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Learning Activity 1 – Theme 1

This week, we look at leadership from the manager’s perspective and explore the differences from looking at leadership from a leader’s perspective.  Managers focus on process, procedure, and implementation of the organization’s purpose.  A manager’s perspective is about getting the job done and keeping stability.  The leader’s mindset is about change and moving workers toward the organization’s vision.  The area of overlap comes in terms of the need to use “soft or people skills” to get their job done.  It is said that a manager motivates while a leader empowers.

In the following five quotes each leader is commenting on the perspective of a manager in an organization as opposed to a leader.  

• Define the difference between a manager’s mindset and a leader’s mindset. This discussion is not about your opinion of the difference rather, support your discuss with citations and references from the course material.
• Using the readings for the week, reflect and explain the meaning of each quote.  and how each quote relates to a manager’s or leader’s mindset. 

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Peter Drucker

“Leadership is working with goals and vision; management is working with objectives.”

Russell Honore

“When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”

 Warren Buffett

“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting and their solutions so constructive that everyone wants to get to work and deal with them.”

Paul Hawken

“Management is nothing more than motivating other people.”

                                                                                Lee Iacocca

Learning Activity 2 – Theme 2

The manager must be able to solve problems, communicate, and lead teams toward the completion of a task.  

 You are the manager of the northern branch of the Laurel City Bowling Alleys.  The owner, Jill Espy, has 4 other bowling alleys around town.  The average employee assigned to the concession stand of all the Laurel City Bowling Alleys lasts approximately 3 years.  However, in your branch, the average employee lasts only 8 months.  Jill is concerned about the lack of retention of concession employees especially since training new employees is costly to the company and this high turnover is costing her money that could be better spent elsewhere.

You have talked with your current concession staff and have learned that pay and scheduling may have some effect on the turnover rate.   Employees feel that the pay is low and the scheduling is erratic making it difficult to make plans outside of work.  You know that employees do not benefit from pay raises because they tend to leave before being at the alleys for a year. 

One worker indicated that many of the workers do not know how to handle difficult customers.  It makes them not want to come to work.   At the time, the focus seems to be on getting the job done rather on customer service.

• Using the employee’s feedback and other facts from the case scenario, what ideas should you consider motivating or changing employee morale that would encourage employees to stay longer in the job?
• Your post must include a discussion the theoretical factors behind motivation and morale, with support from course materials and/or research from the university library holdings.