Leading is another of the basic function within the management process "Leading is the use of influence to motivate employees to achieve organizational goals" (Richard Daft). Managers must be able to make employees want to participate in achieving an organization's goals. Three components make up the leading function:
· Forming effective groups
The authoritarian leadership style or autocratic leader keeps strict, close control over followers by keeping close regulation of policies and procedures given to followers. To keep main emphasis on the distinction of the authoritarian leader and their followers, these types of leaders make sure to only create a distinct professional relationship.
The way a Paternalistic leader works is by acting as a father figure by taking care of their subordinates as a parent would. In this style of leadership the leader supplies complete concern for his followers or workers. In return he receives the complete trust and loyalty of his people.
The democratic leadership style consists of the leader sharing the decision-making abilities with group members by promoting the interests of the group members and by practicing social equality.
The laissez-faire leadership style is where all the rights and power to make decisions is fully given to the worker. This was first described by Lewin, Lippitt, and White in 1938, along with the autocratic leadership and the democratic leadership styles.
The transactional leaders focus their leadership on motivating followers through a system of rewards and punishments. There are two factors which form the basis for this system, Contingent Reward and management-by-exception.
The transformational leader is a type of person in which the leader is not limited by his or her followers' perception. The main objective is to work to change or transform his or her followers' needs and redirect their thinking.
Leadership is less about your needs, and more about the needs of the people and the organization you are leading. Leadership styles are not something to be tried on like so many suits, to see which fits. Rather, they should be adapted to the particular demands of the situation, the particular requirements of the people involved and the particular challenges facing the organization.
Visionary - This style is most appropriate when an organization needs a new direction.
Coaching - This one-on-one style focuses on developing individuals, showing them how to improve their performance, and helping to connect their goals to the goals of the organization.
Affiliative - This style emphasizes the importance of team work, and creates harmony in a group by connecting people to each other.
Democratic - This style draws on people’s knowledge and skills, and creates a group commitment to the resulting goals.
Pacesetting - In this style, the leader sets high standards for performance. He or she is “obsessive about doing things better and faster, and asks the same of everyone.”
Commanding - This is classic model of “military” style leadership – probably the most often used, but the least often effective.
Ø Improves Performance Level
The ability to do work and willingness to do work both affect the efficiency of a person. The ability to do work is obtained with the help of education and training and willingness to do work is obtained with the help of motivation.
Ø Helps to Change Negative or Indifferent Attitudes of Employees
Some employees of an organization have a negative attitude. They always think that doing more work will not bring any credit. A manager uses various techniques to change this attitude.
Ø Reduction in Employee Turnover:
The reputation of an organization is affected by the employee turnover. This creates a lot of problems for the managers. A lot of time and money go waste in repeatedly recruiting employees and giving them education and training.
Ø Helps to Reduce Absenteeism in the Organization
In some of the organizations, the rate of absenteeism is high. There are many causes for this-poor work conditions, poor relations with colleagues and superiors, no recognition in the organization, insufficient reward, etc. A manager removes all such deficiencies and motivates the employees. Motivated employees do not remain absent from work as the workplace becomes a source of joy for them.
Ø Reduction in Resistance to Change
New changes continue taking place in the organization. Normally workers are not prepared to accept any changes in their normal routine. Whereas it becomes essential to bring in some changes because of the demands of time.
At a simple level, it seems obvious that people do things, such as go to work, in order to get stuff they want and to avoid stuff they don't want. Why exactly they want what they do and don't want what they don't is still something a mystery. It's a black box and it hasn't been fully penetrated. Overall, the basic perspective on motivation looks something like this:
In other words, you have certain needs or wants (these terms will be used interchangeably), and this causes you to do certain things (behavior), which satisfy those needs (satisfaction), and this can then change which needs/wants are primary (either intensifying certain ones, or allowing you to move on to other ones).
A variation on this model, particularly appropriate from an experimenter's or manager's point of view, would be to add a box labeled "reward" between "behavior" and "satisfaction". So that subjects (or employees), who have certain needs do certain things (behavior), which then get them rewards set up by the experimenter or manager (such as raises or bonuses), which satisfy the needs, and so on.
