Bad Boss

1.0        SIGNS OF A LOUSY MANAGER

1.1        “Bad Boss” story

‘Bad Boss’ or also known as bad manager are not consciously aware that they are bad managers. As a working person, some experienced or story on ‘bad boss’ is they are afraid to discipline the employees as well as confront them. In the working place, the manager tends to treat the employees as his buddy and being friendly with them. Thus, it is hard for the manager to make any decisions involving employees. For instance, Danial is undisciplined employees where he has lateness problem and his reasons of lateness are unreasonable. Even the manager knows about Ahmad’s problem, he doesn’t take any action against Ahmad not even confront him. The manager is afraid that employees will not like him if he makes any decision upon their disciplinary problems as the manager are being friendly with them. Hence, when the manager is afraid to confront with his employees, it shows that the manager is not responsible with his job.

        1.2        Signs of A Lousy Manager

There are several signs that can help pinpoint a lousy Manager shows in Table 1.0. [pic 1]

Table 1.0

1.3        How a ‘Bad Boss’ Negatively Impact on Career and Other Aspects

The ‘Bad Boss’ might give directly impacts on our career, personal life, physical health etc. Table 2.0 below shows on how a bad boss could negatively impacts on them.

Table 2.0

2.0        LEADERSHIP SKILLS

        2.1        Managerial Leadership Needed for Today’s Organization

Nowadays, it is a crucial issue to find a manager that able to lead successfully in the organization. Different industry or different organization might need vary leadership skills with the same aim to keep up with the growing and uncertain global challenges. There are many types of leadeship skills such as transactional, transformational, servant leadership, charismatic, participative and many more.  

        Two of the managerial leadership that are needed in today’s organizations are transformational and participative leadership. Firstly is Transformational Leadership. This leadership style requires the involvement of management to meet the goals of the organization. Some said that transformational leadership is all about change. While in this style, leaders will communicate and give high visibility to motivate employees to increase the productivity and efficiency in accomplishing goals (Johnson, 2017). In other words, leaders inspire employees, build connection with them to achieve the organization’s vision. Transformational leaders usually correlated to charisma style in which the leader inspires and attract employees with their charismatic personality. Some of employees might need the motivation from the leader to raise their level of confidence.  This leadership style is needed because they will have a clear and big picture on the organization, so that leaders know how to meet the requirements. In additional, by having this type of leadership also build a great connection between leaders and employees as it creates opportunities for employees to show skills and responsibility to complete the task given

        There are two relevant leadership theories for this transformational leadership which are from James McGregor Burns and Bernard Bass. They are the first one who developed transformational leadership theory. According to Burns, transforming leadership is connection with the inspiration and boost that converts followers into leaders and can transform leaders into moral agents (Burns, 1978). He proposes that this leadership happens when people engage with one another and increase their levels of motivation and morality among them. Leaders are the one who will encourage and empower their employees to work together instead of working individually. Next transformational theory is from Bernard Bass. Bass said that transformational leaders encourage people to do more than they planned in the beginning, regularly even more that they believed possible (Bass & Avolio, 1994). It means that leaders will motivate employees to do more and better than what they expected. Bass introduced four components of transformational leadership which are inspirational motivation where they generate vision and objectives committed to them, individual consideration where they are coaching and consider individual differences, idealized influence where they become role model and intellectual stimulation where they facilitate innovation and creativity.

        Next managerial leadership is Participative Leadership. Participative leadership is likewise often called as democratic leadership. Participative leadership highlight the involvement and teamwork of the leaders and employees in the decision-making process. This have enhanced employees moral as they feel they are appreciated in the organization thus leads to better quality decisions. Apart from that, this type of leadership also develops people and construct support for the overall direction and leading to a common vision and goals (Leadership Theories - An Overview in Everyday Language, 2009).  It means that the leaders are going to bring and support employees towards achieving the same vision and goals. Participative leadership somewhat needed for today’s organization as it strikes a balance and equality in the decision making. Even though the leader has final decision but employees still contribute in the decision-making process which make it easier for employees to accept any changes from the organization.

The leadership theory that can be relate with participative leadership is research by Kurt Lewin and his colleagues. They recognized three different styles of leadership such as autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. In the research held that in democratic style, although the final decisions are from the leader, they involve the people in the decision making as well (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939). The style of leadership usually valued by employees as they take in them into the process of making decision. This will be a problem if there are various opinions and no clear way to reach the final decision.

In a summary, every leadership style has their own place to meet certain challenges that can help to improve organization’s effectiveness and efficiency.  Each of them has their own strengths and drawbacks that might be useful for the organization to look into in deciding what kind of managerial leadership that needed for them.

3.0        WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME AN EFFECTIVE MANAGER?

        3.1        Leadership Potentials to Develop

How to become an effective manager?  To be an effective manager, we must have the leadership skills. There are numerous leadership skills that are particularly vital for the leader or the manager. In my opinion, the top five leadership skills that the manager need to become and effective manager includes communication, delegating, motivation, commitment and responsibility. Some leadership skills that I found in myself are commitment, responsibility and motivation. While the other two, communication and delegating are the leadership skills that I wish to develop.

        Firstly, let’s consider the meaning of Commitment skills. Commitment skill is when the leader showing their commitment by being committed to their job as well as their promises. When we show a good example to employees with our commitment, employees will see and follow like what we do. Apart from that, we will also earn respects from them. For instance, in my situation when my head of administrative give me tasks to complete like update the hard copy and soft copy of the details of staff in the organization, I will put my effort and commit to it to complete the assignment as soon as possible even I had to put in extra work hours. For additional, as I am helping my husband with our café, when I promise to our staff a reward such as go and watch a movie, I will keep my word and bring them to watch a movie.