Learning Activity 1 – Theme 1
This week we look at leadership from the managers perspective and explore the differences from looking at leadership from a leaders perspective. Managers focus on process procedure and implementation of the organizations purpose. A manager’s perspective is aboutgetting the job done and keeping stability. The leaders mindset is about change and moving workerstoward the organization’s vision. The area of overlap comes in terms of the need to use soft or people skills to get their job done. It is said that a manager motivates while a leader empowers.
In the following five quotes each leader is commenting on the perspective of a manager in anorganization as opposed to a leader.
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
Peter Drucker
Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.
Russell Honore
When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.
Warren Buffett
Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.
Paul Hawken
Management is nothing more than motivating other people.
Lee Iacocca
Learning Activity 2- Theme2
The manager must be able to solve problems communicate and lead teams toward the completion of a task.
You are the manager of the northern branch of the Laurel City Bowling Alleys. The owner Jill Espy has 4 other bowling alleys around town. The average employee assigned to the concession stand of all the Laurel City Bowling Alleys lasts approximately 3 years. However in your branch the average employee lasts only 8 months. Jill is concerned about the lack of retention of concession employees especially since training new employees is costly to the company and this high turnover is costing her money that could be better spent elsewhere.
You have talked with your current concession staff and have learned that pay and scheduling may have some effect on the turnover rate. Employees feel that the pay is low and the scheduling is erratic making it difficult to make plans outside of work. You know that employees do not benefit from pay raises because they tend to leave before being at the alleys for a year.
One workerindicated that many of the workersdo not know how to handle difficult customers. It makes them not want to come to work. At the time the focus seems to be on getting the job done rather on customer service.