Mintzberg’s 10 Roles Of Management And Situational Leadership In A Franchise Setting

Mintzberg’s 10 roles of management and their application

Discuss about the Managerial Roles for Social and Legal Responsibilities.

Mintzberg formulated 10 roles of management to assist with the challenges that managers face every day in business. He realized managers change roles often and constantly have to battle with conflict negotiations among their teams. The ten roles that he formulated describe manager’s diverse functions.

Figurehead represents the social and legal responsibilities that a manager is entitled to. This includes duties such as inspiring the staff. For instance, in the case of Horton’s franchise, the manager has the role of acting as a figurehead to the rest of the team members. The manager was supposed to ensure better staff performance and attendance of employees. The manager, however, didn’t adhere to this roles and one staff complains that the franchise has a high rate of absenteeism (Kumar, 2015).

Leadership involves the manager being a responsible leader to his team. It involves the leader being focused on each team’s performance. The previous manager of the franchise is not attentive to the performance of their team members. The staff complains that there was a poor performance.

Liaison role requires managers to be able to provide a network of connections for the organization. They can achieve this by establishing a strong line of connection with the internal and external contacts. The franchise was associated with customer complaints. This shows the inability of the manager to establish customer contacts.

The previous manager did not monitor his team in terms of their performance. It resulted in the poor performance of the team members. This in turn affected the sales of the franchise negatively.

Dissemination is the requirement of the manager to have proper means of communication to the junior staff. The team leader should therefore be able to provide useful information to his team. The team members felt that the management lacked a sense of direction.

The manager is required to represent and speak for the organization. He is responsible for communicating about the goals of the organization to the external people. The manager lacked the confidence that is required to communicate these goals.

A manager is supposed to be entrepreneurial in terms of solving problems associated with the team members. The previous manager was also required to create new ideas and implement them (Gabarro, 2014). The manager does not solve the problem of reduced sales which leads to employee layoff.

It is the responsibility of the manager to be a disturbance handler. This means that he is expected to handle any roadblocks. The managers should also help solve disputes within the group. The team members are disturbed that there is an increased rate of employee absenteeism. The manager does not take the chance to address the issue.

Situational leadership and how it can be utilized

The manager is the resource allocator. This means that he is responsible for effective resource allocation. For instance fund allocation and assignment of duties to the staff. The franchise has increased the level of staff turnover. This shows that duties are improperly allocated which is resulting in the turnover.

A manager is supposed to be a negotiator (Horlacher, & Hess, 2016). This means that he has to consider negotiations in terms of what the team members wants. In this franchise, the manager is not actively involved with the needs of his team. He would otherwise have addressed the issue of poor performance and absenteeism.

Every team leader needs some kind of power. This power enables them to have some form of control over their team members. The power is not meant to dictate the team but just to ensure smooth performance of the team. Some managers may even choose to delegate their power to some team members. There are five sources of power associated with a team leader.

Expert power requires a leader to have some extra skills or knowledge. This is skills which they can be able to express that the rest of the team members lack. For instance, the senior human resource has an influence on how the junior human resource goes about their duties. Team leaders should have expert power as it will give them the ability to solve the team’s difficult situations. The team needs to view their leaders as people with extra skills that the rest of them do not possess (Korica, Nicolini, & Johnson, 2017).

Positional power is the power that a person holds for being in a particular position of the organization. For example, the powers that a CEO has are based on that particular executive position. Team leaders obtain positional powers from being placed in that particular position. The team members acknowledge the legitimate powers associated with being in the position of a team leader.

Reward power is associated with the ability of the team manager to give rewards. The rewards that they can give are bonuses, delegated power or even promotions to be the vice team leader (Turker, 2014). Team leaders have the power to influence their team’s behavior through rewards. They can get the team to perform better and even avoid absenteeism through the issue of bonuses or even promotions.

Coercive power involves the leader using some form of a threat to influence the actions of the team. The leader makes the team believe that he has the power to take legal actions against them. The members tend to believe that the leader has the capability to get them fired or even suspensions (Sethuraman, & Suresh, 2014). This will get them to be more cooperative and determined to achieve their responsibilities.

Conclusion

Personal power is the ability of managers to be able to influence other people through persuasion. The leader possesses authority over the team members (Saxena, Bhaumik, & Singh, 2014). The members are able to listen and adhere to the rules and regulations that the leader formulates. This power means that the leader does not rely on the power that his position gives him. He could rely on simple conversations, courteous words.

The most effective power, in this case, would be the personal power. This is the most persuasive power to the team. The leader does not act like he is posing a threat to the team. It is just an easy way of getting the team to do as required (Klein, 2017). Personal power does not come easily but it produces positive results. For instance, the leader can get the team to better performance without them feeling like he is threatening them. The issue of constant layoff, customer complaint can also be effectively addressed if the leader employs this power. It provides an effective form of communication with team members.

Situational leadership is a part of the contingency theories of leadership. According to Kenneth Blanchard, situational leadership is the situation where managers have to change their leadership style in order to fit their followers’ development level. In this form of leadership, the leader is the one who changes to fit in with the team. The team members or the followers do not need to adjust their style to fit with that of their leader. The situational approach is based on values and attitudes of the leader and the team. The situations of situational are categorized into five components (McCleskey, 2014).

Situational leadership requires combinations of different ranks, directive, and supportive behavior of the team leaders. The directive behavior represents order while the supportive behavior offers direction to the team members. The two major behaviors are further classified into four categories which demonstrate how situational leaders operate.

Telling involves the leader demonstrating extraordinary directive behavior and little supportive behavior. Extraordinary directive behavior ensures that the rules which have been set by the managers are followed by the team members (Luo, & Liu, 2014). It also requires the members to achieve the expectations which have been laid out by the leader. For instance, in this franchise, the manager can set the expected performance for each member. This will ensure improved performance hence increased profits. This involves the leader directing the members on their duties and responsibilities. This will enable the team to achieve a better result for the assigned task. Being directive does not mean that the leader is authoritative. It just means that he is able to take the lead role in managing the team depending on whichever direction they want to follow. This is for as long as the direction increases the sales of the franchise.

Selling involves the leader representing both high directive and supportive behavior. This involves the leader directing the members on what needs to be done. This will enable the team to achieve a better result for the assigned task. Being directive does not mean that the leader is authoritative. It just means that he is able to take the lead role in managing the team depending on whichever direction they want to follow. This is for as long as the direction increases the sales of the franchise (Thompson, & Glasø, 2015). In selling the leader is also highly supportive of the decisions made by the team members. This is the perfect approach for ensuring that the members are motivated to perform their duties.

Participation involves the leader showing low directive behavior but very high supportive behavior. In this case, for instance, the leader should have provided support to the team so that they can be able to improve their performance (Pasaribu, 2015). The leader should have been able to deal with the employee issues relating to absenteeism.

Delegation involves the leader showing low supportive and low directive behavior. For example in the case here, the previous leader could have made use of delegation. This is bypassing some authority to the team members so that they can make decisions about the franchise. This will enable them to feel free from accountability which tends to create fear for the employees.

References

Gabarro, J. J. (2014). The development of working relationships. In Intellectual teamwork (pp. 93-124). Psychology Press.

Horlacher, A., & Hess, T. (2016, January). What does a Chief Digital Officer do? Managerial tasks and roles of a new C-level position in the context of digital transformation. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2016 49th Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 5126-5135). IEEE.

Klein, G. A. (2017). Sources of power: How people make decisions. MIT press.

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Kumar, P. (2015). An Analytical study on Mintzberg’s Framework: Managerial Roles. International Journal of Research in Management & Business Studies (IJRMBS), 2, 12-18.

Luo, H., & Liu, S. (2014). Effect of situational leadership and employee readiness match on organizational citizenship behavior in China. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 42(10), 1725-1732.

McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.

Pasaribu, F. (2015). The situational leadership behavior, organizational culture and human resources management strategy in increasing productivity of private training institutions. Information Management and Business Review, 7(3), 65.

Saxena, D., Bhaumik, S., & Singh, S. N. (2014). Identification of multiple harmonic sources in power system using optimally placed voltage measurement devices. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 61(5), 2483-2492.

Sethuraman, K., & Suresh, J. (2014). Effective leadership styles. International Business Research, 7(9), 165.

Thompson, G., & Glasø, L. (2015). Situational leadership theory: a test from three perspectives. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(5), 527-544.

Turker, D. (2014). Analyzing relational sources of power at the interorganizational communication system. European Management Journal, 32(3), 509-517.