Leading Human Resources: An Analysis (part 12)

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Determining Effectiveness

by

Charles Lamson

One of the most important issues facing the applied behavioral sciences is that of human productivity---the quality and quantity of work. Productivity concerns both effectiveness (the attainment of goals) and efficiency (resource costs, including those human resource costs affecting the quality of life). Our focus in this post will be primarily on effectiveness because, as Peter Drucker, a founding father of management theory, wrote, "Effectiveness is the foundation of success---efficiency is a minimum condition for survival after success has been achieved. Efficiency is concerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things."

Management Effectiveness versus Leadership Effectiveness

In discussing effectiveness, we must once again distinguish between management and leadership. As we discussed in an earlier post, leadership is a broader concept than management. Management is thought of as a special kind of leadership in which the accomplishment of organizational goals is paramount. Leadership is an attempt to influence people, individually and in groups, for whatever reason. Influence and leadership may be used interchangeably. Not all leadership behavior is directed toward accomplishing organizational goals. In fact, many times when you are trying to influence someone else you are not even part of an organization. For example, when you are trying to get some friends to go someplace with you, you are not engaging in management, but you certainly are attempting leadership. If they agree to go, you are an effective leader but not an effective manager. Even with an organizational setting, managers may attempt to engage in leadership rather than management because they are trying to accomplish personal goals, not organizational ones.

For example, a vice president may have a strong personal goal to become the company president. In attempting to achieve this goal, this executive may not be concerned with organizational goals at all, but only with undermining the plans of the president and other executives who may be contenders for the job. The vice president may accomplish this personal goal and, in that sense, be a successful leader. However, this individual cannot be considered an effective manager because these actions were probably disruptive to the effective operation of the firm.

Parkinson's "law" suggests a clear example of a person's placing personal goals before organizational goals. His law states that in bureaucracies, managers often try to build up their own departments by adding unnecessary personnel, more equipment, or expanded facilities. Although this tendency may increase the prestige and importance of the managers, it often leads to "an organizational environment that is not only inefficient but also stifling and frustrating to the individuals who must cope with [it]." Thus, in discussing effectiveness, we must recognize the differences between individual goals, leadership, and management.

Successful Leadership versus Effective Leadership

An attempt by an individual to have some effect on the behavior of another is called attempted leadership. This attempted leadership can be successful or unsuccessful in producing the desired response. A basic responsibility of managers in any type of organization is to get work done, with and through people, so their success is measured by the output or productivity of the group they lead. With that thought in mind, Bernard M. Bass suggested a clear distinction between successful and effective leadership or management.

Suppose manager A attempts to influence individual B to do a certain job. A's attempt will be considered successful or unsuccessful depending on the extent to which B accomplishes the job. It is not really an either/or situation. A's success could be depicted on a continuum (see Figure 1) ranging from very successful to very unsuccessful, with gray areas in between that would be difficult to ascertain as either.

Figure 1 

Bass's Successful Leadership Continuum

Source: Based on Bernard M. Bass, Leadership, Psychology, and Organizational Behavior (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 90, 448.

Let us assume that A's leadership is successful. In other words, B's response to A's leadership stimulus falls at the successful end of the continuum. We still do not know the whole story of effectiveness.

If A's leadership style is not compatible with the expectations of B, and if B is antagonized and does the job only because of A's position power, then we can say that A has been successful but not effective. B has responded as A intended because A has control of rewards and punishment---not because satisfying the goals of the manager or the organization also satisfies B's needs.

On the other hand, if A's attempted leadership leads to a successful response, and B does the job because it is personally rewarding, then we consider A as having not only position power, but also personal power. B respects some personal goals. In fact, B sees these personal goals as being accomplished by this activity. This is what is meant by effective leadership, keeping in mind that effectiveness also appears as a continuum that can range from very effective to very ineffective, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Bass's Successful and Effective Leadership Continuum

Source: Based on Bernard M. Bass, Leadership, Psychology, and Organizational Behavior (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960), pp. 90, 448.

Success has to do with how the individual or the group behaves. On the other hand, effectiveness describes the internal state, or predisposition, of an individual or a group, and thus it is attitudinal in nature. Individuals who are interested only in success tend to emphasize their position power and use close supervision. Effective individuals, however, will also depend on personal power and use more general supervision. Position power tends to be delegated down through the delegation; personal power is generated upward from below through follower acceptance.

Fred Luthans, a professor of management at the University of Nebraska, conducted a 4-year observational study to determine the similarities and differences between successful managers (those who were rapidly promoted) and effective managers (those who had satisfied, committed employees and high-performing departments). The study reported that successful managers spent more of their time and effort networking with others inside and outside the organization than did effective managers. Politicking and socializing occupied most of their time, with less time spent on the traditional activities of managing---planning, decision making, and controlling. In contrast, the effective managers spent most of their time in communications, that is, exchanging information and paperwork, and in human resource management (see Figure 3). These activities contributed most to the quality and quantity of their high-performing departments.

Figure 3 The Activities of Real Managers

Source: Academy of Management Executive, 1988, Academy of Management.

Less than 10 percent of the managers in the study sample were in both the top third of successful managers and the top of effective managers. These managers were able to achieve a balanced approach in their activities; they networked and got the job done. The study concluded that more attention needs to be paid to designing systems to reward and support effective managers, not those with the most successful and political social skills. By rewarding effectiveness, organizations will increase their abilities to compete and excel in rapidly changing market and environmental conditions.

In the management of organizations, the difference between successful and effective often explains why many supervisors can get a satisfactory level of output only when they are right there looking over a worker's shoulder. But as soon as they leave, output declines and often such things as horseplay and scrap loss increase.

This same phenomenon occurs in organizations that rely on phone conversations with service representatives for order placement. By monitoring incoming calls, the supervisor can rapidly determine if service representatives are answering calls quickly, correctly, and in a friendly fashion. If the representatives perceive the monitoring in a negative fashion and view the supervisor as ineffective, their performance can deteriorate when the monitoring is stopped. A supervisor who uses the monitoring as a tool to assist the representatives in achieving departmental goals and who rewards positive improvements in call answering and order placement will find that performance stabilizes or improves even when the monitoring is discontinued. The supervisor has used effective leadership to help the representatives meet department and corporate goals.

The phenomenon described applies not only to educational and business organizations but also to less formal organizations such as the family. If parents are successful and effective, have both position and power, their children accept family goals as their own. Consequently, if the husband and wife leave for the weekend, the children behave no differently than if their parents were there. If, however, the parents continually use close supervision and the children view their own goals as being stifled by their parents' goals, the parents have only position power. They maintain order because of the rewards and the punishments they control. If these parents went away on a trip, leaving the children behind, upon returning they might be greeted by chaos.

In summary, managers could be successful, but ineffective, having only a short-lived influence over the behavior of others. On the other hand, if managers are both successful and effective, their influence tends to lead to long-run productivity and organizational development. This really is what leadership and management are all about. In the words of The Wall Street Journal, "The first job of the manager is to make the organization perform."

It should be pointed out that this successful versus effective framework is a way of evaluating the response to a specific behavioral event and not of evaluating performance over time. Long-term evaluation is not a result of a single leadership event but a summation of many different leadership events. 

*SOURCE: MANAGEMENT OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR: LEADING HUMAN RESOURCES, 8TH ED., 2001, PAUL HERSEY, KENNETH H. BLANCHARD, DEWEY E. JOHNSON, PGS. 126-130*

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