Psychology Essay: In Management.

What will you take from this material on leadership and management and apply in your own life? How?

I liked that the material pointed this out:

Leadership and management are different concepts. Leaders inspire others to follow, and managers manage the performance of defined job tasks. Leaders can have subordinates in a managerial role, but leaders must also have followers who are inspired to comply with their ideals through their own free will.

I think the information that I found the most valuable was on Participative Leadership - basically, what this means, is involving your employees in some [not all, at least not necessarily] key decisions, which is especially helpful when creative thinking is needed for complex issues; i.e., being democratic. The material brought out these points that I specifically want to mention:

• Employees of participative managers can often be counted on to meet their professional responsibilities without constant monitoring.

• The sense of independence gained by employees contributes to increased job satisfaction and, ultimately, increased organizational productivity and success.

• Participative employees feel respected and valued for their contributions to the organization.

Especially since today, there are many intelligent, highly skilled professionals out there - motivating workers to do their work, as the material brought out, without constant monitoring, is based on making them feel valued. In the words of Mitch McCrimmon: There is simply no better way to make people feel valued than to ask them, genuinely, for their advice.

However, participative leadership depends on a very necessary condition.

As Stephen Covey brought out in his book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", this is all dependent on habits and behaviors that you have changed in your personal life.

The reason I mention this, is because not all leaders are capable of using participative leadership. If you are narrow-minded, negative, often jumping to conclusions - or, you simply believe that your thinking is the best of all - than you are going to have much greater issues when it comes to inspiring your workers to do the work, and being able to trust them [and vice versa].

Realizing this, I therefore try my best to better my character, on a daily basis, in my personal life. I place a lot of importance on learning about myself, as well as people around me, knowing that this will greatly influence for the better my relationships with others - and that includes in the world of business.