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... ways they report too little communication from management about mission, objectives, and goals for the organization. Ronald Rifle's belief is that people want to make as large a contribution to the organization as possible. Their morale is highest when they are working hard with a common goal shared by everyone.
They work most effectively when recognized as valued contributing team members with unique and needed talents for the team's success. They soar when they feel their leadership qualities are operating fully. The surest way to strengthen your company or law firm is to build leadership skills in your employees. When everyone considers himself a team member, and feels accountable to the team, your company or firm will be operating with the synergism that teams can create. Substitute for Leadership What happens as patients, seriously ill, arrive at the emergency room of urban hospitals? As the ER personnel spring into action, who is in charge?
Similarly, what about the situation of a team of air traffic controllers bringing a jet into an airport during an air traffic crisis; where is the leader? Whereas each member of the emergency room staff appears to have specific tasks to do, they generally accomplish these without any apparent supervision. In terms of leadership, what is happening here? The work of Steven Kerr and John Jermier looked at those situations in which leadership is not needed. They examined situations where existing leadership models could not account for what was observed; work situations where it is difficult to tell who is really in charge. The literature is replete with references to numerous contingency models; Fiedler's Contingency Theory, Yukl's Multiple Linkage Model, House's Path-Goal Theory, Vroom-Yetton Model of decision making, and Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Leadership Theory.
All these models assume that some type of hierarchical leadership is needed and important in formal organizations. Ineffective leadership was assumed to be the result of leader behaviors which were inappropriate to the situation. Kerr and Jermier questioned these assumptions and suggested an alternative -- that certain aspects of the individual, the task or the organization reduced the importance of formal leadership by "neutralizing" the effects of leader behaviors. Further, other situational variables not only "neutralize" leader behaviors, but also "substitute" for them. These leadership substitutes have a direct impact on the subordinate. By focusing attention on non leader sources of influence, the leadership substitute model recognized that many factors in the worker's environment could provide the guidance needed on the job.
Characteristics Of Subordinates Several characteristics of subordinates may neutralize a leader's behaviors. These characteristics include the subordinates' abilities and experiences, their needs for independence, their professional orientation and their indifference towards organizational rewards. Competence Highly competent subordinates may not need nor want to be told what to do. Because of their abilities, experiences, training, or job knowledge, subordinates very often have the competence to act independently, without immediate supervision, as they perform their day-to-day duties.
In effect, they know what needs to be done and how to do it. Leadership by some "superior" would be redundant. Need For Independence The workplace of the new millennium will be a workplace of greater worker autonomy; employees are demanding it. Subordinates want more control over how work is performed and how their workday is structured. In many firms, work teams which assign specific tasks to their members, monitor and control performance and generally have considerable autonomy over work scheduling, have become the norm.
Thus, leadership comes not from a "leader", but rather, from the team itself... Professional Orientation Accountants, engineers, doctors, or software developers may show greater allegiance to their disciplines or their professional associations than to their employing organizations. Often, they have greater concern for the peer review process than hierarchical, organizational evaluation. Such employees may develop important referents, external to the employing organization.
As these employees place their discipline above the best interests of the organization, organizational leadership may become irrelevant. Indifference Towards Rewards. As is described by the Expectancy Theory of Motivation, motivation is linked with perception. The degree to which a specific reward will motivate an individual will depend upon whether: 1. The compensation is important to the person. 2. Additional compensation depends upon performance. 3.
The employee is sure that more effort will result in higher performance. Organizational leadership, if unable to provide rewards as stipulated by this theory, will fail to incite subordinates to follow. Characteristics Of Tasks Generally, leadership is defined as an ability to get followers to engage in activities beneficial to the organization. However, where is the need for leadership if the job is so intrinsically satisfying that subordinates will take it up voluntarily, or if it is so routine as to make any leadership superfluous? . Routineness For routine tasks, unnecessary and redundant leader directions will have an impact upon subordinate satisfaction, morale, motivation, performance and acceptance of the leader.
In effect, if a job is routine and simple, the subordinate may not either need nor want directions. Feedback and Intrinsic Satisfaction Motivational research indicates that employees desire a leader's support and feedback for ambiguous tasks. However, for clearly defined assignments they may not need nor want support or feedback from a leader. Often, performance feedback from the work itself is another characteristic of the task which acts as a leader substitute. Extrinsic rewards are extraneous to the tasks, bestowed by someone else -- promotions, pay raises, awards, titles or even compliments.
Intrinsic rewards, on the other hand, come directly from performing a task. Intrinsic rewards are a form of internal reinforcement such as feelings of accomplishment and self-worth, or having a sense of achievement. When a job is challenging and intrinsically satisfying, the employee may not need feedback or rewards from a leader. Characteristics Of Organization The formalization of norms and rules, group cohesion, inflexible or rigid reward structures may serve as organizational substitutes for leadership... Formalization Clear job descriptions or specific task objectives can substitute for leadership. A highly structured organization with explicit norms, rules, policies, procedures, plans, goals and areas of responsibility may be defined as being highly formalized.
Clear job descriptions or specific task objectives can substitute for leadership. In effect, the specificity of the objectives and job descriptions leaves no room for misunderstanding the organization's expectations of the subordinates. Group Cohesion In cohesive groups, the team members' desires to stay in the team outweigh their desires to leave. The team serves as an important source for satisfying the individual members's oil needs. Further, the desire to maintain those social relations, and not alienate the other team members causes team members to adhere rigidly to team norms.
This adherence to team norms will very often outweigh any leadership dictates... Organizational Inflexibility. An organization that is either incapable of, or resistant to, being changed may be said to be inflexible. This may be a result of very rigid organizational control structures, clear lines of authority, or unbending rules and procedures. In such an organization, employees are expected to adhere to clearly defined policies. Further, given strict adherence to organizational policies, leaders are given virtually no discretion over the enforcement of the rules.
If the employees are aware of this lack of supervisory discretion, then they are likely to disregard supervisory leadership... Rigid Reward Structure. In order for rewards to be effective, employees must place a high value on the rewards -- pay raises, promotions and high visibility work assignments -- under the leader's control. If a supervisor is able to exercise control over pay raises, can make recommendations regarding promotions and has considerable discretion in task assignments, he or she has a high level of reward power. However, if the rewards are not within the supervisor's control, he or she will have little or no influence. This lack of control then diminishes the effectiveness of the leader.
Current theories and models of leadership have placed considerable emphasis on hierarchical leadership that, in order to be effective, takes situational variables into account. There are many instances where "substitutes for leadership" exist. In these instances, the subordinate's dependency on the leader is reduced. Rigid bureaucratic rules and regulations, can reduce subordinates' information needs about the task to almost zero. In other instances the task may be totally specified by technology, or "professional standards" and the prescribed methodology may render the leader superfluous.
The substitute concept identifies situations in which the leader's behaviors are neutralized by characteristics of the subordinate, the task and / or the organization. SUBSTITUTES FOR LEADERSHIP Characteristics Of Subordinates "h Ability and experience "h Need for independence "h Professional orientation "h Indifference towards rewards Characteristics Of Tasks "h Routineness "h Availability of feedback "h Intrinsic satisfaction Characteristics Of Organization "h Formalization "h Group cohesion "h Inflexibility "h Rigid reward structure LEADERSHIP TYPES FOR CHANGING TIMES The rapidly changing face of the world of business here and internationally has offered up some rather interesting organizational phenomena that have served to challenge traditional views on everything from the practice of management to the conduct of production processes. Perhaps the most intriguing of these new developments, though, has been the re-orienting of notions of management. For one, the current thinking is that different structures, new challenges and the prospect of a perpetual state of change have demanded more by way of leadership and less and less in the line of age-old models of management. Indeed, our own Employers' Consultative Association (ECA), in celebrating its 40 th Anniversary, focused on what it termed "Re-Engineering Management: the Mandate for New Leadership. " For sure, the threat of obsolescence stares many in their faces. Some will recognise it for what it is.
Others will simply be washed away by this giant tide of change. The fact is the world of business is in the throes of a gigantic revolution which requires a style of leadership reminiscent of that displayed through some of the more challenging times in the history of Mankind. Anthropologist, Michael Maccoby, argues in an article in a recent edition of Harvard Business Review that such leadership should be both "visionary and charismatic." But, very importantly, he has noted that there has been a tendency to promote the role of a kind of leader who isn't that much different from the narcissistic personalities of times past. "Throughout history, " he suggests, "narcissists have always emerged to inspire people and to shape the future. " Among such notable personalities are: Napoleon Bonaparte, Mahatma Gandhi and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Such styles of leadership have not only been witnessed in the world of politics but also in the world of business where captains of industry and commerce such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were pre-dominant in changing the face of the modern world.
Of course, descriptions of the narcissistic personality emerge out of the turn-of-the- 19 th Century work of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud who identified the erotic, obsessive and narcissistic types. Narcissists, Freud argued, are independent, not easily impressed, innovators and are driven by a sense of power and glory. "Unlike erotics, " Maccoby adds, "they (narcissists) want to be admired, not loved. "And, unlike obsessives, they are not troubled by a punishing super-ego, so they are able to aggressively pursue their goals. " Sounds like somebody you know? It should. For, Trinidad and Tobago, has not escaped the grasp of this reliance on leadership personalities who display some of the more impressive qualities of the narcissist even as they exhibit some of their sharpest deficiencies and weaknesses. Such personalities, the experts contend, tend to be poor listeners who lack empathy, have a distaste for mentoring and possess an intense desire to compete. "One serious consequence of this oversensitivity to criticism is that narcissistic leaders often do not listen when they feel threatened or attacked, " says Maccoby.
Productive narcissists, on the other hand, "are not only risk takers willing to get the job done but also charmers who can convert the masses with their rhetoric. " This, however, can be converted to negative ends when, according to Maccoby, "lacking self-knowledge and restraining anchors, narcissists become unrealistic dreamers."They nurture grand schemes and harbour the illusion that only circumstances or enemies block their success, " he argues. This interesting blend of personality trait has served to create a management style that has created its share of problems and conflict but has also tended to help organizations, through their leadership, confront many issues head-on and with a greater degree of self-confidence. In the end, however, there does not appear to be an automatic correlation between the existence of narcissistic leadership and the success of modern leadership. In fact, success may well rely more heavily on the degree to which this particular personality type co-exists alongside Freud's erotic and obsessive types and what Erich Fromm many years later described as the fourth personality type - the marketing personality. In the end, we may conclude that all four types have the potential to be as productive as they are, many times, unproductive and not particularly useful. The rise of the narcissistic leader, however, poses very special challenges to modern day society even as it, clearly, has led to so many advances and special achievements of our time.
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Research essay sample on Intrinsic Rewards Job Descriptions
