Introduction
According to the current corporate world, leadership has been seen as one’s capabilities of getting others to follow him/her willingly. Leaders ought to have a very clear vision, clear destination as well as a very firm clutch of success image. Such a person should have the capability of communicating his/her vision in a manner that will enable him/her to win the confidence of others. Though the leader might have lots of resources available at his disposal for the organization’s goal attainment, studies have found that human resources is one of the most significant resources available for him.
In case human resource is utilized effectively and efficiently, there are higher chances that it will have lots of impacts on any organization. Those leaders having the capability of empowering their teams with decision-making responsibilities, have a higher probability of achieving more effectively as compared to their counterparts who mostly interfere with the day-to-day activities of their teammates. Teams will only be considered as self-managed teams, if and only if they are “self-organized, semi-autonomous and small in number, whose members are determining, planning and managing their day-to-day activities and duties,” (Gunn, 1984).
It is wise to note that, the main factor that leads to leadership success is to understand the relationship between effective leadership, effective decision making and empowering Self-managed teams. This is the reason as to why this essay critically analyses the links between effective leadership, effective decision making along with empowered self-managing teams.
Building Self Managed Team
It is not good to ask what your organization has done for you; it is good to ask what you have done for the organization; this in one way or the other exemplifies a very effective leader empowering his teammates to make a very effective decision. In defining the relationship between effective leaders, making decisions that are effective and empowered self-managed teams, it is much important to define self-managed teams.
Self-management is all about acting independently, while self-management team is a “collective process of self-governance and democratic management within a production organization, there is no inherent right to capital to participate in management, all who actively contribute to production have the fundamental right to manage that production”, (Linstead, Fulop & Lilley, 2009). Such teams contain members who can work under minimal direct supervision.
Going with the above definition, it is very clear that for self-managed teams to work effectively, they must have an effective leader who can implement effective decision making. An effective leader will provide a democratic type of governance, while effective decision making will make decisions and solve problems that are related to production.
Self-management team took over from dictatorship kind of management. This change was due to shifts from manual working to knowledge working, higher living standards which resulted in higher expectations, last but not least, sophisticated education qualifications contributed to this shift. Other factors that have accelerated this change include technological advancement, gender equity, as well as access to information. Though such factors have lead to the coming up of self-managed teams, but effective leadership along with effective decision making have played a very significant role in self-managed teams’ development.
Self-managed team is neither created nor appointed, but it is grown, natured and guided to a point it starts operating. Over a certain period, team facilitators’ empowerment, changes to team members, turning to self-managed team at last. At first, team facilitators direct behaviors through teaching and coaching, but at last, the team starts directing and controlling itself. According to Linstead, Fulop, & Lilley (2009), “the leaders’ empowerment transfers from themselves to their teams. This task is not a simple delegation of duties, but rather it captures a long-term strategy of providing effective leadership skills, along with the ability to make effective decisions” (Linstead, Fulop, & Lilley, 2009).
Effective leadership along with effective decision making in self-managed teams provides a pleasant workplace as they make employees to welcome an increase in autonomy, empowerment as well as responsibility. This will help in employee retention as opposed to top-down approaches. However, Langfred (2007) argues that the two might have detrimental effects on the organization as they may lead to relationship conflict.
This is particularly when it comes to matters associated with lower duty dependencies as well as lower personal autonomy. These may result in self-management dysfunctional design. It’s stated that “conflict can result in a breakdown of trust and inter-relations within SMTs, and as such, individual autonomy breaks down, causing trust and task inter-dependencies to also be non-beneficial. This manifests itself with the internal breakdown of the SMT”, (Langfred 2005). However, Langford does not realize that empowered effective leadership uses effective decision making and cannot display the above problem.
This is because, in self-managed teams, only two informal leaders are developed, namely: tasked focused leader and an emotional leader. “These two leaders gain lots of fellowship from other group members, as they have effective leadership styles and effective decision-making skills” (Bales, 1950: 43). This concept, however, can be understood well if effective leadership along with effective decision making are defined in detail.
Effective Leadership and Effective Decision Making
An effective leader is one who has the capability of having followers, and in the second definition, is someone who has the capability of inspiring other people to attain a worthwhile goal (Walker, 2005). In the second definition, effective leaders empower team members to attain worthwhile goals through the use of effective decision-making skills. Other studies have defined effective leadership as a leadership style that enhances group performance as well as cohesion maintenance. From this definition, it is much clear that effective leaders also need to have effective decision-making skills for them to enhance group performance.
Moreover, empirical studies investigating charismatic leadership in organizations have found that “Leaders practicing theoretical charismatic behaviors, produce a theoretical charismatic effect, receive higher performance ratings, have more satisfied and more highly motivated followers and are viewed as more effective leaders by their superiors and followers than others in positions of leadership” (Vroom & Yetton, 1973). This implies that effective leaders bind into ways of effective decision making that is being charisma, ways of influencing group members so that they can become motivated followers. This is what is referred to as team empowering.
By looking at all definitions of effective leadership, we can observe a close relation between effective decision making. For instance, effective decisions require a high level of acceptance and quality leadership, which is effective leadership. As a result, it is good if effective leaders can recognize and differentiate facts from ideas and feelings. However, the difference is not open because feelings or biases are mostly veiled before rationalizations. This kind of definition exhibits ways through which effective leaders have to take such like considerations available before making decisions that can be termed as effective.
An effective decision-making process is perceived in three main perspectives, namely: decision-making environments, decision-making methods, and decision-making tools. In case all the above perspectives are put into consideration, they will set teams’ efficiencies. This is because in case the consensus decision-making process is chosen, all tools will be put in place to ensure the best choice along with different ways of measuring it.
According to Aworemi et al (2009), workers prefer working with leaders who can make their policies as well as goals much clear. As an effect, leaders should dedicate responsibilities and roles to their workers immediately after democratically approving policies. This type of effective decision making results into pleasant working environment, which increases employee job effectiveness. This happens particularly when effective leaders are concerned with employee welfare. The outcome of such actions will not only make leaders stand out as leaders but develop fellowship from team members.
Effective leadership can create fellowship as well as transforming such followers into self-managed teams in case a task arises. This explains the conversion of managers into team facilitators, charged with the responsibility of empowering teams to change into self-managed teams. However, over time, such effective leaders are played off, and the team transforms into the self-managed team, as the team will learn and absorb an effective leadership style from their original supervisor or manager, (Morgeson, 2005).
Construction of effective decision making has been described as being the responsibility of effective leadership. Apart from understanding the impact of their decision on the local environment, effective leaders will also understand their impacts on distant environments and the future. This implies that effective decision-making process and effective leadership entails the end-to-end process, (Hackman, & Wageman, 2005).
By comparing effective leadership traits along with high-performance self-managed team’s traits, one can identify that; self-managed groups have members who exhibit effective leadership traits and undertakes effective decision making. However, the main question that now arises is if effective leaders can devolve effective decision making to self-managed teams.
Benefits of Devolving Decision Making To Self Managed Teams
There are Australian companies like ADInstruments and AGL Energy which have devolved effective decision making to self-managed teams. These companies have implemented self-managed teams by allowing night shifters to operate very effectively without supervisors or managers. For many years now, such as companies have remained effective by empowering their self-managed teams by empowering them to use brainstorming techniques that can ensure efficient processes.
Some companies like Allplastics have “reduced cycle time by 50%, reduced scrap by 60% and improved productivity by 30%, all due to implementing SMTs” (Elmuti, 1996). As a result, I believe that leaders should devolve decision making to self-managing teams. This is because; all leaders who have devolved effective decision making to Self managed teams have brought lots of benefits out of such structures within their companies.
In general, such companies have reduced their costs of manufacturing by around 30 to 50 percent, apart from increasing quality measures, customer reliability, and services. Taking these examples into consideration, efficiency increase together with cost reduction shows that, leaders ought to devolve decision making to Self managed teams. According to Williams (1995), empowered employees can improve their work to attain a particular goal, and empowerment will only arise when leaders devolve decision making to Self managed teams. This empowerment can result in around 300 percent production increase. This forms a very strong ground for the effects of management’s trust and faith in empowering self-managed teams to make decisions by themselves.
Another advantage accrued by leaders who devolve decision making to self-managed teams is worker commitment. Going with the study carried out by Linstead, Fulop & Lilley, (2009), Adam Internet has individual teams carrying out their research on how they can improve production efficiency. This decision was reached upon as a result of self-managed teams. These similar teams conduct their meetings outside the workplace, particularly during vacations. In such teams, every member is much responsible for his/her schedule, though they have to ensure that their plans are not inconveniencing clients in any way. “This level of commitment and responsibility is the outcome of empowering employees to make their own effective decisions within SMT”, (House, 1996)
In their book called Wickinomics, Wiliams and Tapscott (2008) described how Australian manufacturing companies like Tarocash have changed radically their cloth manufacturing process as well as opening up of collaborations in every aspect of there designs for their most recent fashions. In achieving this, Tarocash Company reaped the power of collaboration through recognition of every style’s responsibility to the entire fashion. As a result, Tarocash came up with various self-managed teams that worked together to come up with the best dressing fashion.
Every team had the capability of designing, testing, reviewing and developing their styles that they were responsible for. The end product was cost reduction and a decrease in processing time. All these were based on the fact that every group focused on an effective decision-making process about clothing fashions which were the subject’s matter. In case the company had not set a plant floor open to many self-managed teams, one can assume that their market share would have drastically reduced to other clothing companies.
The above examples show how leaders in different companies have devolved decision making to self-managed teams and the benefits of their choices. In making any choice to undertake self-managed teams, along with empowering such groups through devolution of decision-making process to them, and reap successful results, it is advised that companies should first do detailed planning in the teams’ purpose, team members, and attributes of every member and structure the right culture in such teams. Additionally, they should also have high motivation among employees. This is because; there are high chances that the team will fail, in case any miscalculation occurs.
Conclusion
After looking at the above descriptions, Effective Leadership, Effective Decision Making and Self Managed Team are related. As a result, for any organization to be successful, the organization leaders have to devolve decision making to self-managed teams correctly. In the current competitive environment, companies should start looking at ways of improving operational efficiencies while earning a very high level of productivity and customer satisfaction at the same time.
One way that has the capability of attaining such like level is self-managed teams. The creation of self-managed teams with effective leadership qualities along with effective decision-making abilities gives leaders confidence that it is much good if decision making is devolved to such teams. This will ensure that the organization is harnessing “practical source of productivity and efficiency whilst providing optimum employee satisfaction and maximum retention of skilled personnel,” (Argyris, 1976).
References
Argyris, C. (1976). Increasing Leadership Effectiveness. New York: Wiley.
Aworemi, J. Et al. (2009). An Evaluation of the Relationship between Road Transport Owners’ Leadership Style and Employees Effectiveness in Ogbomoso Area of Oyo State, Nigeria”. European Journal of Scientific Research. 35(4): 496
Bales, R. (1950). Interaction Process Analysis: A Method of Study for Small Groups. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Elmuti, D. (1996). Sustaining High Performance through Self-Managed Work Teams. Web.
Gunn, C. (1984). Workers Self Management in the United States. Cornwell University Press
Hackman, J. & Wageman, R. (2005). A Theory of Team Coaching. Academy of Management Review, 30(2), 269-287.
House, R. (1996). Path-goal theory of leadership: Lessons, legacy, and a reformulated theory. Leadership Quarterly 7 (3): 323–352.
Langfred, C. (2005). The Downside to Self Management: A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of Conflict on Trust, Autonomy and Task Inter-Dependence in Self Managing Teams. In Academy of Management Journal. 50(4): 885 – 900
Linstead, S., Fulop, L., & Lilley, S. (2009). Management and organization. Hampshire, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Morgeson, P. (2005). The External Leadership of Self-Managing Teams: Intervening in the Context of Novel and Disruptive Events. Journal of Applied Psychology. 90(3): 497-508.
Tapscott, D. & Willams, A. (2008). Wikinomics. New York: Portfolio Hardcover.
Vroom, V. & Yetton, P. (1973). Leadership and Decision-Making. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Walker, C. (2005). Effective Leadership. Illinois: Human Kinetics Publishers.
Williams, R. (1995). Self Directed Work Teams: A Competitive Advantage. Web.