2003), Management Development, London: CIPD [Online] http://groups.msn.com/ManagementDevelopment Using Problems as a Source of Learning Management & Leadership Development Student Name Tutors Name Course Module Table Of Content Content Page Executive Summary 1. Introduction 01 2. Importance of Management & Leadership Development 01 3. Overview of Management & Leadership 02 4. Analysis of Management & Leadership Skills 03 5. Using Problems as a Source of Learning 04 6. Proposed Conceptual Model for Management & Leadership Development 06 7. Conclusion 09 8. Bibliography 10 Read More