Using Minzberg´s managerial roles to evaluate how the roles come up in my organization:
- Interpersonal Roles:
– Figurehead: The CEO and top level executives, like vice precidents.
– Leader: Plant and site managers, who ensure the assembly and maintaining of the site.
– Liaison: Sales and marketing managers, who ensure the happiness of clients and stakeholders. - Informational Roles:
– Monitor: Product owners and Process owners, who are in charge of a certain kind of a service/product.
– Disseminator: Communication managers
– Spokesperson: Media managers - Decisional Roles:
– Entrepreneur: Chief engineers, Project Managers and Senior managers
– Disturbance Handler: Quality Managers
– Resource Allocator: Procurement Managers
– Negotiator: Sales executives and Sales Managers
Evaluation of my behaviour and skills related to Managers’s roles
- Interpersonal Roles:
– Figurehead: 1
– Leader: 7
– Liaison: 5 - Informational Roles:
– Monitor: 5
– Disseminator: 2
– Spokesperson: 2 - Decisional Roles:
– Entrepreneur: 8
– Disturbance Handler: 8
– Resource Allocator: 4
– Negotiator: 4
Recognizing three key managerial roles and creating a vision for the future
Leader
Vision:
Inspiring and guiding my team to achieve common goals to create a positive work culture for individual growth.
Plan:
– One-on-one meetings with team members to understand challenges and aspirations.
– Providing constructive feedback and celebrating achievements to increase motivation.
– Investing in team building to strengthen the team bond.
Monitor
Vision:
To stay on top of industry trends, needs, advancements and market changes.
Plan:
– Attend relevant webinars or conferences. Keep studying about the market and learning about market changes.
Entrepreneur
Vision:
Create innovation within the team to identify new opportunities and technologies.
Continuously improve processes for growth. Learn more about LEAN-methodology and implementing to organization’s processes.
Plan:
– Encourage experimentation and idea-sharing within the team.
– Allocating regular time for brainstorming sessions to find new solutions and innovations.
– Creating a system to evaluate employee suggestions.
Improvement strategies:
Leader: Attending workshops and treaining sessions to enhance coaching skills. Allocating dedicated time for leadership development each month.
Monitor: Industry related courses or certifications, for example six-sigma. Dedicating time every week for self learning and knowledge.
Entrepreneur: Continuous improvement via employee and client feedback. Implementing suggestion box style systems and conducting innovation workshops.
Observing leadership styles in my workplace
After observing the managers in my company for a three week period we can see various types of leadership styles.
First off, my manager uses transformative leadership, which focuses on motivating followers to achieve their full potential. They have a sense of purpose or vision, encouraging innovation among their piers.
This leadership style results in a motivated athmosphere, positive wellbeing, new concepts and ideas, good teamwork and career development.
Procurement team managers seem to use Laissez-Faire leadership, they are more hands-off and they provide minimal guidance. Team members can make their own decisions, which tells me they are self-motivated and experienced. Their team spirit is not very present, everyone is doing their own thing. motivation seems to be in a normal level. When big decisions are needed, the team members can do them and the manager trusts their decisions.
The highest level of executives like to use Authoritarian leadership, which centralizes on decision-making where the leader does not take any input from their team and has a clear hieararchy with a limited feedback from subordinates. This includes Chief engineers, Process owners and VP to CEO level. For example, when a new project has been sold, the Chief engineer tells their project and package engineers what equipment we are going to use, how it is done etc. So they can’t decide on the implementation on the projects.
Some project managers like to use Coaching leadership style when they have a smaller team, in which they can focus on developing the individuals by providing guidace and constructive feedback. They like to focus on personal growth and continuous learning. This isn’t that commonly found in my workplace, since teams are usually large and divided into several countries.
Evaluating my leadership behaviour
Going back to my first topic of “What kind of leader am I?” we can incororate the principles from Bill George’s philosophy. My personality type was ISTJ and my vision is to build an inspiring and guiding athmosphere with a goal to positive work culture and individual growth.
“True North is the internal compass that guides you successfully through life“
Bill George. Finding Your True North
Combining my personality to True North principles
Reliability and integrity, which align with Bill George’s philosophy. Encouraging leaders to share personal stories during one-on-one sessions, illustrating decisions and actions align with core values. I am a structured approach type of person, which can be coupled with emphasizing the importance of leading with integrity and authenticity. This leads to a clear path for the team.
Potential weaknesses are mitigated by integrating True North’s principles. Reluctancy of change is fixed by acknowledging the importance of adaptability as told in the book. Leaders need to share experiences to embrace change and to demonstrate how they are authentic. The significance of communication is emphasized in the book. Leaders should share personal narratives about communication and how it has a massive impact to a positive work culture.
Leadership traits need to be balanced to achieve great purpose. Combining ISTJ’s strengths and eliminating the weaknesses brings a strong leader. Bill George mentioned lifelong learning in his book, highlighting the positive effect of embracing change brings positive outcomes for personal and professional growth.
Integrating communication skills via True North’s principles by building trust with open communication. Leaders need to express vulnerability, with sharing challenges they have or are facing. Blending my strengths to principles from “Finding Your True North”, I can create a workplace, which not only is based on reliability and structure but also encourages change, communication and professional growth.
I have been noticing signs of Directive and transactional leadership in my own behaviour. I appreciate clarity, structure and order, which is a sign of Directive leadership. On the other hand transactional leadership involves setting clear expectations, providing rewards and addressing performance issues, which also hits close home to me. I am trying to implement True North’s principles to my management skillset, which requires to mix all of the leadership types together. When I was studying leadership styles for the first time transformational felt the closest to me but when I am looking for behaviour patterns and identifying factors of my own leading, it is more of a mix of Directive, transactional and transformational leading.
References
George, B. (2008). Finding Your True North
https://hbr.org/tip/2017/03/adapt-your-leadership-style-to-the-situation
https://hbr.org/2018/03/what-kind-of-leadership-works-best-at-your-company
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2018/03/13/seven-ways-to-develop-your-authentic-leadership-style/#163fb9e69e64
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe6XacmIZms