Leadership and Management Flashcards
1
Q
What is management?
A
Naylor (1999) defined it as: “the process of acheiving organisational objectives within a changing environment, by balancing efficiency, effectiveness and equity, obtaining most from limited resources and working with and through other people.”
2
Q
What is the difference between management and leadership?
A
- Management is about controlling things, being hands on with activities like budgets, timescales, progress etc. It’s a function that must be exercised in any business.
- Leadership is more concerned with direction, movement, progress and change. It’s a relationship between the leader and the led and can energise an org.
3
Q
What is an org?
A
- Katz and Kahn: a social device for efficiently accomplishing through group means some stated purpose
- Mullins: There’re 3 features - people, objectives & structure. It’s the interaction of people in order to acheive objectives that forms the basis of an org.
- Schein: The planned coordination of the activities of a number of people for the acheivement of some common, explicit purpose or goal, through the division of labour and function and through a hierarchy of authority and responsibility.
- Barnard: A system of cooperative human activities
4
Q
What are the main functions of management?
A
- Planning: establishment of the organisation, breaking down the duties, devising a programme and objectives for a work area and allocating work amongst the team. Look ahead and anticipate future events.
- Organising: involves time and resources: design the structure of the organisation and define how the relationship between individuals and departments and delegate work. The number of people reporting to one person: span of control, should be limited.
- Problem-solving: seeing difficulties and challenges, hopefully before they arise, and planning an action to cope
- Coordinating: coordination of resources
- Controlling: evaluating performance and taking steps to bring it into line with plans. Budgets are one of a number on controls on output and expenditure.
- Communicating: the keystone in managing people as it touches everything above.
5
Q
What 5 key performance areas can management be assessed and developed by?
A
Boyatzis 1982:
- Goal and action management
- Directing team members
- Human resource management
- Leadership
- Specialist knowledge
6
Q
What are the managerial roles according to Mintzberg?
A
Mintzberg 1973:
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Interpersonal roles: arises from the managers’ relations with others
- Figurehead: represent the organisation and its policies
- Leader: motivate employees
- Liason: liaise with managers outside ones own area of responsibility
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Informational roles: arises as its an important role to play in communication
- Monitor: monitor information so that the manager can understand how things are operating
- Disseminator: pass on information
- Spokesperson: communicate information to where ever necessary
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Decisional roles: making decisions about the future of the organisation
- Disturbance handler
- Entrepreneur: initiates and plans controlled change by solving problems and improving things
- Resource allocator: decide where effort should be expended, and allocate finite resources
- Negotiator
7
Q
What makes teams distinct from groups?
A
- Groups normally made of individuals who share something in common, e.g. trait or interest, but don’t necessarily work co-operatively towards a shared aim.
- Teams actively pool their resources, skills and knowledge, and working together supporting one another, interdependently and with a clear understanding of how each member will contribute to the whole.
8
Q
What are the benefits of a team?
A
- Lead times for completing tasks can be shortened
- Close personal relationships can develop which enhance job satisfaction and a personal sense of value and well-being for team-members. This may result in members becoming more committed to the orgs aims and thus work harder to produce better results
- Individuals can extend their own skills and knowledge base by learning from and observing other working practices
- Members may be stimulated by performance challenges and support and inspire one another to acheive more
- Combining people skills may enable the org to extend its range of work. Opportunities to be involved in a wider range of interesting and challenging jobs can increase job satisfaction
- The risk of failure is reduced through shared responsibility and decision making
- Creativity can be enhanced as each team member can draw on the knowledge, skills and experience of others and use them as a sounding board for ideas
- The skills and working practices of a successful, established team could be transferred to other projects, thereby spreading the reqards of the intital investment of time and energy that team building requires.
9
Q
What’re the advantages of informal groups?
A
- Group members tend to have a common value system and certain shared views
- They provide social satisfaction for individuals
- They aid communication within the org providing an info flow where none usually exist
- They provide pressure groups demanding action or changes within the org
- They provide standards or norms of behaviour for their members
10
Q
What’re the disadvantages of informal groups?
A
- They provide an active grapevine, spreading rumours throughout the business - particularly at a time of change
- They can become too powerful and act as a disruptive force to the org. They can generate conflict when they clash with the org. They can serve a counter-organsiational function in that they tend to counteract coercive tendencies of the org
- The norms and standards for the group can be inconsistent with those of management
11
Q
What are common factors apparent in effective work teams?
A
- Goals: vision of what the team is all about
- Roles: what people do in a team to contribute to the goals of the organisation
- Size: 5-8 tends to be the ideal size of a team for an effective working group with a variety of views but the opportunity to share them
- Supportiveness: teams that are supportive of each other are more effective
- Processes: how the team does things, organises itself
- Relationships: who thinks what of who and the extent to which anyone respects and understands one another
- Cohesiveness: the more effective teams have similarities amongst its members: background, status, values, intelligence etc
12
Q
What are the Belbin Team Roles?
A
Belbin defined a team role as “a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in a particular way.” He identified 9 key roles for team effectiveness:
- Monitor evaluators: serious minded, prudent individuals with a built-in immunity from being over-enthusiastic. They are best suited to analysing problems and evaluating ideas.
- Specialists: dedicated individuals who pride themselves on acquiring technical skills and specialised knowledge. They provide the rare skill upon which the firm’s service or product is based.
- Resource investigators: enthusiastic, quick off the mark extroverts. They’re natural negotiators and are adept at exploring new opportunities and developing contacts. They are good at exploring and reporting back on ideas, developments or resources outside the group.
- Shapers: highly motivated with a lot of energy and a great need for achievement. They can be argumentative and may lack interpersonal understanding. Make good leaders as they thrive under pressure and generate action.
- Implementers: practical, self-control and discipline. They favour hard work and tackle problems systematically. They are efficient, reliable and see what is feasible.
- Team workers: supportive members of a team. Prevent interpersonal problems arising within a team.
- Coordinators: have an ability to cause others to work towards shared goals. Good at delegating, well placed when put in charge of a team of people with diverse skills and personal characteristics.
- Completer-finishers: have great capacity for follow through and attention to detail. They’re invaluable where tasks demand close concentration and a high degree of accuracy.
- Plants: innovators and inventors and can be highly creative. They’re good for generating new proposals and to solve complex problems.
13
Q
What are Tuckman’s stages of team development?
A
- Forming: bringing together individuals who formulate the initial objectives and roles of the team. The team will be cautious, keep opinions to themselves, encounter confusion. The leader should establish goals and promote communication.
- Stroming: views begin to be presented and disagreements and argument begin to occur. It’s important to let this happen to allow the team to mature and settle. The leader should reaffirm goals and roles and resolve conflicts.
- Norming: new guidelines and standards of behaviour will be established – its culture. The team will be tolerant of one another and have a sense of belonging. The leader should explore new goals, challenges and opportunities.
- Performing: the team will finally be able to concentrate on the achievement of its objectives. The team enjoys high levels of tolerance and participation. The leader should confront issues and praise and reward the team.
- Mourning: the team breaks up
14
Q
What are the three major approaches to leadership effectiveness?
A
- Trait approach: leaders have certain qualities or traits, which are innate and not easily developed or acquired. Certain traits make good leaders.
- Style approach: concept that managers adopt different methods when motivating staff and completing a task ranging from authoritarian to democratic:
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Contingency approach: the most effective leaders have the ability to adapt their style according to the situation.
- Fielder’s contingency thoery
15
Q
What are the style approaches?
A
- McGregor: Theory X (people hate work, authoritarian approach needed) & Theory Y (avg person seeks responsibility, work is as natural as play, democratc approach more suitable)
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The Ashridge Studies: Tells, Sells, Consults and Joins
- The tells style - the manager makes the decisions and annonces them
- The sells style - the manager makes his own decisions but rather than accounce them to the team he tries to persuade the team to accept them
- The consults style - the manager doesn’t make his decision until he has presented the problem to the group and heard their advice and suggestions
- Joins style - the manager delegates a group, including himself, the right to make decisions. The manager indicates the limits winthin which the decisions must be made
