Good Management: Leading Your Department To Success
Leadership is an important demonstration of a managers’ ability. It allows them to guide staff towards goals while giving them opportunities to shine in their own right. It is important, therefore, to understand the difference between leadership skills and management characteristics. Once this is established then leadership tools may be explored and confidence built in using them to good departmental and personal success.
Why Do You Need Leadership Skills To Run Your Department?
Leadership over management can be difficult to define. In many ways the traits are blurred. However, it is important to be able to distinguish the traits of leadership in order to display them to good effect. It is a fact of any group that leaders emerge. It is usually some one who has the capacity to deal with the groups problems in a way that is acceptable to the majority of the group.
In the work environment leaders are rarely chosen by the group, they are appointed to lead. Starting from this premise any leader may appear to have their work cut out. However, this is actually where any individual will show their leadership skills.
This leadership is not just being given a title and responsibility. In the first instant it must be in recognising the group’s contribution to the organisation – the context the group operates within, its reason for being. If this is seen clearly the work undertaken by the group can be directed correctly for the maximum impact. This in itself will make the group successful.
However, the next stage is equally important; the ability for the leader to lead. There are different leadership styles which affect the group’s performance and individual’s satisfaction. In choosing the appropriate leadership style for the moment and circumstances in which it is used the leader is demonstrating their ability to lead.
There is no end of leadership theories each that has merit. The important element is recognising the situation and the style of leadership that is required. This is important to all leaders but can be particularly relevant to women leaders. Women leaders often must fight harder than their male counter-parts to establish and assert their leadership of groups.
In all cases, though, it is the ability to recognise and value the traits of staff that is vital. This is where management and leadership cross. The Ohio Studies of the 1950s into management identified two dimensions of leadership behaviour Consideration and Initiating Structure. These titles were given to leadership behaviour that focus on relationships and employee needs and on getting the job done. They are not separate approaches but almost polar in approach. The leader uses both characteristics to motivate and direct work patterns for successful outcomes. It recognises the strategic organisational needs and the personal needs of the group members for recognition, motivation and the permission to demonstrate their talents to their best advantage for the good of the individual and group. Thus a successful outcome is reached for all.
Effective leadership, then, has its routes in the leader’s ability to understand the organisational context for the department’s existence and the need for the department to use its best individual traits to be brought together for a successful group outcome. This requires emotional intelligence to know oneself and how the individuals and group presents themselves. This in turn will allow for contextualised situational leadership to develop to help solve leadership challenges.
This leadership training programme is designed to explore the qualities of good leadership and the emotional intelligence required to meet leadership challenges. Once this is in order to give confidence and build competence to those wishing to lead their department to success.