Chapter 8: Leadership in Management

Leadership Qualities

Managing and Leading Others

• $Leadership$ means taking a company and its employees in a direction based upon a vision.
• Leaders also make sure that the basic operations of an organization are running smoothly.
• Being a good leader takes several qualities.
  • Motivation, confidence, communication skills, and integrity are among them.
• Motivation has three different components.
  • One involves inspiring others.
  • Another component is initiative.
  • $Initiative$ is the ability to act and make decisions without the help or advice of others.
  • A true leader is motivated by a vision and uses it to inspire others
• Leaders also need self-confidence.
  • Being self-confident means knowing what to do and taking action
• A leader must be good at human relations.
  • $Human relations$ is the study of how people interact in the workplace and how communication can be improved.
• Good communication also involves mentoring.
• A mentor is a trusted counselor or guide.
• $Integrity$ is an adherence to a code of ethical values such as honesty, loyalty, and fairness.
  • Integrity is the most highly valued quality in a leader.

Developing Leadership Skills

• To manage activities successfully, you must draw on a specific set of skills.
  • These include human relations, communication, networking, problem solving, and decision-making skills.
• Leadership qualities are learned through knowledge and experience.
• Skills can be developed in a number of ways, such as
  • through reading books, watching videos, and taking courses on leadership.
  • by working with someone who has leadership ability and studying what he or she does.
  • by joining a club, a team, a drama group, or a community organization.
  • by taking initiative at school, at work, or in club activities.

Leadership Styles

Types of Leadership

• An $autocratic leadership$ style is one in which one person runs everything and makes all decisions without consulting others.
  • Autocratic leadership is useful in situations in which it is important to obey orders without question.
• Democratic leadership is a style in which managers work with employees to make decisions.
  • A democratic leader assumes that people have ideas and are inclined to contribute.
• $Free-rein leadership$ requires the leader to set goals for managers and employees and then leave them alone to get the job done.
  • Another name for this type of leadership style is hands-off leadership
• Giving managers and employees the power to run things and make decisions is called delegating.

  There are several reasons for a leader to delegate:

• The managers do not have time to do everything.
• The managers can focus on more important work.
• Employees have more ownership of the production process.
• Employees have a chance to develop their own potential.

Leadership in Teams

• Many companies have been putting workers in self-managed teams.
  • Self-managed teams are work groups that supervise themselves.
• With these teams, the manager’s role is replaced by the team leader’s role.
• In a self-managed team, the leader is a team player rather than a boss.
• Self-managed teams are organized in two ways:
  • (1) the team selects one team leader, or
  • (2) each team member employs specialized skills, but there is no team leader.
• Self-managed teams have many advantages:
  • They are more goal-oriented than task-oriented.
  • Team members have a chance to learn each other’s job and \n obtain new skills.
  • Team members learn to participate and cooperate.
  • Self-managed teams learn to solve their own problems.
• The disadvantage of self-managed teams is that some people do not have the skills and initiative to work together productively.