Assignment:
Overview: Leaders as Motivators
Kouzes and Posner tell us that people tend to quit when their tasks seem difficult and arduous. Leaders encourage the heart of their constituents to carry on. Encouragement can come from dramatic gestures or simple actions. They go on to say that genuine encouragement shown in different ways, be it by linking rewards with performance or through celebrations and rituals, tremendously motivates people to wade through tough times.
If leadership is defined as getting things done through other people, the ability to create a positive, challenging, and motivating environment is critical. The focus for leaders is to create conditions for people to motivate themselves. This includes the use of motivational tools in practice such as bonus pay, prizes, special recognition, awards, as well as promotions to positions of new responsibility and authority. While effective managers recognize and reward superior performance, leaders also recognize and celebrate acts that uphold the mission and values of the organization while rewarding performance that aligns with the strategy.
A leader will succeed only if he/she has the right people with the right experience and competencies. Thus recruitment, selection, and training are critical to building a culture that upholds the organizational values as well as equipping staff to perform the task and pursue the behaviors essential to implementing the strategy.
You will explore the importance of leading by example and the need for consistency between a leader's words and actions. You will also review the importance of integrity and ethics as key leadership currencies using Kouzes and Posner's leadership principle of "modeling the way."
Module Readings and Assignment:
Read the overview for Module
From the textbook, The leadership challenge (5th ed.), read the following chapter:
Celebrate the Values and Victories
When Leaders are at Their Best
The five practices of exemplary leadership (REVIEW)
Credibility is the foundation of leadership (REVIEW)
From the Internet, read the following:
Lawson Consulting Group. (2012). How to motivate today's worker.
ASSIGNMENT:
This assignment will help you prepare for the next module's assignment about Workforce 2020. Workforce 2020 refers to the type of workforce leaders are likely to encounter in 2020. The concept refers to the workforce that will emerge from trends such as increased globalization and diversity, more extensive use of technology, and the use of non-traditional staff such as more contractors and other "just-in-time" assets.
You will need to consider trends in leadership and organizational structure, for example, the move toward a more participative leadership style and a more networked organizational structure.
Identify an organization of your choice. This could be your current employer. It could even be a hypothetical organization or that of one of your peers. Be sure you have access to information about the organization and about the industry the organization is in. We would suggest choosing an organization and industry that are changing so that you can explore strategies for change management.
Research on that organization, and then respond to the following:
Describe the organization you have chosen. Please include the name and a short description of the organization's products or services.
How does the organization motivate its employees? Describe any programs or methods they use to motivate workers. If the organization does not have any employee motivational strategies, suggest some strategies that you think will be effective.
Describe the current state of the organization's workforce dynamic. Is its workforce growing? Is it changing? How is it changing and why?
What are some of the workforce trends that this organization needs to address? What similar organizations can be used as a benchmark?
What are some of the industry trends that are affecting the organization overall? Is the industry growing, or declining?
Write your initial response in 3 to 5 pages in Word format.