A. Introduction to Excellence in management and leadership

3. Management effectiveness

Introduction

To establish a better understanding of current approaches to leadership and management, we need to come to some basis for defining what constitutes an effective manager. That is, we need to move beyond the concept of management as some aspect of what a workplace supervisor needs to know how to do and examine it in an applied, real context.

We also need to explore the basis which management and leadership theories have provided to frame the concept of an effective manager.

When devising management models the focus is invariably on using these models to identify and develop managerial effectiveness. But how is this defined and how do we know when we have enhanced management effectiveness?

We need to establish the basis from which we can study the concept of an effective manager. This will permit us to then assess not only what constitutes and effective manager, but later study these models for in leadership light of contemporary trends and situations.

This topic will explore three broad 'schools of thought' in defining leadership. We will look at how we have defined the effective manager in terms of the

• The Role and Trait Approach;
• The Behavioural Approach; and
• The Competency Approach.

Each of the above schools has unique characteristics but are they as mutually exclusive in their intent as we may assume?

Coverage in this cluster of topics includes:

• The effective manager - the role and trait approach
• The effective manager - the behavioural approach
• The effective manager - the competency approach

 

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