Introduction
To assess my learning outcome with the functionality of an effective manager, I have worked with my independent group of networks. To identify my skills, I have practiced with three key competencies, such as motivation, leadership, and communication skills of a manager. Robbins & Coulter (2002) argued that management indicates all essential activities to coordinate the works to operate the business effectively. According to the view of Griffin (2006), management consists of decision-making, managing, recruiting, directing others, determining goals, leading function, coordinating the work of staff, and maintaining the firms. I would like to add that the managers need some tools and key competencies to handle the business successfully by organizing the work of others, motivating employees, monitoring activities, and correcting any significant deviations.
With the practice I have identified that managers are also responsible to select the most effective communication channels, resolving conflicts, organizing the mission and vision, negotiating other firms, and developing the skills of the workers (McCrimmon, 2010). However, I have learned the implementation of motivation, communication, and leadership theories in order to represent self-reflected learning about my own capabilities to be an effective manager.
How I reached this view
To reach these views, I have adopted PEEL1 process. It is an action research program I have chosen the process to progress my receiving of teaching and learning of management by means of encouraging my teachers. To identify and measure how far I learned my lessons in the classroom and interact with them with my own reflection on the concerned lecture. Within the PEEL process, I have the network of self-ruling voluntary groups that played a responsibility of interdependent innovator where my teachers supported regularly to reflect on practice under different problem areas applying the gained wisdom.
Main body
Effective motivation
My realization with motivation has gained its shape with the view that a manager should have the power to motivate employees, as it is an important tool to increase the outputs from them and to achieve the organisational goals and objectives. In my rehearsal with the team members, I have experienced that motivation is a process that accounts for an individual’s intensity, direction, and persistence of effort toward attaining a goal and in order to develop my motivation competencies, I endeavour to remove troubles, which I have met to work with my team. I have lectured that most of the good managers would like to follow the hypothesis of Marlow as to be an effective manager, it is crucial to be aware of the need of the subordinates.
In my lecture, I have identified that many managers still struggle to satisfy their employees, so this hypothesis concentrates on three additional needs like achievement, power, and affiliation and I also included this theory, but I believe that this theory has some limitations to motivate employees, as goal-setting theory does not address absenteeism, turnover, or satisfaction (Katzenbach & Douglas (2003). I have pointed that a good manager should consider that a highly qualified and experienced employee may seek a new job if the employer offers a lower salary and understatement the quality (Stone, 2008).
My reflection
I have learned the above motivation theories from my teacher’s lecture in the classroom and due to the practice of the PEEL process, I have the opportunity to lecture on motivation to my independent groups and assess their learning outcome through my teaching. Firstly, I have adopted the motivation theories on me as I had some limitations to speak in front of audiences and sometimes it was an utmost fear to me, but as I have the dream to be an efficient manager in near future, I felt to motivate myself to be well expressed in order to speak well. Very frankly speaking, my lecture to my group has encouraged not only my fluency but also generated my effectiveness of communication to deliver my message to my groups and carry out the motivation I was really influenced with goal-setting and hierarchy of need theory while assessing my competence level at motivation McClelland’s Theory of Needs worked nice.
In addition, I have ensured equality to motivate female members of the group and other minority groups to achieve the objectives. My lecture involved motivating all employees of the same rank who give the same labour or efforts will receive equal salary, benefit, and bonus while it was clear that motivation comes from the work factors, such as, the work environment. I have also mentioned that sometimes motivation may come from satisfying the physiological need and achievement need of employees, so I will concentrate more on job enlargement, enrichment, and rotation issues to influence them while implementation of expectancy approach as it has proved to offer a comparatively powerful explanation of employee productivity.
Working with my group to motivate them has furnished me a tremendous result and the group members really behaved as a professional manager; they worked hard to harder to motivate themselves by applying different theoretical approaches those I have lectured in front of them. I have evaluated the performance of my group members to compare their standard with my learning outcomes and they have given their highest effort to bring a real-life scenario among their performance, some of them were properly directed and guided to strengthen their performance as efficient managers.
Leadership
In my practice of leadership, I have lectured to the target group the Great man theory that has pointed out as an attribute of managers that carried out by birth rather than gaining in the by or learning outcome and it has introduced at the early stage of leadership research while leadership has considered inherent quality by-born to lead people. I found that the society observed a number of great leaders without any academic or learned quality of leadership rather where they had come from and the issues of gender have not raised any question, as all the leaders were male.
Among the groups I have presented the core essence of trait theory demonstrates that some individuals possess a number of inbuilt personalities including influential characteristics those traits are especially strong features to the conquering leadership. My team members who have such criteria would be accounted as a leader for their faithful combination of traits that keep positive impression for the community and even for the nation. The category of this leadership stressed upon the psychological issues those have some exact traits for victorious leadership inbuilt in some person and this specific combination of traits pointed out from the study of the life of the successful leaders and it is believed that if other people can gain good leadership qualities by practicing the same traits.
My reflection
In the beginning, I faced a few dilemmas such as representing myself as a leader and understanding why team members would accept me as a leader of them. With my independent voluntary groups, I have also lectured on the implementation of leadership and my first lecture pointed out leadership comes from the great shift of the traditional theory of leadership where the underlying belief is that leaders are created by born and it is believed that leadership comes from the learning process and not from the heredity. In my first lecture, I have learned why leaders tend to accept their performance, as they are the pioneer of their society and mass people have too many things to learn from leaders.
My second lecture with my peer group concerned with the leadership theory mainly focuses not on the traits of the leader rather on what the successful leaders do and the action of the successful leader can learn through the training and experiences and it will be effective in a situation, which aroused in case of the successful leader. I have observed that the leaders do not follow any convention and rules of the organisation to perform the task, but allow vast freedom to the subordinates in performing their jobs and I firmly believe that there is no one correct way for the task, but in every situation, the way of working needed to change in the changed situation.
The necessity for effective communication:
The PEEL process makes me understand that I should consider the feeling of the team members to reach the goals, so communication is one of the most important factors. Weihrich & Koontz (2005) pointed out that communication serves four main functions, for example, communication acts to control member behaviours in several ways, it fosters motivation by identifying their needs, it provides a release for emotional expression of feelings, and it provides the information that helps to take decisions. I realised that to work as an effective team, a good manager should use interpersonal communication or computer-aided communication system like e-mail, instant messaging, and intranet. I have also learned that organisations may fail to take appropriate steps to reach the goal if the employers overlook communication with them about recent crises and I observed that our team failed to prepare their task due to lack of instruction on time.
Reflection of my learning
At the starting of my communication practice, I was not clear about the point from where it would work effectively to address the proper needs but the practice with my group has generated high competencies for effective communication. I will apply all the communication methods to ensure a minimum level of coordination of work to remove competition and I will try to utilize time to finish all projects, as it is quite general that many employees like to waste the time and resources of the organisation due to the lack of vision and goals.
Summary
Adopting the PEEL process, I have considered three key competencies to reflect my understanding of the requirement to be an effective manager and I believe that managers should have motivation, communication, and leadership skills. I have discussed my own limitations and capabilities to implement the theories within a team or organisation.
Reference List
- Griffin, R. W. (2006) Management. 8th ed. Boston New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
- Katzenbach, J. R. & Douglas, S. (2003) The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. 6th ed. London: Harper Paperbacks.
- McCrimmon, M. (2010) The Effective Manager. [Online]
- Robbins, P. S. & Coulter, M. (2002) Management. 7th ed. London: Prentice Hall.
- Robbins, P. S. & Judge, A. T. (2008) Essentials of Organizational Behavior. 9th ed. London: Pearson Prentice Hall.
- Stone, R. (2008) Human Resource Management. 6th ed. London: John Wiley & Sons
- Weihrich, H. & Koontz, H. (2005) Management a Global Perspective. 11th ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill.
Footnotes
Project for Enhancing Effective Learning