Linking of Rewards with Performance - Essay Example

Leadership Introduction Leadership is an art which requires intelligence, patience, temperament, analytical skills, management skills, ity etc.Leadership is essential in most of the areas of human life like, politics, profession, social activities, sports etc. Leaders are the ones who guide the followers to a specific target with the help of properly formulated strategies. Some people believe that leaders are born and not made whereas some others believe that leaders arise when there is a need. In nay case, the personality and the charisma of the leader plays an important role in leading a group of followers to a specific target. In organizations, managers are the leaders of the subordinates. Workers should obey the instructions from the managers in order to execute a project successfully. The manager’s ability to derive maximum out of a worker is one of the critical success factors of an organization. Managers may adopt many strategies to get the maximum out of a worker. Linking of rewards with performance and adoption of suitable management styles are some of the strategies taken by managers in organizations to improve the productivity of the workers. This paper briefly analyses the importance of linking of rewards with performance and best possible leadership styles to control employees in an organization. Linking of rewards with performance Recognitions are important in personal and professional life. Nobody likes to work in an organization if the organization fails to recognize their good performances and complement them with rewards. Rewards are motivating factors for the employees to increase their performances and productivity. “Great leaders will seek to create environments where their followers are rewarded for their hard work and success” (The Importance of Using Rewards and Recognition To Lead, 2010). Rewards can be given in different forms like incentives, praising words, promotions etc. It is a fact that majority of the employees are working for money rather than helping an organization. They will work hard if they have the prospects of getting more money linked with more performances. Rewards can motivate all the employees irrespective of who is getting it. Those who failed to get reward will definitely try to improve their performance in anticipation of a possible reward in future. In some cases, even a praising word by the manager may serve as a great boost to the employees. It is not necessary that financial gains alone may motivate an employee. Some employees attach more value to the psychological factors and the praising words may satisfy their psychological needs and they will improve their performance further. I have a friend who is working as a production manager in a tire manufacturing unit at present. He doesn’t have suitable educational backgrounds for his post. In fact he was a production worker in the tire manufacturing department before becoming the manager. He succeeded in recycling some scrap materials and re-uses it in the production process when he was working as a worker. The management recognized his achievement and promoted him as a manger. At present he is mainly focussed in the recycling and re-use of scrap materials and the company benefitted immensely because of some of his inventions in converting scrap materials into useful materials. Thus rewards can serve as a boost to the employee and at the same time it can bring unexpected dividends to the organization as well. Best Leadership styles to control employees Different managers adopt different leadership styles. Some managers may adopt democratic style of leadership whereas some others go for the autocratic styles. A third section of managers adopt a blend of autocratic and democratic style of leadership. It is difficult for manager to be democratic or autocratic always. He should be flexible in his approaches and should select proper leadership styles based on the situations. Waller et al (1989) mentioned that identify a task, set goals, determine the task maturity of the individual or group, select an appropriate leadership style, and modify the style as change occurs are the characteristics of situational leadership (Waller et al 1989). The manager or the leader should react based on the needs of the situation. Same leader may react differently at different situations in situational leadership. Great leaders or managers always listen the words of the employees keenly. Employees like leaders or mangers who value the opinions and suggestions of the employees. In some cases, the employees may have better ideas than the manager in executing a work and patience to hear the opinion of employees may help the managers to tackle some complicated situations more effectively. Managers have the management skills and it is not necessary that they may possess technical skills. For example, in a printing unit, the printer has more technical knowledge than the manager and if the manager exhibit patience to hear the opinions of the printer, complexities at the time of production could be avoided. “A failure to listen to employees is one of the primary reasons why many businesses fail. If you fail to communicate, you will fail to succeed. A leader cant lead if they dont have someone to follow them. Listen to your followers and give them your full attention” (The Importance of Using Rewards and Recognition To Lead, 2010) It is impossible for a manager to keep democracy always in his approach. Workers have different personality and characteristics. If the manager always maintains democratic styles, some workers may consider it as the weakness of the manager and may try to exploit it. On the other hand, if the manager always maintains a totalitarian approach, the employees may not approach him with suggestions or opinions. Employees should feel that their manger controlled by the situations rather than the inherent traits. Such feelings will help the development of manager-employee relationship on a positive note. Conclusions Management styles have an important role in deriving the maximum out of an employee. Caution mixed with aggression or democracy mixed with autocracy seems to be the best management style in my opinion. It is difficult to manage all the employees using either democratic or autocratic styles. A combination of the two seems to be the best approach. The manager should react with respect to the situations. Rewards are motivating factors for the employees to increase their performance and managers should use it judiciously in the form of incentives, praising words, or promotions. . References 1. The Importance of Using Rewards and Recognition To Lead, (2010), Retrieved on 19 May 2010 from http://www.exforsys.com/career-center/leadership-skills/the-importance-of-using-rewards-and-recognition-to-lead.html 2. Waller DJ, Smith SR, Warnock JT (1989), Situational theory of leadership Retrieved on 19 May 2010 from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2589352 Read More