Leadership, Organisational Structures and How They Affect Motivation.

This is just a few ways for leaders to motivate your staff…….

1. You should use Motivational Quotes, such as

·        The Secret of Getting Ahead is Getting Started

·        You can never quit. Winners never quite and quitters never win.

·        The greater the hardship, the brighter the flame.

·        Who you are isn’t the result of your work. You are the journey you took to get there!

      
2. Use the most suitable leadership style with you staff!

There are three different leadership styles; Autocratic, Democratic and Laissez-Faire Leadership Style. In an autocratic leadership style, the leader has total authority and control over decision making. The leader does not only control the team, but also monitors them for completion ⁽¹⁾. In this leadership style, the leader has absolute power over the people under him. The democratic leadership style is very different from autocratic leadership style. The democratic leadership style is a very open and collegial style of running a team ⁽²⁾. Ideas flow in his leadership style, and everyone is given the opportunity to voice out ideas, opinions and thoughts. Therefore, meetings and discussions will be quite smooth flowing, as compared to the autocratic style of leading. The Laissez-Faire leadership style is very delegative, in which leaders are hands-off, and give the authority of making decisions to the team members. This leadership style is found to be the least productive among all three leadership styles ⁽³⁾. The best leadership style, based on my opinion would be democratic leadership style, as it is not too controlling, and hands off.

If I was the leader, I would try my level best to apply the democratic style of leadership to my team members. This is because I feel that it will make the leadership style effective, and the communication will be able to go across all the team members, and it will motivate them at the same time. Some staff like to be involved and given the authority to voice out, and therefore, if they are given the chance to do so, it will make them motivated to strive for better opinions and ideas every time. However, this leadership style may not work with certain people, and leaders should be able to detect whether it works or not. If the leaders do not have to have the abilities to detect of the style they are using is working or not, the message that they are communicating will not be understood by the staff/team members and this can lead to demotivation to work and get involved. When the staffs become demotivated, the quality of work produced will definitely reduce, and this is a negative impact on the staff and the leader. If the leaders find that the method isn’t suitable for his team, he should change and try out other leadership styles. To sum up, leaders should know his team by the tip of his fingers, and this will allow him to choose the appropriate leadership style to communicate with them. Therefore, leaders should make changes from time to time, in terms of leadership style, depending on staff, and always make sure that whatever technique used is effective.

3. Decide on an appropriate Organizational structure for you to use on your staff.

Tall Organizational Structures are very complex, as compared to the wide/flat organizational structure. This organizational structure has a taller hierarchy, which means that they are not many people on the same level/rank, which means that each person is in control of a small area ⁽⁴⁾. This means that the span of control is lower, due to the fact that there are not many people under each person and the chain of command is longer, because of the existence of many ranks. When the organization grows and develops, there are even more ranks, which makes the structure even taller.

This is an example of a tall organisational structure ⁽⁵⁾:

As shown in the hierarchy above, there is only one person who works on one part. Therefore, I can deduce that the motive of this organisational structure would be to focus on quantity over quality. This is because, they company might have the motive to do various areas, but not go detailed into each area, maybe due to the expectations and demand of the society.

In Wide/Flat Organisational Structures, there are less management levels. The main focus is to have a few employees, who have solid skills in them, rather than hire so many employees, who are not very skilled and experienced ⁽⁴⁾.

An example of a Wide/Flat Organisational Structure is the one on the right side of this image⁽⁷⁾:

Based on this hierarchy, there are more people of the same job on the same level,       which means that the style of working would probably be in a team, rather than individual. As shown, there are 2 priests who work under each Bishop. If this hierarchy is compared to the hierarchy on Tall organisational structures, I would definitely say that this is one would probably be focusing on quality over quantity, since there is more than one person on each rank.

To motivate staff in different organisational structures, the leader has to know which staff prefers to work on his/her own, or in teams. What the leader can do to motivate his staff, after knowing their personality, would be to organise them accordingly. For instance, those staffs who like to work in groups should be placed in groups, and those who like to work individually should be placed alone. This way, the manager is actually giving the staff the necessary job satisfactions, which will be a form of motivation. Staffs would be motivated this way as they would feel that the manager/leader has faith in them, and knows that they will be able to give their best shots at all tasks given. 


References:

1. "Leadership Styles: Autocratic Leadership." Leadership Styles: Autocratic Leadership. Leadership-toolbox.com, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. <http://www.leadership-toolbox.com/autocratic-leadership.html>.
2.  Leadership Styles: Democratic Leadership Style." Leadership-toolbox.com, n.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. <http://www.leadership-toolbox.com/democratic-leadership-style.html>.
3. Cherry, Kendra. "What Is Laissez-Faire Leadership?" About.com Psychology. About.com, n.d. Web. 8 Jan. 2013. <http://psychology.about.com/od/leadership/f/laissez-faire-leadership.htm>.
4. Griffin, Danna. "Tall Vs. Flat Organizational Structure." Smallbusiness.chron.com. Small Business, n.d. Web. 9 Jan. 2013. <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/tall-vs-flat-organizational-structure-283.html>.
5. Tall Organizational Structure. N.d. Photograph. Blogspot.com. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. <http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VqPK2z4-feQ/UDKM0gQXoSI/AAAAAAAAAFc/MWNcTtHIlg8/s1600/w7503e09.gif>.
6. Organization and Teamwork. N.d. Photograph. Http://pages.paloverde.edu. BUS 101. Web. 8 Jan. 2013. <http://pages.paloverde.edu/staff/lmartin/bus101/lesson8.htm>.