Prepare to demonstrate leadership

To become a good leader in your workplace, you must first identify your organisation's requirements for your position. These requirements will guide and help you demonstrate the kind of leadership your organisation needs. To lead your team to success, you must first know how to identify your organisation’s requirements for management performance and understand what those requirements are.

Identifying Requirements

Each organisation can have different requirements for managers in the workplace. Depending on what it attends to achieve, your organisation will have certain expectations from you. You can identify these requirements by conducting a job analysis.

A job analysis is a process that helps you determine the requirements and duties of your job by breaking it down into parts. It consists of three steps:

Job Analysis

Step 1: Break the job down into parts

The first step is to break your role as a manager into different components. This will make it easier for you to know what information you are looking for.

Responsibilities

The responsibilities are the specific tasks and functions that you are required to perform as a manager.

Required Skills and Knowledge

Skills are the particular abilities specific to being a manager in your organisation. Some examples are critical thinking skills and leadership skills.

Knowledge consists of information that you apply when working as a manager. The knowledge you need may include technical writing, work health and safety procedures, etc.

Attitudes and Behaviours

The attitudes and behaviours determine how your organisation expects you to perform your tasks. As a manager, you may be expected to be confident, strict, and direct.

Context

The context of your job is made up of the working conditions that affect it. This is your day-to-day experience as a manager.

Responsibility Levels

The responsibility level dictates who you will be supervising and who your supervisors are.

Step 2: Identify where to find information about the requirements

There are several sources of information that you can use to identify the requirements of a manager. Larger organisations will require more narrowing down than smaller organisations because they contain more sources of information. It is important that you narrow them down to the sources that can provide information about your specific role rather than your team or department. Sources of information include:

A person that previously held your role in the workplace

Ideally, you would find someone in your organisation who previously had a management role. This can be someone who was promoted or transferred after undertaking your current work.

As someone who's previously worked as a manager in your organisation, they can provide valuable insight on what is expected of you as you perform your job.

The immediate supervisor of your role in the workplace

Your supervisor should be able to provide you with at least the basic information about your role as a manager.

Your immediate supervisor is the person in the workplace who is tasked with overseeing you and your work team.

They may not be able to inform you about the more detailed aspects of your role, but what you gather from them can serve as supplementary information to those gathered from other sources.

The department that you are part of in your organisation

Focus on gathering information from those in your department that are at the same job level.

Other managers or leaders in your department can share their knowledge, insights, and experiences that will help you better understand your own requirements.

Step 3: Gather the information you need

The final step is, of course, to collect the information. To do this, you can apply one of the following methods:

Workplace observation

Observe the people who perform the same or similar tasks. The best option would be to observe someone who has the same position in your workplace.

Interviews

You can conduct individual interviews with your supervisor or someone that previously held your position. Group interviews are more appropriate when asking your work team. Be sure to prepare your questions beforehand and ask questions that will help you identify the requirements for management performance.

Existing records

You can access and review work documents that are relevant to your role as a manager. Documents such as project reports or meetings minutes that involve your position’s tasks can be helpful.

Management Performance Requirements

Your organisation will have several requirements that you must meet to be an effective leader in your workplace. These requirements are determined by the different functions or roles of a manager. Below are the four key functions of management and the activities that performing those functions require:

Planning

• Establishing objectives stating the organisation's mission
• Developing strategies to achieve organisational goals
• Determining the required resources for the organisation's business activities

Organising

• Establishing and communicating organisational policies and procedures
• Developing the organisational structure
• Assigning tasks to the correct worker for the job
• Coordinating with workers about work activities
• Allocating resources for the organisation's business activities

Controlling

• Measuring and evaluating the performance of workers and work teams
• Comparing organisational performance standards to the performance of the members
• Identifying potential alternatives and areas for improvement in the organisation's systems and procedures
• Taking action to implement changes to improve worker performance

After identifying the organisation’s requirements for management performance, you must now identify the qualities that you will need to meet them. Depending on your policies and procedures, your organisation will have specific qualities that they expect of you. Your goal as a leader in your workplace is to develop these qualities in yourself. The following sections will discuss some of the qualities you may need and how you can exhibit them in your workplace.

Effective Management Qualities

There are three qualities necessary for positive management performance (Lussier, 2019). As a leader in your workplace, your goal is to ensure that you exhibit all three qualities and continuously improve them.

The three qualities are integrity, industriousness, and the ability to get along with people.

Integrity

• Am I trustworthy? Do I complete tasks when I set out to do them?
• Am I loyal? Do I avoid doing or saying things that might hurt my co-workers?
• Can I take criticism? Do I try to improve and change when needed?
• Am I honest? Do I avoid lying, cheating, or stealing?
• Am I fair? Do I treat others equally?

Industriousness

• Do I want to be successful? Do I do my best to achieve success?
• Am I a self-starter? Am I able to get things done without being asked?
• Am I a problem solver? Do I create solutions when I experience problems?
• Am I self-reliant? Can I work without depending on others?
• Am I hardworking? Do I enjoy my work and completing my tasks?

Ability to get along with people

• Do I enjoy working with others? Do I prefer to collaborate with co-workers than work on my own?
• Can I motivate others? Am I able to influence my co-workers to complete tasks they do not enjoy?
• Am I well-liked? Do others enjoy working with me?
• Am I cooperative? Do I ensure that the team does well as a whole?
• Am I a leader? Do I enjoy instructing others?

You can assess yourself by answering all the questions under each quality. Each time you can answer ‘yes’ is evidence of that quality in you. Which of the qualities do you exhibit? Are you more capable in any of the qualities than the others? Examine which of the three qualities is your strength and which is your weakness. Take time to develop the quality you might lack by creating a plan to address it. These three qualities are necessary for taking up leadership roles and choosing a leadership style.

What is Leadership?

Many people believe that leadership is simply being the first, biggest, or most powerful. Leadership in organisations has a different and more meaningful definition. Very simply put, a leader is interpreted as someone who sets the direction in an initiative and influences people to follow that direction. How they set that direction and influence people depends on various factors considered below. To really comprehend the ‘territory’ of leadership, you should understand some of the major theories on leadership styles. This will enable you to review some of the traits and characteristics that leaders should have.

Leadership Styles

The company's organisational culture largely determines the role of leadership in management. It has been argued that managers’ beliefs, values, and assumptions are critical to the overall style of leadership that they adopt.

There are several different leadership styles that can be identified within each of the following management techniques. Each technique has its own set of good and not-so-good characteristics, and each uses leadership differently.

The Autocrat

The autocratic leader dominates team members, using unilateralism to achieve a singular objective. This approach to leadership generally results in passive resistance from team members and requires continual pressure and direction from the leader in order to get things done. Generally, an authoritarian approach is not a good way to get the best performance from a team.

There are, however, some instances where an autocratic style of leadership may be appropriate. Some situations may call for urgent action, and in these cases, an autocratic leadership style may be best. In addition, most people are familiar with autocratic leadership and therefore have less trouble adopting that style. Furthermore, in some situations, subordinates may actually prefer an autocratic style.

The Laissez-Faire Manager

The Laissez-faire manager exercises little control over their group, leaving them to sort out their roles and tackle their work without participating in this process themselves. This approach generally leaves the team floundering with little direction or motivation.

Again, there are situations where the Laissez-Faire approach can be effective. The Laissez-Faire technique is usually only appropriate when leading a team of highly motivated and skilled people who have produced excellent work in the past. Once a leader has established that their team is confident, capable, and motivated, it is often best to step back and let them get on with the task since interfering can generate resentment and detract from their effectiveness. A leader can empower the group to achieve their goals by handing over ownership.

The Democrat

The democratic leader makes decisions by consulting their team while still maintaining control of the group. The democratic leader allows their team to decide how the task will be tackled and who will perform which task. The democratic leader can be seen in two lights:

A good democratic leader encourages participation and delegates wisely but never loses sight of the fact that they bear the crucial responsibility of leadership. They value group discussion and input from the team and can be seen as drawing from a pool of the team members’ strong points in order to obtain the best performance from their team. The Democrat motivates the team by empowering them to direct themselves and guides them with a loose rein.

However, the Democrat can also be seen as being so unsure of themselves and their relationship with subordinates that everything is a matter for group discussion and decision. Clearly, this type of ‘leader’ is not really leading at all.

Visionary

The visionary leader mobilises their team members towards a shared goal or objective. Visionary leaders are charismatic, persuasive, and have high emotional intelligence. They are able to see a ‘big picture’ of the future and what needs to happen to achieve it. Compared to the other leadership styles, the visionary leader approach creates a stronger positive impact on the organisation’s culture.

This leadership style is best for managers who are experts in their field of work. That expertise begets respect from team members and is useful for motivating them to follow the leader’s plans and instructions. This style is not ideal for workers requiring more training or close guidance.

Keys to Effective Leadership

There are five keys to being an effective leader:

Focus

In order to be a leader who people want to follow, you need to ensure that you are aware of the results you want to achieve and where you want to go. Look at your vision, your mission, and your values and use these to find the most effective strategic goals for your organisation. By focusing on where you want to go, you can be sure that you will actually get there.

Authenticity

People like to follow those people who are always themselves. Be real! Be yourself and manage people in the way that you feel works best. Consider, for example, the way that you want to be managed and manage those under you using similar techniques. By being authentic, you can build people's trust when working with you.

Courage

A leader needs to recognise when they are doing things right and needs to have the courage to admit their mistakes.

Empathy

Empathy is all about showing you understand how others feel. You need to show empathy as much as you can, and you can achieve this by developing your listening skills. Appreciate what others are saying and use this knowledge to gain new ideas and build your relationships to be as strong as possible.

Timing

An effective leader understands the timings behind certain events and knows when and when not to make decisions. They understand the manner needed to make decisions, understand the speed at which to move, and know which decisions to make and when.

Professionalism as a Leader

Efficient

• Finishing tasks when they are meant to be finished
• Understanding their own and team member's roles
• Creating high-quality outputs

Reliable

• Being on time
• Being approachable
• Providing input during team discussions
• Supporting work team member

Respectful

• Displaying good manners
• Being courteous
• Being fair and honest
• Accepting feedback given
• Apologising when appropriate

Leadership Theories

Countless experts and researchers have spent years formulating theories on leadership. These theories aim to explain what effective leadership is. Leadership theories refer to explanations of how and why certain people become leaders. These theories focus on the characteristics and behaviours that people can adopt to improve their leadership skills. They can be used to understand what characteristics a person needs to become a good leader. This section will discuss some of the basic universalist leadership theories.

Universalist Theories

Universalist leadership theories focus on the key characteristics held by effective leaders. They argue that if a leader has these characteristics, they can successfully lead a team through any circumstance. These theories are wildly accepted as they were some of the first theories developed in trying to understand leadership.

The Great Man/Woman Theory

This theory proposes that certain people make better and more natural leaders than others. According to this theory, successful leaders such as presidents, conquerors from history, and decorated politicians are great men or women who can replicate that success in different circumstances. It proposes that leadership is intrinsic rather than something that is developed over time.

Trait Theory

The trait theory of leadership was created as a result of several studies on the specific traits of leaders. Those studies have found that there are sets of traits that belong to an effective leader. Those types of traits are:

Physical

• Height
• Appearance
• Energy level

Intellectual

• Intelligence
• Independence
• Ability to reason

Personality

• Extroversion
• Dominance

Social

• Flexibility
• Charisma
• Social intelligence

Contingency Theory

This leadership theory focuses on environmental factors that determine what leadership style would best suit the situation. According to this theory, no leadership style is the best for every situation.

Contingency theory suggests that leaders focus on variables related to the environment to determine the best leadership style suited for the situation. Leaders must:

• Identify and examine the needs of their team members
• Assess the context of their working situation and environment
• Adjust their behaviour based on their findings

Situational Theory

Similar to the contingency theory, the situational theory of leadership suggests that no leadership style is the best for every situation. A situational leader can identify what leadership style and strategies are necessary for the task at hand. According to this theory, a leader must be able to adjust their leadership style according to:

• The objectives of the task
• The nature of the group
• The activities necessary for completing the task
• The resources needed for the task

As a leader, you are going to need to undertake planning. Planning occurs whenever something needs to be put into action. Planning processes also mean putting effective means in place to measure overall performance, trying to find ways in which you can be sure that your leadership on a given task is actually working, and you are achieving what needs to be achieved. The following sections will discuss how you can develop performance plans for individuals in your work team and your work team as a whole. These plans must target completing your organisation’s business objectives.

The Individual Performance Plan

Individual Performance Plan Components

An Individual Performance Plan (IPP) is a tool that you use to establish and communicate the performance expectations of each member of your work team. What an IPP is like varies depending on how it was developed. Usually, it includes the following information:

• worker profile – the worker’s name and position in the organisation
• career goals – what the worker intends to achieve for the organisation
• development objectives – what the worker plans to do to improve their performance
• training and development opportunities – the area that the worker needs to improve on
• signatures – evidence of approval and acknowledgement from relevant persons

Developing an Individual Performance Plan

Developing an IPP involves clear and open communication between you and the member of your work team that it is for. It also requires a good understanding of your organisation’s objectives. There are five phases:

Pre-Planning

Both you and your work team member must prepare for a meeting to discuss their performance. During this stage, you should review your key performance indicators, which will be discussed later in the unit, and look over records of previous evaluations that the worker has undergone.

Worker/Supervisor Meeting

Examine your team member's strengths, weaknesses, objectives, and organisational requirements. During this phase, you must ensure that the discussion is open and that both you and the worker have an equal opportunity to speak. Be sure to assign someone to create meeting minutes so that you can later review what was discussed. This phase is where you ask the worker what they need to better meet their organisational requirements. The discussion should centre around identifying the worker’s areas for improvement in their performance and what you can do to improve it. This meeting will establish the performance plan’s goals or objectives.

Preparing the IPP

This is the phase wherein you develop the individual performance plan. The IPP must establish what they need to improve their performance and how to meet those needs. Ensure that this phase is collaborative between you and the worker that the performance plan is for.

Complete all the components, as discussed earlier. The development objectives that the performance plan indicates should be aligned with the organisation’s business objectives. Your organisation should have a template for an IPP, so be sure to follow it. The IPP should contain the objectives, the action steps necessary to complete them, and the dates you expect those action steps to be completed. Below is an example of a template for an IPP.

Employee Name: Position:	Worker’s Strengths: Worker’s Business Objectives:
Objective	Action Step	Target Completion Date	Actual Completion Date

Implementing the IPP

The member of your work team will undergo the activities in the IPP, with your supervision. These activities will be the worker experiencing the training opportunities that you have decided on in the IPP. The worker must log when they intend to complete the business objectives and when they actually complete them.

As the activities occur, the worker’s responsibility is to complete the action steps that you have laid out in the IPP to the best of their abilities. You must guide them towards maximising their development opportunities so they can get the most out of it and achieve as much growth as possible. Ultimately, it is their job to tend to their professional growth while receiving the necessary resources and support from you and the organisation.

Evaluating the Outcomes

You must evaluate the effectiveness of the IPP and determine if your co-worker has grown. The worker must inform you whether the training and development experiences have helped them better perform their tasks. You can do this by having them submit an evaluation form to describe their experience and explain how the training has helped them. Allow the worker to make suggestions or recommendations for improvement to make the training more effective.

As their manager, you must continue observing the worker as they resume their tasks after training and determine if their performance has improved. Did they accomplish all the development objectives that the IPP aimed to complete? Has their productivity increased since undergoing training? Has the quality of their work improved?

If the IPP was a success, you should see an overall improvement in your worker’s performance. Ultimately, the goal is to attain professional growth and use that growth to contribute to the organisation’s business objectives.

The Team Performance Plan

Team Performance Plan Components

Like an IPP, a Team Performance Plan (TPP) determines and communicates a team's performance expectations. It identifies the desired performance levels of a team and how the team can achieve them. A TPP usually contains the following components:

• team development objectives
• performance measures
• actions to take to achieve business objectives
• a time frame that dictates how long it will take to execute the TPP

Developing a Team Performance Plan

To develop a performance plan for your work team, you must ensure that it aligns with your organisation’s overall objectives. The process of developing a TPP is as follows:

Identify Team Performance Needs

Examine your work team's strengths and weaknesses to identify its areas for improvement. Remember that you are assessing a team, so you must identify these in every member. The performance needs are what the team must achieve or be provided with to meet the organisation’s standards and business objectives.

Identify Desired Team Performance

The team’s performance can be one of the following levels:

Beginner

• This is the level wherein the team's performance is equivalent to that of someone who is new to the line of work.
• It is the minimal level of performance and is just enough for the performance to be satisfactory.

Intermediate

• This is the level wherein the team's performance is at the normal and usual quality for a professional in the organisation.

Expert

• This is the level wherein the team's performance surpasses the organisation's expectations.

Ideally, the team would be functioning at an expert level of performance. The desired performance level may not be the expert level, depending on the circumstance. It is possible that the team is currently working at a beginner level, and aiming for an intermediate performance level would be more realistic.

Identify Methods to Monitor Performance

The next step is to identify and establish how you will monitor and evaluate the performance of your work team. Examples of some methods are surveys, self-evaluation, and observation by team leaders. You must align your monitoring methods with your organisation’s key performance indicators (KPIs) to accurately measure and evaluate the performance of your work team.

Your organisation should have methods in place for monitoring the performance of your work team, so be sure to identify those methods and apply them. It is always the best practice to go by organisational policies and procedures.

Create the TPP

This phase is when you will create a team performance plan. Like the IPP, this should be a collaborative effort between you and the work team. That means that you and everyone in the team should agree upon all the decisions made for the TPP. The TPP should contain all the components mentioned earlier. The TPP should explicitly communicate the time frame in which the team should be able to achieve their goals. Below is an example of a template for a TPP to help you better understand how to create one with your work team.

Team Performance Plan Department: Team Development Objectives:
Objective	Action Step	Team Member	Target Completion Date	Actual Completion Date

Implement the TPP

Guide your work team through implementing the TPP that you developed together. As the team goes through the action steps in the TPP, you must be present and involved in their experience. As their manager and leader, it is your responsibility to guide your work team through the development activities.

Developing a TPP may make your team feel more aware of what they lack in terms of performance and discourage them. Be sure to remind your team that participating in activities is for their benefit and will help them grow as professionals in their careers. Encourage your team to make the most of the action steps assigned and achieve the most growth. Allow them the opportunity to ask you questions about the TPP activities and be direct when addressing those questions.

Remember to be supportive but avoid spoon-feeding your work team. The activities in the TPP are meant to challenge them and help them address their weaknesses. Their performance cannot improve unless they work for it.

Evaluate the Outcomes

Evaluate the effectiveness of the TPP by examining if the team was able to achieve its goals and improve its performance level. Like in evaluating the outcomes of an IPP, you can set up a meeting with the work team to discuss the effectiveness of the TPP.

Allow the work team to share their insights and experiences from undergoing the development activities in the TPP. Ask them if the action steps have helped them do their work more efficiently. Ask them for suggestions or recommendations on what can be done to further help them improve their performance level as a team.

Over time, you must continue observing and monitoring the performance of your work team. A successful TPP will lead to an increase in the productivity and performance level of a work team. If the TPP has truly helped your work team, they should be able to better contribute to achieving your organisation’s business objectives.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are what you use to measure a worker’s performance level. An organisation’s business objectives usually determine KPIs. Your responsibility is to establish KPIs and communicate them to your work team. The KPIs will help you evaluate your work team's performance; they will also guide your work team towards achieving the performance level that the organisation requires. The following sections will discuss how you can establish KPIs and use them to measure your work team’s success.

Establishing KPIs

The first thing to do is to identify the purpose of the position. This is generally easy to accomplish because it is stated separately or included in the position description introduction. An excellent check to use in determining if the KPIs make sense is whether they reflect the purpose of the position itself.

Identifying the Purpose of the Position

The purpose is to provide managers with objectively based information for making decisions. You need to identify the major duties of the position using the position description. Below is an example of a position that has four key tasks. Within the descriptions of each of the duties, keywords can be found that tell what the duties involve.

• studies the structure and/or functions of organisations
• provides program cost analysis, annual and multi-year fiscal planning
• provides program support, assessment, and consultation services
• conducts management surveys and research projects

Note that the first and last duties involve conducting studies, surveys, and other projects that require similar skills. Therefore, they can be combined into a single critical element.

Identifying Critical Elements

During this step, you are again trying to place the position within the context of the organisation. Two questions come to mind:

• What is the organisation attempting to achieve?
• What contribution can this position be expected to make?

This step demands more creativity than simply reviewing a position or job description for keywords. Other questions to ask might include:

• Does the organisation have any special projects to accomplish this year?
• Are there any initiatives that my department/division could work on or support?
• Are there some long-standing problems that could be addressed?

This is, by far, the most difficult step. This step clearly states what you expect the worker to do and how well they are expected to do the work assigned. This takes time and thought.

Note the similarity between the performance standards for critical elements one and two. This often happens when a position has consistency in the duties assigned and skills employed. Could they be combined? Yes, but in this case, it would not be recommendable to do that because there will probably be a great deal of difference between the approaches used in most management studies and the analytical approach needed to assess and recommend a forecasting model.

Reviewing the KPIs

The next step is making sure the KPIs are measurable and understood by everyone in the organisation.

Review what is expected and clarify why accomplishing the standards is important to the organisation's overall success. Remember that this entire process aims to get everyone in your organisation to perform at the highest level possible. Communicating the KPIs to your work team is an important component in this process. Establishing clearly written and mutually agreed upon key performance indicators is not easy, but it is well worth the investment of time.

Getting the Best Performance

In order to lead and get the best possible performance from your team, you need to look for ways to actually measure the level of performance of your staff and determine exactly where and when this is to be done. Without this knowledge, you have no idea if what you are doing is actually working or not.

Such measurement may be undertaken at a range of times, including:

• professional development reviews
• project appraisals
• compensation reviews
• and many more opportunities that are informal

Determining how to monitor performance is an important step in developing performance plans. You may have worked through the previous steps of the process, developed what you thought were great KPIs, and then found that monitoring performance on an element is impossible, too costly, or too time-consuming. If this happens, think through other specific measures that indicate performance that are as specific as possible.

The process involves you in attempting to:

• Establish the type of information that you need to obtain and then look at where you can get it from
• Establish the times for collecting the information that you need and then who will gather it.
• Look at reports that are already available to determine if they will be useful.
• Give feedback to appropriate staff.

Key Points

The performance you give as a leader and the behaviours you exhibit are crucial to how your staff will perceive you.

The three qualities for positive performance management are integrity, industriousness, and the ability to get along with people.

An Individual Performance Plan is used to communicate the performance expectations of each member of a work team. A Team Performance Plan communicates the performance expectations of a work team as a whole.

Ensure that your performance meets the organisation’s requirements.

Performance plans allow you to make sure that your organisation reaches its required goals. Part of this performance plan must be a set of key performance indicators which allow you to measure progress towards goals.