Introduction to the effective leader and manager
Overview
This chapter will take a broad view on how to maintain and enhance practice for a professional working in a team environment. Nevertheless, as part of advanced learning the chapters will all stress the importance of professional development from a perspective of those moving into a management or leadership role within the transport and logistics industry.
To establish a better understanding of current approaches to leadership and management, we need to come to some basis for defining what constitutes an effective manager. That is, we need to move beyond the concept of management as some aspect of what a team leader needs to know how to do and examine it in an applied, real context.
We also need to explore the basis which management and leadership theories have provided to frame the concept of an effective manager.
When devising management models the focus is invariably on using these models to identify and develop managerial effectiveness. But how is this defined and how do we know when we have enhanced management effectiveness?
We need to establish the basis from which we can study the concept of an effective manager. This will permit us to then assess not only what constitutes and effective manager, but later study these models for in leadership light of contemporary trends and situations.
This topic will explore three broad 'schools of thought' in defining leadership. We will look at how we have defined the effective manager in terms of the
- The Role and Trait Approach;
- The Behavioural Approach; and
- The Competency Approach.
Each of the above schools has unique characteristics but are they as mutually exclusive in their intent as we may assume?
Learning objectives
After completing the work for this chapter you should be able to:
- Contrast the ways to profile an effective manager and leader
- Review and investigate the role approach to management
- Review the behaviour approach to management
- Review the trait approach to management
- Review the competency approach to management
- Discuss what constitutes effective manager
