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THE IMPLEMENTATION OF MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP

WHAT IS MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP?

A starting point for understanding managerial leadership is, what do people want from their jobs? They seek the opportunity to:

  • Fully apply their capabilities.
  • A fair differential compensation for the work they do.

So, a managerial leader is a person who both can and wants to help his or her people to satisfy these two needs. Leadership becomes a reality when subordinates know that their managers fill these conditions; this is to say, when they can trust that their managers know their work and are able to do it.

Said Napoleon Bonaparte: "Every soldier is entitled to a competent command". A managerial paraphrase of this would be "every employee is entitled to have a competent manager". This is the key to good managerial leadership.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF LEADERSHIP IN ORGANIZATIONS

So, the widespread implementation of managerial leadership in an organization is not about choosing people who are gifted as leaders, nor about training them as leaders nor about exhortation of persuasion of any kind. As many organizations have found out to their great benefit, it is all about getting the right organizational components in place. Managerial leadership is supported by the following policies and systems:

MANAGERIAL POLICY

  • Managers are accountable for the results of their subordinates and for their behavior on the job.
  • Managers are accountable for the application of managerial leadership practices.
  • All employees are accountable for working at the top of their capabilities.
  • Managers are accountable for keeping a team of subordinates in which every person fills at least the minimum requirements of their roles.

STRUCTURE

  • All managerial roles must be one work stratum up from that of the subordinate roles (stratification).
  • The maximum number of subordinates a manager has should be that that permits him or her to keep direct contact with each individual subordinate (span of control).

HUMAN RESOURCES SYSTEMS

  • A Personal Effectiveness Appraisal system that:
    • Enables managers to appraise overall effectiveness of each subordinate relative to the requirements of their role (not relative to unqualified results, nor to the performance of colleagues).
    • Is connected to the compensation system.
  • A compensation system based on two factors:
    • The level-of-work of the role.
    • The employee’s overall effectiveness on the role.

THE PROCESS OF IMPLEMENTATION

The implementation process of managerial leadership consists of the following stages:

MANAGERIAL POLICY

  • All employees, whether managerial or not, should be appraised and compensated for their endeavor and for the quality of their work. The results they achieve are the starting point for this appraisal; however, they must be judged in the light of prevailing circumstances for their achievement.
  • Managers must be accountable for the results of subordinates. This means essentially that they must observe the organization’s Managerial Leadership Practices.
  • No manager must be forced to keep a subordinate who is unable to fill the minimum requirements of his or her role.

STRUCTURE

Required actions are:

A corollary of this action is that all ambiguities should be eliminated as to who is whose real manager (as often happens in shift work and in other situations).

APPRAISAL OF EFFECTIVENESS SYSTEM

All organizations have a Personal Effectiveness Appraisal, be it formal or factual and "invisible". According to their design, the systems have strong effects on managerial leadership: if they are good, they support it effectively; if they are defective, they may seriously undermine it.

COMPENSATION SYSTEM

There can be no managerial leadership in the absence of a perception of equity in compensation. A sound compensation system does not create managerial leadership per se; bad systems, however, do impede leadership. So the compensation system must be examined and modified if necessary.

MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP PRACTICES

Once policies and systems are in place, managers should be trained in simple managerial practices for the fulfillment of their managerial accountabilities. (See page MANAGERIAL LEADERSHIP PRACTICES. )

CONCLUSION

This is a summary of required actions. Once they become effective leadership blooms, and one can forget about the personal flair for leadership. In Elliott Jaques’s words:

“What then is managerial leadership? If it is part of each employee’s contract to do his/her best, then it need be no part of the leadership accountability of any manager to motivate, stimulate, or invigorate subordinates to do their best. It brings the issue of leadership tumbling down to earthly realities from its idealized place in the sky.

“This conclusion means that CEOs can stop looking in the mirror to see whether they look like leaders. They can also stop trying to change their stance and their habits and behavior to look more like Attila the Hun, or General Patton, or Winston Churchill, or General MacArthur, or whoever their leadership heroes might be. Leadership has nothing whatever to do with such a commonplace approach. It has to do with something far more important; namely, with the ability to develop sound strategic plans that will make it possible to achieve the company’s goals set by the Board of owners�.

Elliott Jaques, "Social Power and the CEO", Chapter 13



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