1.0 Introduction
Leaders and managers are different and play different roles in an organisation. Nevertheless, to be more effective as managers, line managers alongside other managers need to learn the concepts of leadership so that they can be effective as leaders and managers. The aim of this report is to analyse the different roles played by leaders and managers and how concepts of leadership are applicable to managers to motivate the employees and increase performance among the employees. The first part of the report is the introduction followed by critical examination of the distinct differences between the leaders and managers. It looks into the contemporary and traditional leadership theories and how they affect the organisation as well as how ethical approach affects strategic leadership. The third part looks into the manager’s role in enhancing organisation’s effectiveness through employee motivation and engagement. The third part reflects on the two parts and summarises the content of the report.
2.0 Strategic leader and manager
2.1 Differences between a leader and a manager
There is a significant difference between a leader and a manager. Leadership is the process of setting a vision and aligning people to follow the vision while motivating them to keep working towards the right direction. This implies that leaders inspire people to follow after them and to act on their vision. Leaders influence people to act in a particular way. According to Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber (2009) the most important role of leadership is providing direction and motivation for people to follow towards that direction (McCleskey, 2014). However the influence of the leader has to be derived from the authority of the five bases of power which are legitimate power, expert power, referent power, expert power, coercive power and the reward power (Lo, Thurasamy and Liew, 2014). This implies that leadership provides advantages to an organisation by showing the direction, inspiring action and performance while ensuring that the organisation is headed towards the right direction. Despite this advantage, Krasikova and Green and LeBreton (2013) noted that leadership could be implemented by the destructive traits of leader. The traits that make leadership destructive included tyranny, narcissism, hate and unpredictability.
Management on the other hand is the process of setting targets and goals and organising people and controlling them in order to meet these targets and goals. It entails use of mostly coercive and rewards power to make people do things. Purcell and Hutchinson (2007) indicated that management is the ability to make people do things right. Managers are mostly concerned with meeting specific targets and goals. Managers are concerned with meeting short terms goals and objectives. This is unlike leaders who are concerned with long terms goals and achievements. Also managers are mostly concerned with the maintain status quo. Managers want things to remain the same while leaders are change oriented they wasn’t circumstances to change for the better. Managers are mainly concerned with controlling risks and minimising the risks in an organisation. They are the risk controllers. Managers also deal with people as employees by assigning tasks and directing the employees on what they should do. Management is advantageous in an organisation because it provides clarity on organisational goals and helps the organisation to eliminate unnecessary activities that are not directly to the expected results. However, management is significantly affected by the status differences between the manager and the employees which make it difficult for managers to interact with the employees.
In summary, it can be identified that leadership is the art of influencing people to do the right things through persuasion and motivation. On the other hand management is the ability to exercise control on a group of people and influence them to take certain action within a defined period in order to attain set objectives.
2.2 Critical evaluation of traditional and contemporary leadership style
There are two major perspectives that guide application of leadership in organisations. The theories are the traditional leadership theories and the contemporary leadership theories. The traditional theories include theories such as the trait theory, behaviour theory and laissez faire theory and autocratic leadership theory (Howell, 2012). There are also contemporary theories and they include theories such as servant leadership theories, authentic leadership theories and the task oriented leadership (Rego et al, 2013). These theories demonstrate a leader as someone wielding influence through referent power or power earned through respect earned by serving and being concerned about others (Copeland, 2014).
The autocratic theory of leadership held that leaders possessed exceptional knowledge and capabilities. leader exceptional. Therefore the employees were expected to completely follow orders from above. Contributions from the employees were forbidden. The leader wielded a lot of power on the employees and was the only decision maker in an organisation. This theory was very appropriate in contexts where the leaders were highly skilled and were dealing with unskilled labour. It was also effective in environments that required constant supervision and control. It was advantageous in areas where control was required in making the employees adhere to rules and regulations. However, this style was criticised for inhibiting creativity and innovation as the leaders could not effectively come up with new ideas and strategies. It also hindered innovations since the employees’ ideas and contributions were not considered as necessary (Yukl & Mahsud, 2010). It was appropriate for organisations that did not require high level of creativity and identity such as sweat shops and contract manufacturing organisations.
The servant leadership theory holds that the leader is a person who earns the trust and confidence of others due to their personal service and commitment to their followers’ interests. It holds that a leader should be someone with the willingness to serve the interests of the employees. Servant leadership is characterised by genuineness service to the followers by ensuring that their needs and wants are fulfilled (Amanchukwu, Stanley and Ololube, 2015). This theory is service oriented and holds that great leaders are the ones that act as servants of their followers and they are hardly noticed within the organisation despite their tremendous influence. Unlike in other traditional theories that depicted the leader as the one to give instructions to the followers, the servant leaders also agree to receive instruction and suggestions from their followers about their organisation (Gardner et al., 2011). The servant leadership is participatory in nature and it allows followers to voice their suggestions and their opinions to the management in order for the managers to make informed decisions. The servant leadership approaches encourages the employees to be collaborative trustworthy and to be team players in order to attain the organisation’s mission and vision. It is also characterised by empathy where the leader actively listens to employees personal problems and assist them when necessary (Rego et al, 2013). However, evaluators of the servant leadership theory such as Gardner et al (2011) have considered servant leadership as a weak form of leadership. They hold that servant leadership is very difficult as leaders tend to have minimal power and control over their employees. Other opponents of authentic leadership have indicated that the theory is not backed up by strong empirical research that has shown that servant leaders wielded more results from their followers (Peus, et al, 2013). Despite this limitation, servant leadership has been very influential in the twenty first century leadership especially in work environments that have highly skilled labour. Software and innovation companies with highly skilled employees use this approach to motivate and keep their experienced and high skilled employee motivate and working towards the organisational goals.
2.3 Why it is imperative for leaders to depict ethical behaviour
It is important for leaders to demonstrate ethical behaviour mainly because the leaders are role models of the employees. The employees are mostly reflection of the leaders. Whenever leader’s fails to be ethical the employees become unethical which sabotage business and the company (Elsi et al, 2012). This can be demonstrated in organisations such as Enron Company whose leaders were not ethical which created unethical culture within the organisation leading to eventual collapse of the company.
Ethical approach in leadership is essential in meeting the legal and moral obligations of an organisation such as paying taxes, compensating employees well and having good working conditions. Ethical approach in leadership entails meting the expected standards. It includes also treating the employees with dignity and respecting their rights. Walumbwa, et al (2010) Ethical organisations ensure that they are compliant with the existing rules and regulations which in turn create good relationship between the organisation and other stakeholders such as the government. It eliminates costs and other expenses likely to be incurred for engaging in unethical behaviours (Freiwald, 2013).
The other reason why ethical leadership is essential is that the being unethical acts as self sabotage. This is because unethical practices create a negative public image of the company. They create a negative reputation not only for themselves but also for their companies which makes the customers lose confidence in the company (Dierendonck, 2011). Also ethical leadership stops the employees from engage in negative behaviours such as stealing and mismanagement of resources which leads to eventual organisational failure (Gardner et al, 2011).
Ethical leaders enhance the employee engagement. This is because they make the employees have faith in the future of the company. It motivates the employees and makes them optimistic about the future of the company which leads to high performance in the organisation.
3.0 Employee motivation
3.1 The definition and model of employee motivation
Employee motivation is the willingness of the employee to apply effort and energy towards the attainment of the company’s goals. Abbah (2014) considered employee motivation as a set of forces that originate within and outside the employee that influence the employee to utilise energy, skills, and capabilities towards achieving the objectives of the organisation.
One of the major models of employee motivation is the Maslow’s theory of motivation. The theory holds that employees are motivated by five universal humans needs which are the need to have basic needs met, need for security, need to meet social needs, need for recognition and self actualisation needs (Peterson et al 2012). Maslow further developed Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which indicated that some of the needs should not be fulfilled without some of the needs being fulfilled. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the basic needs that include food, shelter and cloths, the second level of need was for security. The third need was social needs. The fourth need was for esteem and the top of the hierarchy was the self actualisation. To motivate the employees the leaders needed first to provide the employees with the basic needs and once the employee had the basic need they needed to have the security needs and the social/love needs met. However, Silvester (2012) noted that the main challenge with this theory is that fulfilled needs no longer motivated employees to work hard and the organisations had to continuously keep on indentifying the needs of the employees in order to motivate them accordingly. In addition the theory was limited by the fact that different cultures prioritised different needs (Larsen & Brewster, 2003).
3.2 Role of the manager in employee motivation
Line managers had significant role in the employee motivation. One of the roles which they played was ensuring that rewards provided met the employees need for basic needs, social need and security and achievement needs (Avolio, Walumbwa and Weber, 2009). The managers also needed to appealed to the employees’ intrinsic motivation by having rewards that the made the employees feel that their career was meaningful and it contributed to their overall career growth and provided them with work life balance (Albrecht et al, 2015).
The line managers also had to ensure that they provided a clear connection between performance and rewards. There has to be clear performance management metrics that assessed the employee commitment and input to work. The aim of such metrics was to ensure that the employees’ inputs were appropriately rewarded (Jang, 2010). Such metrics also reduced the feeling of discrimination and unfairness among the employees because they were aware of how rewards of each employee’s were determined. In addition the performance management and rewards should be in line with the industry standards to ensure that employees did not feel that their payment were lower compared to their counterparts in the same industry (Amanchukwu, Stanley and Ololube, 2015).
Line managers who set goals for their employees derived much better results than those who did not. In addition, line managers who involved the employees when setting the goals attained much better results compared to managers who did not involve their employees in the goal setting process (Brown, Trevino and Harrison, 2010). Most importantly the goals were very motivating when they were challenging. According to Albrecht et al, (2015) managers who set challenging goals elicited higher motivation from their employees compared to those who did not set challenging goals. Challenging goals that were realistic and meaningful increased employees need to learn, develop and network with other employees.
3.3 Proposal on how the line manager could improve organisational effectiveness by enhancing employee motivation
Managers and especially line mangers have a major role which they have towards the increasing organisational effectiveness. Employee motivation is essential in an organisation because it leads to increased employee productivity and organisational effectiveness. According to Maslow the employee motivation can only be enhanced by meeting the five universal needs starting with the most basic needs. To enhance employee motivation Robertson and Cooper (2010) proposed that line managers compensate the employees highly. This was because one of the major aspects that motivated people to work hard was to meet their basic needs. Line mangers should ensure that the pay provided by their organisation motivates the employees to work harder. In addition, the managers should introduced performance based pay such as bonuses to motivate the employees to be more productive by rewarding employees based on their productivity (D’Souza and Gurin, 2016). Performance based pay has been noted to enhance employee motivation and productivity as they know that their efforts would be rewarded by their organisation.
The other recommendation regarding the line mangers they should motivate the employees by meeting security needs especially for employees who have worked with the organisation for a long time (Jung, 2010). This can be done by providing job security to the employees. For instance employees who have worked for a long time with the company should be provided with security such as permanent employment or have better pay than those who are recently employed (Purcell and Hutchinson, 2007).
The line mangers should also motivate the employees by meeting their social needs. This can be done by providing vacations to employees. Other forms of social compensation include providing for employees welfare needs such as sick leave and maternity leave. It can also be done by providing employees with rest days in order to enhance work life balance (Abbah, 2014).
The line manager should also provide the employees with opportunities for growth and career development. According to Silvester (2012) employees who were in jobs where they were provided with opportunities for growth had higher motivation than those without (Kaliannan and Adjovu, 2015). The opportunities for growth are mostly perceived when there are opportunities of employee promotion and employee training and development. Employees feel motivated when they are aware that they are likely to be promoted to the next level of payment or responsibilities. Organisations that train employees demonstrate that they are still in business for long time compared to those that do not train their employees (Albrecht, et al, 2015).
The line managers should also enhance employee motivation by meeting the intrinsic needs of the employees such as the need for praise and recognition. Line managers should praise and recognise employees who have demonstrated increased improvement and performance in their work (Mone et al, 2011). They should also make the employees feel that their work is meaningful and that it contributes to the greater good of the society. This can be done by making the employees participate in corporate social responsibility activities that benefit the local communities.
4.0 Conclusion
This report first analysed the differences between a leader and manger. The study noted that the leaders were long term oriented, they were risk takers and they provided guidance to the employees. Managers were short term oriented; they focused on controlling the employees rather than providing guidance. The study noted that there were various leadership theories which were the traditional theories and contemporary theories, among the traditional theories the study examined autocratic theory of leadership as dependent on one person who made all the decision regarding that organisation. Employees were followers and were not expected to contribute ideas or voice their opinions. On the other hand the contemporary theories of leadership included the servant leader theory of leadership which held that leadership emanates from serving others. Servant leadership emphasised on the need of the leader working together with the employees in order to foster team work and collaboration among the employees. The other part examined the Maslow’s theory of motivation. It further looked into how the theories of motivation could be used by the organisation to enhance employee motivation and organisational effectiveness. This report proposed that the line managers can enhance motivation by providing employees with the basic needs and by ensuring the pay was equitable The line mangers also could enhance the employee motivation by involving employees in setting goals that are challenging and realistic. To enhance employee motivation should ensure that the employees are compensated well financially, that they have opportunities for growth and that they have work life balance.
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