A. Introduction to Excellence in management and leadership
1. Leadership in the workplace
a. Leadership and Management
index of contents
Distinguishing Leadership, Management and Supervision
Activity 1
Figure 1 - Manager - Leader Authority Dimensions
Activity 2
What do modern organisations want from workplace leaders?
Figure 2 - Leadership set against a backdrop of 6 decades of industrial change
Figure 3 - Transforming organisations moving from the Industrial to the Information Age
Table 1 - Major external factors requiring management and translation
Distinguishing Leadership, Management and Supervision
While management and leadership are interdependent, one can make a simple distinction between the two by describing leadership as the creation of vision and orientation of action, and management as responsible for actualisations, or actions undertaken to achieve the vision. This distinction does not prevent 'blurring' of the concepts. As later study will reveal all too often workplace leadership has been studied as an aspect to the function and task of management. Some of the most important observations and leadership models have come from authors and managers examining the importance of moving beyond day-to-day management of applied performance (doing), to the creation of a vision and motivation of people (being a leader). Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus succinctly stated the different perspectives by distinguishing managers as "the people who do things right", while leaders "are people who do the right thing" (Bennis and Nanus, 1985:21). Within this context supervision is the role assumed by leaders and managers to ensure that actions are undertaken to achieve the desired ends.
For the supervisory level manager (first-line or front line manager) all too often effectiveness revolves around responsibility for performance outcomes that require using both management and leadership competence. Yet, as we will illustrate, management and leadership are distinct, and both the organisation and the individual supervisor need to be very well aware of their capabilities for both. In today's organisations, workplace leadership must be viewed as an activity not restricted to any form of 'manager' or limited by a hierarchical position in the organisation.
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Activity 1
- Think about some definitions for the following. You may wish to note some definitions for later discussion with colleagues:
A Manager isA Leader is:
A Supervisor is:
A Junior Staff Member is:
- Could a supervisor be a manager, leader and a junior staff member all at the same time?
- Would a workplace leader always be a supervisory-level firstline or frontline manager?
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Much of today's literature assumes organisations and individuals not only understand the distinction between supervision, leadership and management, but also can pursue career and allocation of tasks based on this understanding. To further assist us develop our understanding this section will progress to investigate the supervisor having roles they undertake. The supervisor may be anyone. They could be a manager or a leader, but they also may be any staff member.
Figure 1 Manager - Leader Authority Dimensions
(above modified from Tannenbaum & Schmidtt, 1972)
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The Tannenbaum and Schmidtt Continuum clearly expresses the modern dilemma in which leadership is not vested in an individual manager but in a workforce composed of individuals who all have the capacity to influence strategic outcomes. This builds on the earlier sections observations on the use of authority. A central aspect to leadership is how the leader vests authority and involves staff. Individuals who try to use authority to control or monopolise problem-solving mechanisms invariably lose the flexibility of harnessing team and 'subordinate' input into decision-making and change processes. In effect, it is this desire to control how things are being done that marks the manager, and the desire to involve and inspire others that begins to delineate the leader.
The Tannenbaum and Schmidtt Continuum reinforce the importance of authority in distinguishing leaders from subordinates. Legitimacy of power is intertwined with this study. The more followers perceive power to be legitimately vested with an individual leader, the less individuals are likely to resist or frustrate the exercise of power (Sayles, 1979:49; & Ehrlich, Meindl & Viellieu, 1990). Equally where organisational and societal cultures have been become less willing to accept power resides with the position, the more difficult it has been for the person in the position to expect their power to be considered legitimate. This strongly reflects the trend in Western management styles to focus on the individual leader and their situation inspiring others, rather than in the authority to lead being vested in a hierarchical position.
Leadership can be defined, even if how we do this can vary. Let us examine some definitions of leadership by different authors, from different perspectives.
Some see leadership as purely the set of traits or characteristics attributed to individuals who are identified as leaders. This is the focus on the person :
. the true leader is a listener. The leader listens to the ideas, needs, aspirations, and wishes of the followers and then - within the context of his or her own well-developed system of beliefs - responds to these in an appropriate fashion. That is why leaders must know their own mind. (Depree, 1989:xxi)
Authors equally stress the importance of the context or 'terrain' (Sandy, 1990:63) leaders must operate and the teams the have to build. In this sense leaders are shaped by the situation and context . Elliot Jaques and Stephen Clement argued in 1991 for a move back to leadership basics where leadership is analysed and developed:
. requisite for a particular time and place, both individual and circumstantial (1991:xiv).
Some view leadership as tied to the ability to influence and motivate people to achieve goals. This act occurs in a setting, linked to culture. The act :
Leadership is defined broadly [as] influencing task objectives and strategies, influencing commitment and compliance in task behavior to achieve these objectives, influencing group maintenance and identification, and influencing the culture of an organization. (Yukl's, 1989b:252)
The vision:
Strong leaders want to find that special vision that will shift their organizations into over-drive, that will speed things up in the right direction while conserving energy and power. To be effective, to truly inspire and motivate excellence and achievement in organizations, leaders must find the right vision from among the many good and bad possibilities always available. (Nanus, 1992:25)
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Activity 2
Complete the reading from Lashway, et al (1997, revised 2002). Now complete the following:
- This reading focuses on school principals but it is of interest to note that many of the new leadership studies have come from this sector. List all the factors the authors suggest have been proposed as components to study or profile a leader?
- How does a person's position in the organisational hierarchy affect their leadership skill requirements?
- Does any one way of profiling a leaders stand out for you as a means to profile international leadership skill requirements? Do you think this is a reasonable basis to tailor different leadership learning and development programs?
Now undertake some personal reflections on the role of a supervisor as a leader.
- Can you identify a situation where a supervisor has performed a role as a leader?
- Reflect on the latest new releases (print, television or other medium), can you identify someone who is playing a significant leadership role in the community or a company?
- In both the above situations consider what made you choose these people as leaders?
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What do modern organisations want from workplace leaders?
The first years of the Twenty First century have confirmed The Industrial Age is buried, and the knowledge age and the associated information economy have well and truly assumed dominance. Yet, as much as we may believe this statement to be true, in the 1990s it was less apparent. Leadership experts noted how leaders performed and the environments within which they operated had significantly changed from those present in the inter-war period (1918-1940). The experts and the long serving practitioners also could identify how prevailing leadership styles and models had evolved, but they still seem to hold traits of an industrialised society that was closer to agrarian revolution than it was to the knowledge age. At the start of the Twenty First Century, it is apparent the global need to compete in the Information Economy crystallised the need to re-evaluate how we approach the development of leaders and definition of effective workplace leadership and management.
Some of the changes of immediately apparent in the operational environment for organisation leaders between 1940 and 2001 include (Barham et al., 1988:37):
- Flatter, faster-moving, market-driven, cost-conscious, complex organizational environments;
- More organizational 'surface' exposure to environment;
- Increasingly decentralized and fragmented organization;
- Integration of business strategy with organizational culture;
- Increasing importance of 'horizontal' management relative to 'vertical' management in order to manage quality, service, and technological imperatives;
- Increasingly international environment; and
- Unprecedented emphasis on people as organization's most vital resource.
These organizational and environmental developments have implications for how individuals both manage and lead. The implications also apply to leaders in other sectors and types of enterprise, such as the service industries, government agencies, and small businesses.
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Figure 2 Leadership set against a backdrop of 6 decades of industrial change
(Bowles and Graham 1993 and see IBIS Information International)
1940s Military-industrial driven growth
War driven industrial mass production and focus on improved technology
1950s Search for production efficiency
Industrial expansion, shortage of resources (labour and inputs), growth of new manufacturing industries and businesses
1960s Science and technology innovations and expansions
Extensive introduction of new science and technology , research and development driven solutions to consumer and industry production needs
1970s Market expansion and competition
Market forces shape production, search for new markets, globalisation of commodities
1980s Financial markets and consolidation of ownership in larger businesses
Global financial markets emerge and impact local markets, consolidation of larger businesses into trading blocs and conglomerates, emergence of new bread of mega- multinational businesses
1990s Emergence of the Internet and Information
Evolutions form data to information focus and allocation and organisation of markets, businesses and people to maximise technology and information driven markets
2000s Consolidation of the knowledge-based business
Movement beyond information to knowledge that is tied to purpose, markets cross national and artificial industry or occupational boundaries, knowledge as a commodity, presence of virtual communities (knowledge workers, teams, organisations, markets, education, etc.) and rapid transfer of technology and codified knowledge across the globe.
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Figure 3 Transforming organisations moving from the Industrial to the Information Age
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The speed of business and supply cycles accelerated. Cycles of planning and responsiveness to changing customer demands had all compressed. One of Australia's largest companies (and a Forbes 500 company) noted that the average shelf-life (before complete re-ordering and renewed production was required) of a non-perishable supermarket product had evolved from:
4 years in 1950
1 Year in 1980
40 Days in 1993
4 Days in 1999
26 hours in 2004
In the same period of time it was identified that Australian corporate leaders could no longer focus the majority of their effort on internal issues. Major external factors that required constant translation into the organisation's current activities and future directions. Some of the major external factors are listed in the next table.
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Table 1 Major external factors requiring management and translation
| Government legislation and policy |
- Shifting tax base
- Privatisation trends
- Global not local best practice benchmarks
- Centralisation of major agencies
|
| The shift to Total Quality Service and Improvement Systems |
- Continual improvement
- Flatter organisation
- Customer focus
- Staff responsibility
- End to end supply chain solutions
- Added value
|
| Global competition with shrinking local markets |
- Compulsory competitive tendering for public contracts
- Growing presence of major corporations and multinationals in regional markets
- Decentralised markets and suppliers
|
| Industrial relations |
- Team work
- Decentralised workplace agreements
- Multiskilling
- Compliance (Eg. Health and safety)
|
| Customer needs and expectations |
- Increased customer expectations
- Value offer of brand and life of product
- Satisfying needs
|
| Budget and finances |
- Shrinking funding
- Doing more with less
- Activity based financial management and improvement
|
| Technological Change |
- Work practices
- Cost efficiencies
- Convergence
- Rapid innovation cycles
- Virtual networks
- Accelerated high speed information exchange and transfer
|
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