Leadership communication objectives are set for the organization or the unit as well as for specific individuals. Therefore two kinds of plans are needed: plans for the team and individuals’ plans. Wherever objectives are specified for a group of people working together towards a common goal, a team goal is required. Within the team individuals are assigned specific objectives for achieving and these individuals need individual or personal plans.
Regular performance review is one of the main features. In the absence of a review system the system cannot function. The focus of the goal setting is on:
- Performance
- Improvement
- Future corrective action
- Frequency of reviews
- Self-Appraisal.
It is on the basis of these five elements that the planning of the is going to work.The purpose of evaluating is to provide corrective feedback to the concerned person. In such a system, the appraisal may be done for the purpose of assessing the individual’s potential and his compensations for career planning and identification of training and development needs and also includes appraisal of personality traits and not merely performance.
Top Management Support
Goal setting to be successfully implemented it is important that it has the full backing and support of the top management. In the process of implementation, there may be some redefining of objectives which in turn may lead to jobs being redefined. restructured or even totally scrapped in some cases. This is bound to lead to conflicts and friction and top management intervention may often be required to soothe disturbed emotions and find practical solutions. Top management needs to exhibit great patience, understanding and perseverance to see goal setting through its teething age.
Staff Motivational Methods
Reward management is about the development, implementation, maintenance, communication and evaluation of reward processes. A substantial knowledge does exist that focuses on the relationship between reward systems and the degree to which participative management is practiced. If an organization wishes to operate in a participative manner, it needs to change all its systems, including its motivational system. For effective participative management a different approach to pay for performance is required. It is to suggest that the correct approach is to pay bonuses based on group or plant-wide performance.
For success of participative management team performance needs to be rewarded. Of late, reward system practices are changing in consistent with participative management. Gain sharing has become increasingly popular in the last decade, and skill-based pay plans have replaced job-based plans in many manufacturing locations practicing participative management.
Reward systems influence attraction and retention of employees. Overall, those organizations that give the most rewards tend to attract and retain the most people.. This seems to occur because high reward levels lead to high satisfaction, which in turn leads to lower turnover and more job applicants.
The best performers represent a particularly interesting retention pr6blem. To retain them, a reward system has to work on a par with those received by individuals performing similar jobs at a similar level in other organizations. The emphasis here is on external comparisons because turnover means leaving an organization for a better situation as well. One way to accomplish this is to reward everyone at a level that is above the reward levels in other organizations.
When certain specifiable conditions exist, motivation systems have been demonstrated to motivate performance. However, performance motivation depends on the situation, how it is perceived, and the needs of people. The connection between performance and rewards must be visible, and a climate of trust and credibility must exist in the organization. The belief that performance will lead to rewards is essentially a prediction about the future. For individuals to make this kind of prediction, they have to trust the system that is promising them the rewards.
Just as reward systems motivate performance, they can motivate the learning of skills and the development of knowledge. Individuals need to see a connection between learning specific skills and a valued reward. Pay for performance systems may motivate learning and development because individuals perceive that they must develop their skills in order to perform effectively. Sometimes pay for performance systems may discourage individuals from learning new skills or motivate them to learn wrong skills. This can happen when the skills that should be learned are not directly related to present performance.
The reward systems in hierarchical organizations acts as a strong motivation to learn those skills that are perceived to lead to promotion. To counter this tendency some organizations are using skill-based pay when they want individuals to add new skills that do not involve promotions.
Reward systems also contribute to the overall culture and climate of an organization. Depending on how reward systems are developed, administered, and managed, they may cause the culture of an organization to vary quite widely. Reward systems are often a significant cost factor in organizations.
One of the important attributes of work organization is its ability to give rewards to their members. Pay, promotions, fringe benefits, and status symbols are perhaps the most important rewards. Because these rewards are important, the way they are distributed have a profound effect on the quality of work life as well as on the effectiveness of organizations. Every organization has some characteristics which are common with any other organization. At the same time, each organization has its unique set of characteristics and properties. This psychological structure of organization and their sub-units is usually referred to as Organizational Culture.
Culture is a commonly experienced phenomenon and many words like, climate, atmosphere, environment and milieu are often used interchangeably to describe it. Organizational climate is a relatively enduring quality of the internal environment that is experienced by the members, influences their behavior, and can be described in terms of values of a particular set of characteristics of the organization.Organisational is the set of characteristics that describe an organization and that (a) distinguish one organization from other organizations; (b) are relatively enduring over time and (c) influence the behavior of the people in the organization. Organizational Culture is a relatively uniform perception held of the organization, it has common characteristics, it is descriptive, it can distinguish one organization from another and it integrates individual, group and organization system variables.
Just as any culture has some do’s and don’ts in the form of totems and taboos which dictate how each member should behave with a fellow member or an outsider, similarly each organization has a culture that influences the behavior of employees towards clients competitors, colleagues, supervisors, subordinates and strangers. Organizational Culture is the perceived aspects of an organization’s internal environment, but within the same organization there may be very different OCs. This might happen because people with different length of experience or at different levels of organization’s hierarchy, may perceive internal environment of an organization differently. Personal characteristics such as Values, Needs, Attitudes and Expectations determine the manner in which an individual is likely to perceive the various aspects of the internal working environment of the organization.
Developing Cooperative Relationships
A relationship will be maintained and will prosper only when it satisfies the participants’ needs and expectations. In a mutually helpful atmosphere, the participants tend to cooperate rather than compete in sharing limited resources or rewards. In work organizations, the people compete for limited resources—pay increases, promotions. power and recognition. Development of a cooperative work culture depends on three factors:
- Shareable goal: The perception that the goal is shareable by the staff members all interdependent functioning, there exist at least one superordinate goal which can be achieved only if the members cooperate.
- Perceived power of all members: The perception that all members have power enough to use in a benevolent or a malevolent manner, depending upon their individual choice.
- Trust: A minimum level of trust prevailing among the staff that power of the other party will not be used in a malevolent manner. The present level of trust is a product of past experience and self-fulfilling prophecy. The more trusting the members become, the more likely it is that they will engage in cooperative relationships in future.
Resolving Problems:
A close relationship will be maintained by building trust, acceptance and support. At times when one member may become angry with the other for failing to meet the psychological contract. When this occurs, the first party should constructively confront the second. How well the two handle such an interpersonal problem will indicate the depth of the relationship. In a narrow relationship, one member may ignore the destructive behavior of the other, hut in a mature relationship, however, both parties should engage in constructive confrontation in order to improve the quality of the relationship.
Weakness
The leader smoothes out the path towards goals and provides rewards for achieving them. As a leader, I should understand the needs of the people and their desire to work or behave in a way that accomplishes goals that satisfy those needs. This theory is based on a situation of the above kind. If I know the need of the person and his desire to work and he is able to accomplish the work, I can reward him to make him feel happy and satisfied. In essence, I am doing three things: One; I am motivating the members of the group by clarifying the path to personal rewards that result from attaining work goals. I have thus ‘fixed’ him on the job and made him see that his performance can lead to positive or negative rewards. Two, I have already made the path-goal clear to the member and also told him about what the job requires. I need not say too many things about the job to him as this may decrease his interest in the work and deter his performance. Three, I must offer the reward to the member of the group who actually accomplishes the task. My reward may be praise or increase in the pay or promotion of the member to a higher position. My judgment about the desirability of the member to a higher position is crucial. My judgment about the desirability of the member’s effort and the goal helps me to decide whether a reward can be given.
The head of the committee provides directions to the committee to fulfill the objectives of the committee. He or she should be a person of open mind and a careful listener. He or she should allow members to voice their opinions and should not place his or her opinion above those of others. He or she should involve everyone in the activities of the committee. He or she should have active interest in the purpose of the committee and in the ideas of the members. He or she should help the committee focus on the task at hand and on the progress made.
The members of the committee should cooperate with each other to achieve the purpose of the organization. To a great extent the image of a committee depends on the cooperation of members with each other. They should have stronger motivation to accomplish the task. They should have effective communication with each other. There should be more ideas generated in the group, along with increased satisfaction and performance of the members. It is the head who should try to ensure communication, satisfaction and productivity among the members of the committee.
Meetings of members in a committee may be time consuming and costly insofar as individual’s time is concerned. Committees are also criticized for not making the members responsible for bad decisions or mistakes. Many individuals use the committee as a shield to avoid personal responsibility for bad decisions or mistakes. In fact, all committee members as well as head should be made responsible for all decisions. It is in the interest of the committee to differentiate between very conscientious members who voted against a wrong decision as well as those who took a particular decision and can defend it to the end. Many decisions taken by a committee may or may not be liked by members of the organization who are likely to be affected by it.
Leadership Styles
Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ) is the most important style that gives good result. The LBDQ was administered in a wide variety of situations and surprisingly two dimensions of leadership continually emerged from the study: one is ‘consideration’ and the other is initiating structure’. Consideration reflects the extent to which individuals are likely to have job relationship characterized by mutual respect for subordinates, ideas and consideration of subordinates feelings. I may say that it is the behavior of the leader indicating friendship, mutual trust, respect and warmth in the relationship between the leader and his group members.
Initiating structure reflects the extent to which individuals are likely to define and structure their roles and those of their subordinates towards goal attainment. In other words it is the behavior of the leader which deals with the relationship between himself ad the work-group and tries to establish well-defined patterns of organization, channels of communication and method of procedure.
Group and Exchange Leadership
The leader provides more benefits or regards than burden or costs for followers who help him achieve the goal of the organization. There must be a positive exchange between the leader and followers in order for group goals to be accomplished. The leader can give rewards to his followers in the form of praise or pay increase or promotion for accomplishment of the group goal or task. This has positive impact on attitudes, satisfaction and performance of the followers. In return, they respect the leader and give due regard for his status and esteem and believe in his heightened influence. A leader emphasizes initiating structure when followers do not perform very well. He increases his emphasis on consideration when the followers do a good job. In return, the perception of his followers of his being an effective leader increases. Hence the leader and the followers mutually affect each other.
Social Learning Theories
Person and environment function in conjunction with the behavior itself and reciprocally interact to determine behavior. A person, through his actions, produces the environmental conditions that affect his behavior in a reciprocal fashion. The experience generated by behavior also partly determines what a person becomes and can do. This in turn affects his subsequent behavior. The theory is called social learning theory because, individuals learn in an environment in the process of interacting with each other which is a social process. I will appreciate the application of this theory in understanding the behavior of a leader and the continuous reciprocal interaction between the leader’s cognitions and environment, including subordinates and their needs, experiences, objectives in the organisation, abilities, and skills. energy performance, etc. known as contingencies that regulate their behavior.
The three aspects of leadership assume that the leader knows how his behavior is controlled by various needs, situations and experiences that he undergoes. The leader works with the subordinates to discover what those needs situations and experience. The leader and the subordinates jointly attempt to discover ways in which they can manage their individual behavior to produce mutually satisfying as well as organizationally productive outcomes
References
1. Leadership A communication perspective By Michel z Hackman Craig E Johnson
