Directing Principles of Management

Directing: Definition

• Giving instructions, guiding, counseling, motivating, and leading staff to achieve organizational goals
• A key managerial function performed by managers alongside planning, organizing, staffing, and controlling
• Performed from top executive to supervisor, wherever superior-subordinate relations exist
• A continuous process initiated at the top level, flowing down through the organizational hierarchy

Characteristics of Directing

• Pervasive: Required at all organizational levels, with every manager guiding and inspiring subordinates
• Continuous: An ongoing activity throughout the life of the organization
• Human Factor: Related to subordinates, making it sensitive to complex and unpredictable human behavior
• Creative: Converts plans into performance, preventing inactivity and ensuring physical resources are useful
• Executive: Carried out by all managers and executives, with subordinates receiving instructions from superiors
• Delegate: Deals with human beings, requiring delicacy to handle unpredictable human behavior toward enterprise goals

Importance of Directing

• Action Initiation: Starts action toward attaining objectives, commencing work upon receiving instructions
• Effort Integration: Coordinates interrelated activities through supervision, guidance, and counseling
• Motivation: Motivates subordinates to work efficiently and contribute maximally to organizational goals
• Change Facilitation: Eases adjustment to changes by addressing resistance stemming from employment/promotion fears
• Stability and Balance: Managers instruct, guide, supervise, and inspire subordinates to balance individual and organizational interests

Principles of Effective Direction

• Harmony of Objectives: Management aligns individual and group objectives, prioritizing group interests
• Unity of Command: Each person receives orders from one superior, ensuring accountability to one boss to avoid contradictory orders and confusion
• Unity of Direction: One head and one plan exist for activities with the same goals, under one supervisor
• Direct Supervision: Personal contact enhances effectiveness, fostering participation and feedback
• Participative Management: Mutual consent and consultation with subordinates followed by decisions to motivate workers through participation and acceptance
• Effective Communication: A system that ensures the free flow of ideas, information, suggestions, complaints, and grievances within an organization

Elements of Direction

• Supervision: Overseeing subordinates' work, directing work and workers
• Motivation: Inspiring, stimulating, and encouraging subordinates using positive, negative, monetary, and non-monetary incentives
• Leadership: Guiding and influencing subordinates in the desired direction
• Communications: Passing information, experiences, and opinions, creating understanding

Supervision as an Element of Directing

• Guiding employees' efforts and resources to achieve desired objectives
• Overseeing people at work by instructing, observing, monitoring, and guiding
• Applied at all levels, but more important at lower levels

Importance of Supervision

• Acts as a link between workers and management
• Ensures instructions are issued and understood by employees
• Facilitates control by matching actual versus planned output
• Maintains discipline through strict guidance, encouraging more disciplined activities
• Supervisors provide feedback to the management improving decisions
• Improves motivation when the supervisor has good leadership
• Ensures optimum utilization of resources by overseeing all activities, reducing wastage

Motivation: Definition

• Stimulating people to act to accomplish desired goals
• Key terms related to motivation are: motive, motivation, and motivators
• Motivation process:
  • A motive is an inner state that energizes, activates, and directs behavior toward goals which arises from unsatisfied needs and causes restlessness
  • Motivation is the process of stimulating people to action, dependent on satisfying needs of people
  • Motivators are techniques used to motivate people, such as pay, bonus, promotion, and recognition

Features of Motivation

• Psychological Phenomenon: An internal feeling influencing behavior, not forced upon employees
• Goal-Directed Behavior: Induces behavior to achieve goals
• Positive or Negative: It uses inspiration or enforcement
  • Positive motivation inspires people to work better (raises, promotion, recognition)
  • Negative motivation forces people to work via threats or punishment (memos, demotion, stopping increments)
• Complex Process: Difficult due to differing needs and wants that change over time
• Continuous Process: Arises from unlimited, changing human needs; satisfaction of one results in another

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Considered fundamental to motivation
• People have diverse needs that motivate them to work, including physiological, social, safety, esteem, and self-actualization needs
• For the satisfaction of these needs, managers must offer different incentives (monetary and non-monetary)
  • Basic/Physiological Needs - Most basic in the hierarchy and corresponds to primary needs like hunger, thirst, shelter, and sleep - Management can satisfy this need by offering monetary incentives like a good salary and comfortable working conditions
  • Safety/Security Needs - Security and protection from physical and emotional harm, stability of income - Management can satisfy this need by offering job security, pension, and insurance.
  • Affiliation/Belonging Needs - Refer to affection, a sense of belongingness, acceptance, love, and friendship - Management can encourage team building and permit workers the opportunity to interact socially and develop cordial relations with colleagues
  • Esteem Needs - Include factors such as self-respect, autonomy status, recognition, and attention - Management can provide opportunity for employees to feel a sense of accomplishment
  • Self Actualisation Needs - The drive to become what one is capable of becoming. These needs include growth, self-fulfillment, and achievement of goals. - Management can offer the freedom to take decisions

Motivation and Incentives

• Financial incentives are measurable in monetary terms (pay, allowance, bonus, profit sharing, etc.)
• Non-financial Incentives provide psychological and emotional satisfaction (status, climate, advancement, recognition, etc.)
• Motivation improves performance, promotes positive attitudes/smooth change, reduces employee turnover and absenteeism

Leadership: Definition

• Influencing people to willingly strive for mutual objectives
• Enables managers to maintain good interpersonal relations, motivating contributions towards organizational goals
• Involves leader-follower interaction, persuading employees to work cooperatively and enthusiastically toward common goals

Importance of Leadership

• Makes a positive influence with good results
• Maintains personal relations, meeting needs and providing confidence and support
• Introduces change
• Handles conflict
• Trains subordinates
  • Builds up successors and helps in the process

Qualities of a Good Leader

• Physical features – inspire followers
• Knowledge – instruct and influence subordinates
• Integrity – acts as role model
• Initiative – seizes opportunities
• Communication – good listener, teacher, counselor and persuader
• Motivation skills – be confident with followers needs
• Decisiveness – be firm and not change opinions frequently
• Social skills – sociable, friendly and maintain good relations with followers.

Styles of Leadership

• Leadership styles reflect a leader's behavior, influenced by philosophy, personality, experience, value system, followers, and organizational atmosphere
• Different types of leadership styles include autocratic, participative/democratic, and free rein/laissez-faire
• Autocratic or Authoritarian Leader:
  • Insists that orders are obeyed, determines policies without consulting the group
  • Centralized decision making
  • Best when where is little room for change
• Democratic or Participative Leader:
  • Consults the group
• Laissez Faire or Free Rein Leader:
  • Gives complete freedom to the subordinates

Communication

• Transfer of information from sender to receiver that is understood
• Organization always tries to improve communication skills of everyone in the company

Elements of Communication Process

• Sender
• Message
• Encoding converts the message into communication symbols
• The channels that the message goes through
• Decoding
• Receiver
• Feedback happens when receiver indicates he understands
• Noise can obstruct the communication

Importance of Communication

• Facilitates Coordination for the team to act in action
• Data necessary for decision
• Managerial efficiency comes from communication
• Peace in the workplace happens from mutual understanding
• Good communication skills are necessary for effective leaderships

Formal Communication

• Follows chain of command
• Is official
• Is either written or oral

Informal Communication

• Takes place outside official channels
• Consists of:
  • Grapevine communication
  • gossip

Barriers to Effective Communication

• Semantic Barriers:
• Badly expressed messages
• Words with different meanings causes confusion
• Faulty translations transfers wrong messages
• Unclarified assumption result in confusion
• Technical Jargon unclear for workers
• Psychological Barriers:
• Evaluating prematurely judgment before listening leads to misunderstanding
• Lack of attention or poor listening skills
• Loss by transmission and poor retention
• Organizational Barriers:
• The free flow does not create if creates problem
• Leads delay of action if structure is complex

Improving Communication Effectiveness

• Clarify ideas before telling team
• Consult communication with needs
• Be aware of language tone or context
• Ensure proper follow up and remove hurdles
• Be a good listener