Effective Management and Leadership Programme

The purpose of the presentation is to present the key recommendations for developing an effective management and leadership programme.

Make a presentation including bibliography/references which will show your source of information gathered.

Details about the reliability of your information, why did you choose the source, and to what extent can you trust the source and why- e.g. a company report might be more upbeat about the situation of the company than an externally conducted analysis similarly. Similarly you might identify conflicting information from different newspapers on their political biases etc how did you get around this.

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Leadership and management have been amongst the most studied and controversial topics of the study of business and management for the last century.  The body of theory which has grown up around the subject reflects the change in thought on management theory and can be distilled into a framework which shows the evolution f the ideas of what makes a good leader and management, and by proxy of this one can define with reference to the theory the key skills which need to be developed in order to produce good leaders.  Broadly there have been a number of movements in the thought on leadership and management, beginning with the ‘great man’ approach, defined in a number of studies on the history of leadership and management studies as the belief that leaders are exceptional people born to great innate abilities, this reflects the early school of militaristic styles of leadership, reflected in the organisation as a male dominated and hierarchical structures to business as a whole.  This data is drawn from two key studies, one a study of  the comparisons of more modern transformational leadership compared with previous styles, which allows one to assess the need for key innate personality traits, the other a modern study of an attempt to define a universal framework of leadership.  Both of these studies argue that a key part of the management and leadership of an organisation, despite the move from the great man approach, is still rooted in the idea of an inspirational character with innate abilities. 
These abilities have also been studied with some detail and indeed the evolutionary process in management thought moved from this point to study the traits that made an effective leader and manager.  The table shown below comes from an extensive study on the skills and traits of leaders, and is still used in theory to define those skills advantageous to leaders and managers.

Leadership Skills and Traits (Stogdill, 1974)

Therefore it can be argued with reference to the literature that the first steps in designing an effective leadership and management programme is to identify by aptitude and ability the kind of people who are going to make good leaders.  In the past it was thought that leadership was something that one was born to, but as will be seen the relationship to leadership of the personality is not as clear cut and much depends on the type of leadership one wishes to develop, and indeed the organisational factors.
The movement away from the individual qualities of leadership began with the behavioral school, according to much of the literature the move is seen as a departure from the militaristic style of the study of management and leadership.  Theories of the subject include the now standard McGregor’s X and Y beliefs, shown below;

Theory X and Y Managers (McGregor, 1960)

And Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Grid, as depicted below;

The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964)

This move away from seeing the organization as more than a hierarchy with leaders at the top of the pile and workers as subservient to them is a dramatic change in management theory and suggests that in designing any effective leadership or management structure and training the type and classification of the organization and the people involved become central to the success.  Clearly this is demonstrated by a body of literature on the subject of behavioral management, and it is easy to see why the move become more popular than traditional management as it follows a move in the philosophy of management as a whole.  The behavioral School I still important, but the consensus has been that it cannot explain everything in the leadership and management paradigm.  Modern thought has centered on a contingency paradigm, which begins from the point that there is no one way to manage or lead, and the correct style is contingent on the nature of the organization, the external needs of the business and society and the internal needs of the workers and management.   A number of models have been produced, from ones dealing with social enterprise and the public sector, of which this example from the National College for School Leadership is an example of the types of leadership they have identified;

“•

Emergent leadership

, when a teacher is beginning to take on management and leadership responsibilities and perhaps forms an aspiration to become a headteacher
•

Established leadership

, comprising assistant and deputy heads who are experienced leaders but who do not intend to pursue headship
•

Entry to headship

, including a teacher’s preparation for and induction into the senior post in a school
•

Advanced leadership

, the stage at which school leaders mature in their role, look to widen their experience, to refresh themselves and to update their skills
•

Consultant leadership

, when an able and experienced leader is ready to put something back into the profession by taking on training, mentoring, inspection or other responsibilities.”

To frameworks developed for the professions especially in terms of ethical leadership and responsibilities, as this one from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales;

Through to the guidance and descriptions issued by the IMPM for its advanced leadership and management course;

“The International Masters Program in Practicing Management is designed to be the “Next Generation” Masters Program, combining management development with management education. It is a degree program that focuses directly on the development of managers in their own contexts – their jobs and their organizations. The IMPM is therefore deeper than conventional programs of management development and more applied than traditional degree programs. It was launched in March of 1996 to acclaim from participants and their companies alike, as well as from the international business press.

“The IMPM seeks to break the mould of the functional “silos” so common in management education – marketing, finance, organization behaviour, and so on. Instead, the Program is structured around managerial “mindsets”, one for each module. It opens in Lancaster with managing in general and the

reflective

mindset in particular. Then it moves to McGill, where attention turns to Managing Organizations and the

analytic

mindset. Bangalore follows with Managing Context, the

worldly

mindset. In Japan, it takes up Managing Relationships, the

collaborative

mindset. The Program closes at INSEAD with Managing Change, the

action

mindset.
More detail is given about each of these mindsets by Mintzberg and Gosling (2003):

• The

reflective

mindset refers to “managing self” – developing the ability to reflect and make meaning – a form of emotional intelligence.

• The

analytic

mindset refers to “managing organisations” – developing the ability to analyse and synthesise not only the hard data, but also the soft – “to appreciate scores and crowds while never losing sight of the ball”.

• The

worldly

mindset refers to “managing contexts” – to appreciate cultural and local differences and similarities and respond accordingly.

• The

collaborative

mindset refers to “managing relationships” – developing partnerships and networks; working with people – managing “relationships” not “people”.

• The

action

mindset refers to “managing movement” [or “change and continuity”, or “mobilization”] – managing change without losing track of continuity.

It is argued that the good manager/leader must master and integrate each of these mindsets and so offers a more cognitive and reflective approach to management development than more traditional behaviour and skills-based programmes.”
In conclusion the recommendation of this presentation is to consider three areas of design.  Firstly to consider the criteria for considering an applicant’s needs and suitability, reflecting the traits, in relation to the needs and requirements of the organization, reflecting the contingency of the organization and society. Secondly to look closely at the needs of the organization, especially at the needs of subordinates and the overall strategic direction of the organization, which reflects both behavioral and the specific needs of the organization in relation with the external environment.  Lastly To examine the type of leadership needed, with specific reference to the examples from the public, private and professional examples given above, which show that the ideal leadership and management style is very specific to the sector in which the organization is based.

References

Blake, R.R. and J.S. Mouton (1964) The managerial grid. Houston TX: Gulf.
Gronn, P. (1995) Greatness Re-visited: The current obsession with transformational leadership. Leading and Managing 1(1), 14-27.
Gosling, J. and Mintzberg, H. (2003) Mindsets for Managers. Working paper, Centre for Leadership Studies.
Hamlin. R. (2002) Towards a Universalistic Model of Leadership: a comparative study of British and American empirically derived criteria of managerial and leadership effectiveness. Working paper WP005/02, University of Wolverhampton.
McGregor, D. (1960) The Human Side of Enterprise. New York: McGraw Hill.
Stogdill, R. (1974) Handbook of Leadership (1st Ed.). New York: Free Press.