Do effective managers also need to be good leaders?

These five stages are represented in a pyramid style form where at the bottom is physiological needs (satisfaction of basic needs e.g. Food, sleep), safety needs (security at work where you feel that your job is safe and don’t have the fear of unemployment), love needs (sense of belonging in the workplace such as having good friends), esteem needs (having a sense of achievement from work i.e. good reputation) and self-actualisation needs (when someone believes they have achieved all they can achieve) consecutively going up the pyramid. Therefore Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory is related back to effective managerial styles as it talks about the response staff have to the managers approaches, for example if the staff is motivated and happy they will progress along the pyramid. For that reason we can say that theory X does not make for an effective manager as they can only motivate employees up two levels of satisfaction.

However theory Y relates more to the integration of an individual into an organisation combining the goals from the two individually into one. This then leads to the staff achieving the goals of the organisation in order to achieve their own goals, this can be through performance, appraisal, salaries, promotions and staff-line relationships. Consequently the staff have the opportunity to achieve all five of the Maslow hierarchical needs as theory Y is a more subordinate-centred leadership where the employees feel more part of the organisation. Referring back to the question in hand we would have to say that effective managers do have to be good leaders, because a good leader has to ‘develop teamwork and the integration of individual and group goals’, this therefore links back to McGregor’s theory Y as McGregor also says that it is the integration of an individuals goals into the organisations goals leading us to believe that as theory Y is the effective management style and also adopts the beliefs of a leader.

To fully answer the question we would also have to discuss what makes a good leader and if or how it links in to an effective manager. A good leader could therefore be described as someone who is ‘committed, dedicated and has good communication skills with an emphasis on active listening’. There are also a number of leadership styles we can discuss such as authoritarian (autocratic) style, where the main figure of power is the manager (such as the McGregor theory X) whereby the manager takes control of the decisions made by the organisation the rewards and the punishments. Therefore an autocratic leader would tell their subordinates what they want done and how they want it done.

Another form of leader is a democratic style leader, democracy derives from the two Greek terms ‘demos’ and ‘kratos’ which mean people power. In this style of leadership   one or more employees are involved in the decision making of the organisation, hence using the input of the employees to decide what and how to carry out a task. However the final decision will still be made by the manager, which should create a sense of respect from employees, as they will see that there opinions are considered and if good enough shall be implemented into the plans. This is therefore linked into the McGregor theory Y as this approach could help the employees reach the esteem needs according to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. The third form of a leader is the laissez-faire leader, this type of leader allows employees to do as they see best, therefore the focus power is passed onto the subordinates, with the leader only giving their own opinions when requested from other members. Ultimately in the laissez-faire approach there does not seem to be anyone in charge of one another. The laissez-faire approach can also be linked back to a managerial theory, the Japanese theory Z approach. This approach is an adapted version of the McGregor approaches, presented by Ouchi. Ouchi’s theory puts across a similar idea to that of the laissez-faire, as it is based on the assumptions that trusting employees to do as they see fit and making them feel like an intimate part of the organisation through building up trust in order to increase production. This approach is believed to be effective as shown by the large chain Marks & Spencer who are believed to adopt a theory Z style approach to management. As a result of this we can to the conclusion that an effective manager does need to be a good leader, and the successful Marks & Spencer chain could sum this up as they adopt both effective managerial and good leadership techniques.

        The managerial/leadership grid put forward by Blake and Mouton discusses further evidence that an effective manager has to be a good leader. This grid has two main principles, firstly the concern for people, which discusses the ‘amount of emphasis a manager gives to subordinates and colleagues as individuals and to their needs and expectations’. Secondly, the concern for production that talks about how hard the manager tries to reach high levels of output for the organisation. This graph shows us how similar a manager and a leader is to one another as the grid was first published as a managerial grid in 1985 and then republished as a leadership grid in 1991. Therefore we could say that an effective manager does have to be a good leader as they are one of the same. The grid below is an example of what the managerial/leadership grid looks like and the four levels of managerial/leadership abilities, ranging from low in ability and low in motivation, low in ability and high in motivation, high in ability and low in motivation and finally high in ability and high in motivation.

On the other hand Hollingsworth questions how a manager can consider themselves as leaders, as Hollingsworth believed that a commercial manager such as a retail manager must learn from the military in order to be viewed as a leader or to gain leadership qualities. Hollingsworth based his ideas on his own experiences both in management commercially and in the military. Hollingsworth believes that there are some links between a leader and a manager but felt that there are major differences such as; ‘a manager administrates and a leader innovates, a manager maintains and a leader develops, a manager does things right where a leader does the right thing’. In spite of Hollingsworth’s views to how a leader is different from a manager I believe that it helps to answer our targeted question by proposing that an effective manager does have to be a good leader as managers and leaders have different qualities that can be combined to make for more effective style of management. For example a manager in some circumstances may have to do things right such as making a subordinate do a certain task, but in other circumstances they would have to do the right thing such as understanding why a subordinate may not be able to carry out the task required of them. As a result of this you could say that leadership is a sub section of management.

Conclusion

In conclusion to the question ‘do effective managers have to be good leaders’ I would say that they might not have to be good leaders but have good leadership qualities. This can be backed up by the McGregor theory Y and Ouchi’s theory Z approaches to management as they coincide with democratic and laissez-faire styles of leadership respectively whereby they have certain traits that are similar to one another. However this also applies to McGregor’s theory X, which also has certain traits of the authoritarian style of leadership, which could lead us to assume that even non-effective managers have leadership qualities. As a result of this I would say that it is difficult to decide what type of manager is effective as they are all effective in different situations, for example theory X could be effective when the job offers little opportunities for staff, so a manager would be more rigid in setting out what and how tasks should be carried out. However it is the belief of some people that an effective manager does not need to be a good leader as they are two totally different things, such as Hollingsworth who believes that the two terms cannot be traits of the same person, ‘A leader is much different from a manager’