The Leadership Advantage By Warren Bennis, The Quality Of Leadership

736 Words2 Pages

I have been fortunate to work with several heads of departments within a couple years of graduating college. During this time, I have worked with quality leaders and not so great ones. The quality leaders were competent, skillful and endowed with people skills. These leaders gave me the opportunity to grow and a sense of purpose. After reading The Leadership Advantage by Warren Bennis, I was quickly reminded about a former superior of mine that lacked the understanding and knowledge of what qualities a leader should have. The company also did not entertain a culture that promotes employee satisfaction.
Right after graduating college, I was hired by an investment management firm to work as an assistant to the head of marketing. I saw this …show more content…

2). My superior had the required skills to successfully flourish in his position by himself, however, he wasn’t able to replicate his competency with a subordinate. One of the major issues that could have been solved with more understanding of what it means to be a good leader was his lack of people skills. This quality made it difficult for him to communicate and delegate appropriately with people. With this lack of communication, goals weren’t clearly defined and there was no sense of direction. This led to an idle workplace and I eventually volunteered to work with another department to be more …show more content…

According to Herzberg in One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? (1987), KITA is “the surest and least circumlocuted way of getting someone to do something” (p. 5). He explained to effectively administer KITA, leaders in a work environment must begin with the hygiene issues. Although the hygiene issue is not the root of the employee’s dissatisfaction, it should be eradicated for better satisfaction and motivation. The hygiene issue at this company was that their salaries were way below the industry average and working conditions were unpleasant. With the proper understanding of management principles, the managers in this firm would have known that fixing the culture of the company and paying fair wages would improve job satisfaction. Once these issues were fixed administering KITA would not have a negative connotation to employees and probably would not be

Open Document