Skills for Effective Management
It is understood that management, which is defined as the act, manner, or practice of managing, handling, supervision, or control directly affects almost every aspect of the workplace (American Heritage, 2000). An incompetent or careless manager can have a devastating impact on an organization. This incompetent manger can cause and perpetuate decreased employee performance, dissatisfied customers, and poor production. An effective manager will avoid such effects through circumspect consideration and implementation of innovative management strategies. The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss such strategies and to provide a formula for exceptional leadership.
THE INNOVATIVE LEADER: SKILLS FOR EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT
Introduction
An innovative leader is an effective manager, and an effective manager is an innovative leader: an ingenious, inventive, and original leader, one who is not afraid to embrace new concepts or reconsider old practices. An innovative leader differs from other managers due to his or her extraordinary creativity, enthusiasm, confidence in subordinates, and innate respect and genuine goodwill for all co-workers. Other managers, who may be content to accept the status quo from the subordinates and organization for which he or she is responsible, become unacceptable to a business (Smith, 2003). These managers cannot compare to the innovative leader, who goes above and beyond to utilize the competencies of staff and to improve the organization. Are you an innovative leader? Let’s explore the skills of an effective manager, and find out.
There are a plethora of skills that are necessary for effective management (Humphrey & Stokes, 2000), and there are just as many guidelines and principles that lend themselves to the advancement of admirable leadership. Many of these will be familiar, while others may be more obscure, but it is, arguably, the most valuable of the many management and leadership precepts that this composition will address.
Communication, which is simply the practice of accurately imparting one’s thoughts and ideas, is the most prevalent and relevant skill in any organization, and as such, must be established prior to any other managerial actions (American Heritage, 2000). Findley and Amsler (2003) note that the vast majority of performance problems that supervis...
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In the first part of the book, Siddhartha is consumed by his thirst for knowledge. He joined the samanas and listened to the teachings of the Buddha in attempt to discern the true way to Nirvana. Though he perfected the arts of meditation and self-denial, he realized that no teachings could show him the way to inner peace. While with the ascetics only a third of his quest was accomplished. Siddhartha said, "You have learned nothing through teachings, and so I think, O Illustrious One, that nobody finds salvation through teachings" (27). His experiences with the samanas and Gotama were essential to his inner journey because they teach him that he cannot be taught, however this knowledge alone would not deliver him to enlightenment. Siddhartha had taken the first step in his quest but without the discovery of the body and spirit, his knowledge was useless in attaining Nirvana.
...tood the material world and therefore couldn’t unify with it. To achieve nirvana he had to understand the different opinions and lifestyles of everyone so he could understand and accept the unity of the universe. In the moment that Siddhartha reaches enlightenment the narrator describes it as, “Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny...belonging to the unity of all things.” This means that he achieved inner peace by accepting and understanding everything, and he did this by participating in the many different worlds around him. The present moment contains a concentration of experiences that would take several lifetimes to undergo. Siddhartha knows not only that he himself is always the same despite the changes in his life but also that he is the same as all others in the world.
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