The Effect of Leadership in Managing Performance - Essay Example

The Effect of Leadership in Managing Performance Table of Contents Introduction 3 Managing Performance 4 Objective 6 Literature Review 6 Methodology 8 Findings & Implications 9 Recommendations 11 Conclusion 11 References 12 Introduction The external environments of the business processes along with the internal integration are on constant change. In fact, in the dynamic scenario of today, the word ‘change’ is presumed to be the only constant word. The developments in the field of technology, especially information technology and that of communication processes have made the business scenario all the more complex and competitive. Thanks to the increasing effects of globalization, the world has become all the very small, just with a few clicks of the computer mouse. In order to ensure sustainable growth and development of the businesses, it is prudent for the organizations to remain extremely alert for all the changing environments. Also, it has to inculcate enough features of dynamism and flexibility so that the processes, both internal as well as external, are efficient as well as effective. This is truer for the ever growing industry of the United Arab Emirates. The environment of the UAE is one of the most dynamics industries as people from all across the globe have transaction with the market. To attain such desired status, one of the major areas upon which the organizations have to work is that of the leadership. The leadership should be strong and succinct. The leader should be able to lead from the front with exemplary performance so that the employees and team gets motivated and spirited. Leadership can be defined as the special traits of an individual that he or she posses and that helps him to motivate and induce his colleagues or subordinates to accomplish tasks (Northouse, “Leadership: Theory and Practice”). The leadership traits of an individual can take various forms, he can be task oriented or people oriented. A task oriented leader is more of a formal kind and views the task assigned to the team of the supreme importance and takes every measure to get it done. On the other hand, the people oriented leader is more of employee friendly and expects to get the best out of the team leveraging the personal relationship with the team. Managing Performance The management of the performance has been a recent and upcoming concept in the field of human resource management. As the competition within the industries are on constant rise, so it has become very important for the organizations of all types, small, mid – sized, large and even multi - national corporations to quantify the performance of the employees. Till very recently, the quantification of the performance was related only with the external jobs like marketing and sales. But standing face to face with the heated competitions, the organizations of modern day, have also inculcated the measures of performance management in other traditional functions like human resource activities, accounting and finance, engineering and systems and others. One of the prime aims of the performance management initiatives is to identify the better performers within the processes and to promote them to the next higher level of the hierarchy. Also, the same process helps to find out the average and the general performers too. While the better performers can be rewarded for their performances, the not so good performers can be resorted to various training and development modules and coaching programs. But prior to evaluation of the performance of the employees, the organizations should emphasize upon the performance planning. Performance planning sets out for the targets to be achieved and the ways of attaining such targets. There is no point in having the performance management in place if there are no specified targets. So, this is the basic requirement of the successful performance planning. Next step is all about coaching and mentoring the employees towards the desired level of performance standard already set. Once the performances of the employees are evaluated with the various performance evaluating indicators, the next step involves rewarding the better performers and correcting the performances of the not so good performers. The reason of such failure might be either technical or psychological or rather it can well be a mixed of both the factors. The required assessment of the failure of the desired level of performances is carried out and proper measures are initiated to improve and rectify such lags in performance. The ongoing process of performance management ends with helping the not so good performers with methods to improve their performances. The role of leadership in performance management is undeniable. It is the leader who leads the team and is in direct touch with the team of the performers. It is the leader who knows the strengths and weaknesses of the team the best. All these factors have led to the leaders of the modern world to be the performance managers of the business arenas. The processes of performance management by the leaders have definitely contributed towards the increasing efficiency and effectiveness of the businesses. Objective The report deals with the affects of leadership in the management of performance. It studies in detail with the various methods by which the leaders of the team or the projects view the system of performance management and use the methodology to understand the processes better and work towards the organizational objectives. This report specifically focuses on the industry of the United Arab Emirates and the procedures followed by the leaders of the industry to ensure effective performance management. It succinctly studies the skills of the leaders of repute in terms of performance planning, performance coaching and the correction of the poor and average performers so that can attain the desired level of standard as set at the time of the performance planning. Literature Review It is often discussed in the industry that the term leadership is frequently mis – understood in the organizational perspective of today. The research scholar of repute, Stogdill had defined the concept as the factor that influences the activities of a group towards the establishment of setting of the organizational objectives and also to understand the methods of accomplishment of such objectives. But the experts of present day view such definition as the traditional explanation. The understanding of the term as described by the Field Marshal Slim of Burma was much modern compared to that of Stogdill. Speaking with the AIM (Australian Institute of Management) the officer stated, “Leadership is of the spirit, compounded of personality and vision. Its practice is an art. Management is of the mind, more a matter of accurate calculation, of statistics and methods, of time tables and routines. Its practice is a science. Managers are necessary – leaders are essential” (Baxter & MacLeod, “Managing Performance Improvement”). It has been observed that leadership is the method of the creating the workplace to be a place of fun. If the leaders have the traits to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the employees, it assists the workers to work without any sorts of fear. Also the leader has to be the role model and he should be able to apply the standards of fairness irrespective of personal likes and dislikes and should have the virtue of maintaining confidentiality (University of Montana, “Leadership”). Performance coaching by the leaders is presumed to be a continuous model. At the outset, the leaders identify the ideal state that is desired from the present flow of action and then they take initiatives to prepare their team towards the attainment of such level. The onus of providing support to the subordinates always lies with the senior members of the group or the leaders as it is only when they provide the adequate assistance, the team can perform well and the leaders cam move high up the growth ladder (Reeves, “Assessing Educational Leaders: Evaluating Performance for Improved Individual and Organizational Results”). Methodology In order to understand the effect of leadership on the performance management in terms of performance planning, performance coaching and correcting the performance lags among the employees in the industry of United Arab Emirates, a pre-fixed questionnaire is presented to the top corporate of the said industry. The questionnaire was filled up by the likes of Rony Yousseef, who is the Market Manager of Sadia International for the entire region of United Arab Emirates and Basim Akkawi, the operations manager for the reputed corporation, Cartel Building Technology LLC. Also, Grace Haddad, the successful marketing manager of Lister Petter FZE cooperated with the questionnaire so that the research gets the true insight of the industry of the UAE. The respondents were approached with the questionnaires of 11 questions which judge the various traits of leadership particularly relevant with the management of the performance. The first set of question was related if the leader is enough flexible and values listening as an important activity. The second consideration was if the leader is fine in measuring the performance of the team or of him. The next set of alternatives focused on the procedures of attaining organizational goals. The forth question considers if the leader is well versed with other colleagues and open to cross team performance and also is equally equipped with assisting the team members. The fifth question concerns the personal career of the incumbent and analyses if the present and previous experiences (if any) have added value to him. The next set of alternatives grasps the way the leader believes in making the difference at the processes towards the organizational objectives. The seventh question was about the decision making process for the leader. If the leader is risk averse or risk loving can be well judged by the eighth alternative. The next set of question verifies the lure for creativity and experimentation of the leader. The tenth question considers the traits of mutual trust present within the leader where as the last set of question judges the leader’s attitude towards change. Findings & Implications The findings and the implications carried with the questionnaire of eleven questions to three top managers of the United Arab Emirates have interesting implications. The first question received unanimous answer of the same alternative. All the three managers informed the interviewing group that they are open to others’ ideas and are not at all obstinate. Replying to the second set of question two of the interviewed managers maintained that whatever the situation comes they are always conscious about their own output and productivity, as it is the most essential to keep intact so that they can lead by examples. It is only Grace Haddad, who confessed that many a times; tension takes him over as he is into the construction segment of the industry. The third question again had unanimous response as all the three managers claimed that they are on constant search on ways of doing things better as they thought the more crisp and succinct are the ways, more efficient would be the processes. Referring to the fourth question, two of the managers perceived themselves as the team players and viewed that the relationship matters and therefore they are always at help for their teams and colleagues. Rony Youseef also admitted the requirement of being team player in the global changing environment of today but he identified himself to be helping other when he is called. It is for the first time in the fifth question when three of the managers have differing views as one of them said he only chooses those projects that have good future while the other admitted that sometimes it so happen that in spite of his best efforts he could not succeed. The third manager was found saying that the most job he selected turned out to be success. While analyzing the feedback of the sixth question, again the uniformity of the answers are observed among the managers. All the managers opined for changing processes of their leadership to cope with the changing business environments. It seems it is quite important to get aligned with the changes to be successful in the markets of Dubai. The seventh question considers if the managers are people oriented or not. Two of the managers seems so as they strive for consensus within their team and higher management for the various decisions to be taken while Rony Youseef declines to people orientation and says he likes to go all out after he has made up about the alternative. The risk taking qualities of the managers vary widely as the three different managers have three different degrees of risk initiatives. It truly depicts the industry of UAE as the market has different forms of risks in different industries. All the interviewed managers stressed upon the fact that they always emphasize on doing new things which again helps one to understand the market scenario of United Arab Emirates, which is tremendous competitive. All the managers also agree to the tenth question that the ability to work in team is essential in the present form of business and so is the intra-personal skill. Apart from Basim Akkawi, the other two managers consented that they would love to be the forerunners in adoptions of change in the business process. But Akkawi maintained, abrupt change does not serve any point and should be gradual and steady. Analyzing the results of the questionnaire, it is observed that the leaders of today are open to changes and take every possible alternative to enhance the performance of the team. Also, there are quite flexible and people oriented. The industry of Dubai varies widely in risk initiating but that can also because of the different types of industries they represent. Recommendations The above findings of the research upon three of the leading managers of the United Arab Emirates show that the effect of leadership upon the performance management is enormous. It is upon the personal traits of the leaders that much of the performance of their teams depends. The leader should not only be able to lead in an exemplary fashion, also he should be able to set proper standards for his team. The leader is also responsible to coach and mentor and guide the team to achieve the set targets. The performances of not so good performers should be analyzed and corrected and it also falls under the purview of the leaders. All these methods are particularly true for the industry of UAE as it is one of the most vehemently changing industries of the globe. The leaders should also enhance their intra – personal skills to manage and lead better, especially in respect to performance management. Conclusion The management of performance (that includes performance planning, performance coaching and correction of performance lags) is much dependent upon the leadership abilities of the person assigned to lead. He should not only depend upon the official powers and discretions but also should try out informal methods to bring the best out of the team. In the ever changing industry of today and ever growing market of UAE, leadership attributes are really going to be the deciding factor in the near future in terms of overall company performance. References Baxter, L. F. & MacLeod, A. M. Managing Performance Improvement. Routledge, 2007. Northouse, P. G. Leadership: Theory and Practice. Sage, 2009. Reeves, D. B. Assessing Educational Leaders: Evaluating Performance for Improved Individual and Organizational Results. Corwin Press, 2008. University of Montana. “Leadership”. 14 December, 2009. Human Resource Services. No Date. http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cache:XSxgfOJ43fEJ:www.umt.edu/hrs/forms/pprms.doc+performance+planning+and+leadership+site:edu&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&client=firefox-a> Read More