importance of basic management and leadership skills

The most common definition of management is, ‘the art of getting things done through people’, which gives a broader sense of management. However, to understand the nature of management one has to study the evolution. Prior to this, one has to know management is not only the art but also is a form of science – managing as practice is an art; the organised knowledge underlying the practice is a science.

The evolution of management theories dates back to late 18th century and early 20th century with the advent of scientific management. Management has seen many dimensions in emphasising its focus from arranging the work base in job shop to allocation of task with authority to human relations approach, and now converges towards the integration of organisational activities with the external forces like socio-cultural, economical, technological and political environment to pro-actively respond.

Having different approaches of management, the most apposite definition that describes management is, ‘the attainment of organisational goals in an effective and efficient manner through planning, organising, leading and controlling organisational resources viz. human resources, money, machines, materials’.

India has contributed several things to the contemporary management such as the ‘Mahabharatha’, an Indian epic inspires the men of action which the ‘Bhagavad Gita’ guides men of thought. Similarly, ‘Upanishads’ sources a great management thoughts and practices and ‘Ramayana’ hallmarks the values a great leader.

Concomitantly, the Indian joint families managed and the way it is organised, led and controlled reveals the prevalence of management principles and practices in ancient India.

Hence, the present management students needs at least the knowledge of these Indian epics that provides deep insight of management thoughts and practices that involves a great calibre of understanding the organisational activities and also the environmental forces that impacts on management.

Leadership

Beforehand, a leader is who articulately embodies a vision and goals, and enables others to share and achieve them. And the leadership is a state of mind – vision, spirit, and character, getting diverse individuals to work together as a team.

A leader can be a manager, but a manager is not necessarily a leader. In the workplace, the leader emerges informally as the choice of the group; in society, the leader transpires from the societal situations.

The leadership skills are inculcated within a person through various sources like reading the biography of leaders, retrospection of oneself, education, training, and experience. There are several leadership studies with theories like traits theory, behavioural theory and contingency theory. In brief, traits theory assumes the primary source of leadership effectiveness lay in the personal qualities of the leaders themselves, while behavioural theories sought to explain the relationship between what the leaders did and how the employees reacted, both emotionally and behaviourally and the contingency theory studies leadership style in different environments.

Though many theories have drawn from the past, it is essential a person learn loving him or herself which is the first criterion towards a leader. Apart from that, we can imbibe the leadership skills through a continuous learning process. We learn few important attribute of leadership skills exhibited by successful leaders.

Firstly, people always want to be guided by those they respect and who have a clear sense of direction ethically and conveying a strong vision of the future. In other words, trust and confidence and effective communication are required by a leader. The first brings a satisfaction among employees while the later make understands what and why is needed, and how to be made achievable by them. The effective communication may be either verbal or non-verbal, but the vital point is that the leader’s thought be clearly conveyed in an effective manner for efficient performance from the employees at workplace in particular and the people in society at large.

Secondly, the leaders shall have the elements like, vision creator, team builder, task allocator, people developer and motivation stimulator. The leader should envision a clear goal for the organisation that what and where we should be in 5-years down-the-lane. The leader should possess the ability to build a team of similar wavelength thinkers as subordinates and delegation of authority with a specific task to each subordinate who is good at achieving it. Sometime, allocation of a task to a wrong person who is either a starter or has no practical experience will spoil the organisation.

The leadership is to develop leaders, not followers. Through people developing, the organisation propels to a higher levels with quality standards. The leader should also motivate the subordinates and nurture them with stimulators that direct subordinates towards the right direction.

One of the most important attribute that a leader or leadership skills, is in cultivating a balance between work and family both for themselves as well as employees or people. Likewise, there are numerous qualities that inspire us to be a leader. However, given a constraint the above are some of the important aspects of both basic management as well as the leadership skills.

Hitherto, we have understood the basic management and leadership skills, and now we focus these two are more important for a graduate. It is said that, the effective leadership produces a useful change, while effective management controls its complexity thus, effective leadership with good management returns a healthy organisations.

express your love feelings

the prominence to the pure love is diminishing, resulting decline in the significance of pain is also turning to be the hard reality, i.e., love is infatuation and pain is a product of it, construed as love itself a pain rather than pain is love.