The Business Skills Handbook
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
The Business Skills Handbook
Leadership Skills
Week 18
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Reading
Recommended text:
The Business Skills Handbook
Horn, R.
London: CIPD
1st edition, 2009
ISBN: 1843982188
Chapter 18: Leadership, Coaching and Mentoring Skills
(page 451)
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Lecture Outline






understanding and using management
the characteristics of management work
practical management skills
understanding the nature of leadership
trait leadership skills
behavioural leadership skills
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Learning Objectives



understand and use the distinction between
management and leadership
understand the aspects of managing
develop different ways of leading
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management

The two terms leadership and management are often
used as if they are the same thing – they are not. You
will need to have the distinction clear if you are to
lead groups and teams effectively.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [2]

Let’s look at management first. Management is the
control and direction of people and resources to
achieve the agreed vision and objectives of the
organisation. This is a very important function of
business, but it is different from leadership.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [3]

In your business career your first steps are very likely
to be as a manager. So what do managers do? What
should managers do?
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [4]

Henry Mintzberg has had a major and enduring
impact on the nature of management since his book,
The Nature of Managerial Work, was published in
1973. There have been numerous add-ins to the
basic ideas over the years. There has also been
extensive research and investigation looking at the
nature of the manager’s work.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [5]

One of the basic building blocks of Mintzberg’s
beliefs, and a major driver for this book, is that
management is the applying of human skills to
organisational systems.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [6]

His much published and reiterated paper, ‘The
Manager’s Job: Folklore and Fact’ (1975), exposes
the constant pressure managers feel, the push to do
too much work, respond too quickly and deal with
interruptions.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [7]
Mintzberg expresses the manager’s job in six
characteristics and ten roles.
The characteristics of management work are:
 Management tasks are a mixture of regular,
programmed jobs and unprogrammed tasks.
 Management tasks require both generalist and
specialist skills.
 Managers seek information from all sources but show
a preference for that which is orally transmitted.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [8]



Managerial work is made up of tasks and activities
that are characterised by brevity, variety and
fragmentation.
Management work is more an art than a science and
is reliant on intuitive processes and a ‘feel’ for what is
right.
Management work is becoming more complex.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [9]
The ten roles that make up the content of the manager's
job are:
Interpersonal
 figurehead – performing symbolic duties as a
representative of the organisation
 leader – establishing the atmosphere and motivating
subordinates
 networker – developing and maintaining webs of
contacts, both inside and outside the organisation
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [10]
Information
 monitor – collecting all types of information that are
relevant and useful to the organisation
 disseminator – transmitting information from outside
the organisation to those inside
 spokesman – transmitting information from inside the
organisation to outsiders
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [11]
Decision-making
 entrepreneur – initiating change and adapting to the
environment
 disturbance-handler – dealing with unexpected
events
 resource-allocator – deciding on the use of the
organisation’s resources
 negotiator – negotiating with individuals and dealing
with other organisations
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [12]

You can probably see from Mintzberg’s early work
that management is a function that organises and
executes the organisation’s effort. Traditionally we
teach management rather like it is a science.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [13]

Management skills are acquired by training,
education and practice. Management skills are
applied by understanding vision, people, team
dynamics, creativity and empathy.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management [14]

Practical management involves using scarce
resources and making the most of those resources.
In modern business there are always scarce
resources. There is never enough: time, finance,
people, expertise, raw material or knowledge. How
you argue for and use the resources that are made
available to you will be the measure of your success.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice

If you are new to management, you may wonder
what you will do all day. The following is a list of
managerial activities that I have put together from my
own experience and the experience of managers I
have known.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [2]


Organising – designing processes, procedures and
practices for others to follow
Analysing – investigating things and discovering the
various aspects of those things and how they
currently fit and work together
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [3]


Evaluating – assessing whether people, processes,
resources and other things are operating effectively
Planning – setting out the steps that individuals and
teams need to take to get something done. This
includes short-term planning of activities covering
days, weeks, months, and long-term planning
covering months and years.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [4]


Financial aspects – arguing for resources,
budgeting for those resources and accounting for
what has been spent and what has been produced;
also, costing goods and service
Motivating – talking to teams and individuals to
inspire and motivate them
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [5]


Monitoring – checking the progress of products and
services to ensure targets are met; also, checking on
the actions and outcomes of people
Negotiating – discussions and actions that resolve
conflict, agree ways forward, sort out problems, and
so on
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [6]

Providing – all teams and employees need things to
do their work. As a manager you will spend a lot of
time negotiating what is needed and arranging for the
necessary things to be provided at the right time.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [7]

Paperwork – recording and requesting actions
required by the organisation in paper or electronic
form. As one anonymous airline manager remarked,
‘I never knew how much paper it took to get a plane
in the air.’
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Management in Practice [8]

This is a very general idea of the types of activity you
can expect to do when you become a manager. As
with all assertions, challenge and probe my version of
what management involves.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Leadership

Leadership is about creating a vision and direction for
people. This is in contrast to management, which is
concerned with organising and directing individuals
and teams to achieve agreed organisational
objectives related to an organisational vision.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Leadership [2]

The two roles of leader and manager are nearly
always intertwined. One cannot exist without the
other. So while you will be expected to manage the
day-to-day aspects of getting things done, you will
also need to create some vision, focus and direction
for your staff.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Leadership [3]

This can be on a small scale, where small teams
need to understand, to see, what has to be done. It
can also be on a grand scale, where you are leading
a whole organisation or group of organisations.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Leadership [4]

Leadership styles can vary greatly and there is no
‘right’ or ‘wrong’ way to lead. You will develop your
own leadership style in time, but to begin with I will
consider some of the well-known approaches.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership

Trait leadership approaches are grounded on the
idea that leaders contain a set of traits and
behaviours that could be studied and emulated by
others.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [2]

You may have already noticed that at university and
work there are some people that seem to have
natural leadership qualities. People just seem to
accept them as leaders and want to be led by them.
So we seem to know leadership when we see it.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [3]


However, if I ask you to set down what it is that
makes a good leader, you might struggle to come up
with a clear list of things.
What makes a good leader ?
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [4]

When it comes to studying leadership traits we could
adopt the approach of looking at great leaders and
then seeing how the majority of leaders measure up.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [5]

Alternatively, we could look at everyday leaders and
see what traits they have that make them effective.
The problem with great leaders is that they are often
individual and the traits they display are rather rare in
practical leading.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [6]


So let’s try to come up with a list of traits that could
make you an effective leader.
What are traits of good leaders?
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [7]

I think you will have found a massive amount of traits
that indicate a good leader. I also expect that there
was very little agreement between different
authorities. If you focus on the more researched and
evidenced sources, you may have found a similar list
of traits to what follows.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [8]
Traits of leaders – a synthesis





energy, vitality and enthusiasm
honest and trustworthy
able to see the big picture – vision
good at doing things – task competence within
specialist areas
understands and accepts team and individual needs,
wants and desires
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [9]





skilful person-handler, negotiator and conflict-handler
effective decision-maker
inspires and motivates
courage and stickability
values diversity
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [10]





achievement driven
intelligence
accepts responsibility and remains calm under
pressure
self-confident and self-aware. but also balanced,
humble and modest
assertive and can lead from the front
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Trait Leadership [11]




supportive and can lead from the rear
adaptable, flexible and can handle change
consistency
a good listener
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership

Behavioural leadership moves on from the traits of
leaders to the behaviour of leaders. The focus of this
approach is how leaders behave towards those they
lead. The different patterns of behaviour are grouped
together into styles of leadership.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [2]

The most popular of these styles is the managerial
grid (Blake and Mouton 1978).
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [3]
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [4]

The managerial grid is based on only two
dimensions. These are:

Concern for people – this represents the degree to
which the leader considers the needs and wants of
the team. Low implies that the leader gives no
concern for the people in the team and high implies
that the leader considers and acts on the needs the
team.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [5]

Concern for production – is the degree that the
leader is concerned with achieving concrete
outcomes. Low implies little concern for the
productive output and high means the leader is fully
focused on achieving agreed outcomes.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [6]

If you plot any one person on these two dimensions,
you come up with one of Blake and Mouton’s five
leadership styles. Working from the bottom left corner
of the figure we have:
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [7]
Impoverished Leadership – Low Production/Low
People
 The leader has little concern for either production or
people. The work environment is neither personally
pleasant and satisfying nor high achieving. This style
of leadership is likely to create a demotivated
workforce that achieves very little. If this
characterises your work group, you make need to
look at and change your leadership style.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [8]
Produce or Perish – High Production/Low People
 This style is also known as leadership compliance
style – ‘do what you are told’. This style of leader
believes that people are just like any other resource
and are there to produce output.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [9]

This style of leader is autocratic with strict rules about
working. There will be very little social interaction
between team members during work hours. Their
management style will punish inappropriate work
behaviours as the way to motivate staff.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [10]
Middle of the Road Management – Medium
Production/Medium People
 This style of leader balances the needs of the people
carrying out the work with the need to achieve and
produce. The compromise of balancing the two foci
means that leaders using this style will not produce
high-performance teams.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [11]

The compromises create this middle ground position
where teams are satisfied and production is average.
When you first search for your own leadership style, it
is this position that is often taken until you develop
more experience. This middle ground position is not a
bad style to adopt for new leaders because they can
build on the people and task focus to improve the
performance of the team.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [12]
Country Club Management – Low Production/High
People
 The leader using this style puts the greatest
emphasis on the well-being, needs and feelings of
the team. The basic managerial assumption is that if
the team is happy, the productive output will be high.
This is often wrong! The team is happy and interacts
well but it is at the expense of production. So the
team likes working under this style of management
but does not work as hard as they could.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [13]
Team Leadership – High Production/High People
 This is the most desired leadership style as it
produces happy teams that produce high outputs.
Employees’ views and needs are canvassed and
acted upon but in the context of producing high
outputs. Team members are likely to be fully involved
in the management process.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [14]

The leader maximises both the people focus and the
productive output by skilled interventions. While you
may desire to use this leadership style, it is not easy
to achieve. The main difficulty is to balance the team
needs and involvement with maximum output. Teams
operating under this style of leadership are likely to
trust the leader and the leader will trust the team. The
team will be happy, motivated and focused on
production.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Behavioural Leadership [15]

The managerial grid is a practical and useful way to
focus on your own leadership style. A weakness is
that it only focuses on two dimensions of a very
complex process. It does however allow you to
diagnose your own style and work towards something
more desirable. It is not too difficult to create other
two-dimensional tables that focus on your own
precise leadership context.
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Activity
Case Study Preparation
Zulu computers
120 minutes’
prep
5 minutes’
feedback
Feedback to the group –
answers to the four
tasks
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
Next Week
• the skills required to manage a traditional career
• the skills required in modern careers: protean and
portfolio
• understand career theory
• strategies for making the transition into a career
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
The Business Skills Handbook
The End
The Business Skills Handbook
Roy Horn - Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development