Leadership Style Questioner - Research Paper Example

RMIT UNIVERSITY BUSM1162 Management 1 – Managing People Assignment 2 Individual Assignment Lecturer and Tutor: XXXXXX Tutorial class: Friday, (xxxx) Student name and number : XXXXX October, 2015 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Contemporary business environment requires from organizations and individuals continuous improvement within leadership and management roles in order to increase effectiveness and profitability of business. In this sense, there are many academic researches and developed tools that had been focused on this topic. Within course of this work the survey on personal management and leadership competences has been conducted, in order to evaluate my current personal competences, and to define areas for improvement.In addition, Leadership Style Questioner had also been conducted, in support to overall evaluation. The result outputted that my major strengths are Compete and Create competencies, but however, areas that need improvement are Collaborate and Control competencies. Through detailed examination, it has been concluded that major focus areas for development of action plan are empathy (emotional intelligence) and controlling skills. Table of Contents 1.Introduction 3 2.Methodology 5 2.1.Literature review 5 2.2.Background of self-reflection and personal experience 8 3.Analysis of results 9 4.Discussion 11 5.Conclusion 13 6.Personal action plan 14 7.Appendix 18 7.1.Values Management Practices Instrument – Self Assessment 18 18 7.2. Competing Values Leadership Instrument – Assessment by Others 22 7.3. Global Leadership Competencies and Meta-competencies 26 1. Introduction Significant scientific research that had been conducted on organizational behaviorand leadership styles during many previous decades, emerged the concept of Competing Values Framework, developed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh. It was a response to the demand coming from companies to boost “successful leadership” ,advance “organizational effectiveness” with special accent to creation of value ( Quinn et al, 1998). The concept was quickly widely accepted by practitioners, however, in practice, it found new grounds within its application to improvements on management and leadership skills (Tong and Arvey, 2015). The new researches are also proposing application of competing values framework to be applied also on self-managed teams (Yang and Shao, 1996). It has became also useful tool for managers and leaders to evaluate their leadership styles and through self-reflection find their deficiencies in order to improve them. Following recent academic researches ,within course of this work a tool for examination of current level managerial and leadership competences is applied on personal example. In this sense, the aim of this assignment is to gain insights in my personal people management skills through application of tools including questioners on competing values for management and leadership practices, and leadership styles. Based on the results derived from questioner evaluation is conducted on those areas of my personality that need special attention for further improvement. The final part of the work is devoted to development of personal action plan whose purpose is to define steps and actions that would help me further to improve my management skills within a period of next 12 months. 2. Methodology Challenging contemporary environment encourage managers for continuous improvement of their managerial or leadership skills. In this sense, application of new and existing scientific approaches for self assessment regarding management practice and developed skills is necessary. Taking into consideration requirements of this work, the adequate methodology needs to be defined in order for task to be successfully accomplished. In order to conduct task of this assignment, contemporary literature review is conducted in order to sustain support for best utilization of chosen evaluation model and finally to find solution for deficiencies noted through execution of the model applied. Secondly, deficiencies in my management and leadership competences are analyzed through conducted survey on personal management and leadership competences,whose results are further discussed and action plan issued to support my improvement process. In addition, to further assess my leadership skills, the “leadership style questioner” is also performed. 2.1. Literature review Development of organizational and leadership competences had been in a spot of many academic researches. Especially during recent years, where it has been conducted an transformation in the leaderships styles from authority persons to contemporary much more open and relaxed personnel. In this sense, new concepts of transformational and transactional leadership emerged, while Judge, et al (2004) are adding to this group and “laissez-faire leadership” style. Flexible Training Partners (2015) are noting following leadership styles: Directing, Coaching, Facilitating and Delegating. Quin and Kameron (2005) are proposing “Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument)” or OCAI for the purposes of screening culture within one organization. This simple assessment instrument represents a form of questioner with only six simple questions. There are also longer versions of the questioner, depended on the preferences of the user, however, Quin and Kameron (2005) are noting that this six questions are exactly those target questions that allows to final user insight in the organizational culture. Figure 1: Action imperatives and action competitiveness Bakanauskiene and Martinkiene (2011) are separating managerial competencies into following “ blocks” : “professional”, “social” and “ personal”. Based on the conducted research they placed emphasis on the following personal competences “Knowledge, aptitude, ability, skills, attitude, effective performance, activities, behavior, implications of behaviors”, however, they also found that experts opinion diverge slightly from emphasized competences. On the other side, Cardy and Selvarajan (2006) are stressing that organizational-level and employee –level competences needs to be aligned within one organization, implying on possibility that there might be some differences in those views. Tubbs et al (2006) by conducting a comprehensive study on leadership competences, develop a “taxonomy of Leadership Competencies and Meta-Competencies,” a list that includes 50 major competencies that a leaders world-wide should possess or learn. (Appendix XX) .Boyatzis (2011) also investigated the topic of competences for effective managers and leaders within companies and organizations. He found that for management effectiveness mix of three competes are crucial for this to be achieved and includes : “emotional, social and cognitive intelligence competencies”, as described in the below picture . Source: Boyatzis, E.R. (2011), Managerial and Leadership Competencies: A Behavioral Approach to Emotional, Social and Cognitive Intelligence, Vision (09722629), Vol.15, Issue 2, p91-100. Singh ( 2010) is noting emotional intelligence as an extremely important asset of “ human capital” in organizations, implying on development of more soft skills within management and leadership structure for the purposes of “ effective management”. In line with this emerging trend in managers competencies there are many authors that had discussed this topic. Wall (2007) is stressing that leaders are required to talk more on the topic of “character, personality” and also in which way people integrate themselves within a working environment, organization or team (Wall, 2007). There are many authors who are arguing 360 degrees approach in competence assessment process ( Sharma, 2002), however, there are also authors who argue that this sort of assessment is actually applicable in practice , considering that it is focused more on a “generic and broader issues” than towards actual specifics (Vancherswar,2004). Boak (1991) is noting that personal self assessment process should be the starting point for development of “personal plans” which could be further monitored so that personal progress is continuously followed up. 2.2. Background of self-reflection and personal experience My personal leadership competences I have firstly revealed through engagement in charity activities. While still a student, I have organized a group of people who has been interested to get involved in activity of collecting support for homeless people. I have started discussing the idea with people and within couple of days we became organized group who had been able to collect substantial amount of money, food and goods that has been distributed to homeless people all around my home town. Those activities, aside that made me happy to provide help to those poor people, also gave me the possibility to get an insight of my organizational and leadership competences. I have realized that I have the ability to engage people to take some action through good presentation of an action plan. I have supported open discussion, considering that through this we came out to some very interesting ideas and approaches to initial plan. Survey on personal competences should reveal those areas of my personal leadership competences that are good, but also my weaknesses that needs further attention and improvements. Those weaknesses are addressed in personal action plan is developed and presented under Chapter 6 of this work. 3. Analysis of results For the purposes of initial self evaluation there are two surveys that had been conducted: one related to competing values on management practice and other related to competing values to leadership practice. As defined by Quin and Kameron (2005) the questioner should provide overview regarding four major competing values including: collaboration, control, creation and compete. Each of those competing values represents important segment of overall framework of managerial style. Collaboration is related to human relations, communication, team building etc. Create deals with creative thinking, change management, negotiations and similar. Third aspect, Control is focused on monitoring and management activities, while Compete deals with productivity, organization and delegating activities. The conducted surveys outputted following results: Table 1: Competing values assessment Competing values Collaborate Control Create Compete competing values management practice 5.3 5.7 6.25 6.4 competing values leadership practice 5.5 5.75 6.25 6.5 Graphical presentation represents quite useful tool within process of self-evaluation, because it maps all important segments of competing profile and outputs a quadrant where strengths and weaknesses can be easily spotted. Graphical presentation of questioner results is following : In addition to above mentioned questioner, the leadership style questioner as proposed by Flexible Training Partners (2015) had been conducted in order to further investigate my leadership competencies including: facilitating, coaching, delegating and directing. The concept is quite similar to one proposed by Quin and Kameron (2005), but focused exclusively on personal leadership skills. The results of questioner are following: Facilitating Total=24 Coaching Total=21 Delegating Total=16 Directing Total=21 4. Discussion Based on results from survey conducted, it could be noted that my both managerial and leadership competencies are aligned. There are no any significant differentiations between them, based on achieved scores. However, it could be noted that my Compete and Create competencies expressed slightly higher results than my Collaborate and Control competencies. This implies that my current skills are much more oriented toward promotion and encouragement of adaptability and improved productivity and increased profitability , than towards creating and sustain commitment and cohesion and establishing and maintaining stability and control. Based on research from Boyatzis (2011), the good manager needs to have aligned emotional, social and cognitive competencies, and in this sense, there is a space for improvement within my Collaborate and Control competencies. Following my response that led to definition of my current competitive skills ( Appendix 1 and 2) it could be clearly seen that my skills are much more oriented toward achievement of the goal than to communication with employees. For example the question related to listen of personal problems of employees is graded with lowest number in both questioners. Among other questions that had been graded with lower numbers are those related to open discussion on differences, show empathy among employees and show concerns of the needs of employees. It all clearly indicates that I need to focus more on soft skills and emotional intelligence as an crucial factor for contemporary successful leading of the people, as noted also by many academics, and important “human capital” as noted by Sing (2010). On the other side, related to Control competences my answers outputted similar results. Within management competencies, lowest graded questions are related to control of records and reports to spot differences, anticipation of workflow problems and check for errors and mistakes. It clearly, indicates an issue with ability and current skills for controlling the processes and people. This is also supported through leadership competences questioner where lowest graded questions are those related to protection of continuity in day-to-day operations, minimization of disruptions to the workflow and bringing a sense of order in the unit. In addition to above mentioned questioner, the leadership style questioner had been conducted in order to further investigate my leadership competencies including: facilitating, coaching, delegating and directing.Although, there is relatively high score in the result among Facilitating, Coaching and Directing skills, Delegating skills express significantly lower score. Delegating skills are related to concrete relation within employees pointing to delegation of responsibility for finalization of specific tasks to employees, and those employees are liable for their own errors and mistakes. On the other side, Facilitating skills represent my positive side, with respect to open and free discussion related to work and expressing their new ideas. However, aligning to results from previous questioner, discussion regarding private matters and problems, had not been in the scope of my business interest, and it could be concluded also that it is in line with defined luck of skills related to emotional intelligence. Above noted personal deficiencies had served as a basis for development of specific action plan whose aim is to define monitor and control (Boak,1991) my progress on improvement of managerial skills within a period of next 12 months, as presented in chapter 6. of this work. 5. Conclusion Contemporary business environment requires from organizations and individuals continuous improvement within leadership and management roles in order to increase effectiveness and profitability of business. In this sense, there are many academic researches that had been focused on this topic. There are also many tools developed, whose aim is to support organizations and individuals to spot their deficiencies in management and leadership styles and to assist them to successfully overcome them. The aim of this work is to apply such tool on my personal example and to critically discuss the results of it. For this purpose three questioners had been conducted: two dealing with competing values within management and leadership profiles, and third focused only on leadership style. The result of management and leadership profile questioner resulted in conclusion that Collaborate and Control competing skills are slightly lower than Create and Compete skills, imposing on space for improvement in this area. It has been clearly concluded based on the questioner answers that I luck emotional intelligence skills. In addition, I also need to make improvements within area of control of processes and working procedures. Through leadership styles questioner it has been concluded that Facilitation is my leadership asset, however Delegating skills express significantly lower score and in this sense, impose a call for improvement of my delegation skills, and again, aligned with results of previous questioners, to improve my skills related to emotional intelligence. 6. Personal action plan In order to se time frame and concrete actions that are going to help me in the future period to improve my leadership and managerial skills, following personal action plan had been developed. Areas for improvement Actions Time frame Empathy Communication with class colleagues regarding their personal issues Listening well people when they are speaking about their personal matters Trying to connect with others on emotional level Trying to be more open up in communication with others Pay more attention on feelings of the other person Withhold a judgment , if any Offer help Treat all people as being equally important During next 12 months Control of working process Try to setup controlling process of assignment submission of my colleagues Through controlling process anticipate if there are any potential future problems arising Check for errors Within next 3 months References Quinn, E.R., Cameron,S.K., Degraff, J. and Thakor, V.A., (1998), Competing Values Leadership, Edward Elgar, second edition. Tong, Y.K. and Arvey, R.D., (2015), Managing Complexity via the Competing Values Framework, Journal of Management Developemnts, Vol.34, Issue 6, p653-673. Yang, O. and Shao, Y.E., (1996), Shared Leadership in Self-Managed Teams : A Competing Values Approach, Total Quality Management, Vol.7, Issue 5. Quinn, E.R. and Cameron, S.K. (2005), Diagnosing and changing organizational culture: based on the competing values framework, Jossey-Bass A Wiley Imprint, revised edition. Boak, G. (1991), Three Dimensions of Personal Development, Industrial & Commercial Training, Vol. 23, Issue 5, p21. Sharma, R (2002), 360 Degree Feedback, Competency Mapping and Assessment Centers for Personal and Business Development, Tata McGraw-Hill, p239 Vancherswar, V. (2004), review of a book : 360 Degree Feedback, Competency Mapping and Assessment Centers for Personal and Business Development ( Book), IIMB Management Review ( Indian Institute of Management Bangalore), Vol 16, Issue 2, preceding p0-0. Bakanauskiene, I. and Martinkiene,J. (2011), Determining Managerial Competencies of Management Professionals: Business Companies Managers Approach in Western Lithuania region, Management of Organizations: Systematic Research, Issue 60., p29-43. Cardy, L.R. and Selvarajan, T.T. (2006), Competencies: Alternative Frameworks for Competitive Advantage, Business Horizons, Volume 49, Issue 3, p235-245. Singh, K. (2010), Developing Human Capital by Linking Emotional Intelligence with Personal Competencies in Indian Business Organizations, International Journal of Business Science and Applied Management, Vol.5, Issue 2,. Wall, B. (2007), Chapter3: How Emotional Intelligence Raises the Bar for Coaching, Coaching for Emotional Intelligence book chapter, p62-70. Boyatzis, E.R. (2011), Managerial and Leadership Competencies: A Behavioral Approach to Emotional, Social and Cognitive Intelligence, Vision (09722629), Vol.15, Issue 2, p91-100. Judge, T.A. and Piccolo, R.F., (2004), Transformational and Transactional Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Test of Their Relative Validity, Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 89, p755-768. Tubbs, L.S. and Schulty, E. (2006), The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, Vol.8, Num2. Flexible Training Partners 2015, Leadership styles questionnaire, //lms.rmit.edu.au 7. Appendix 7.1. Values Management Practices Instrument – Self Assessment 7.2. Competing Values Leadership Instrument – Assessment by Others 7.3. Global Leadership Competencies and Meta-competencies Source: Tubbs, L.S. and Schulty, E. (2006), The Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, Vol.8, Num2. Read More