High Performance Management

1. After reading the assigned chapters (George, B. (2015). Preface & Introduction, Chapters 1 -8 and Antonakis, J., & Day, D. V. (Eds.) (2018). Chapters 1, 10, and 14, which are in attached pdf books, please write a paper on the results of an interview that you will conduct with yourself as a manager, your interview will be a hypothetical one.
2. Your paper should not be a verbatim recitation of the results of the interview.
   Before you conduct your interview, you should develop the questions based on the requirements of the paper. Include Appendix with the list of interview questions.
3. Your paper should not be a verbatim recitation of the results of the interview. Do not quote yourself.
4. Be sure to include your questions in the appendix of your assignment.
5. Requirements of the Paper:
6. Write and organize your paper with the appropriate headings and sub-headings.
7. Introduction-Explain your position/ organizational mission/ goals.
8. Self-Awareness and Values-Discussion of this as it pertains to your management style.
9. Support Team-Discussion of how this impacts your management style.
10. Integrated Life-Steps you have taken or plan to take about leading and integrated life and what it means to your management practice.
11. Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivators: Define each of these motivators in terms of your management practice and their influence on your management style.

Organizational Specifics

1. Use headings and subheadings.
   Carefully Read the Assignment. It is important to understand what question(s) you are trying to answer
   Understand the Course Texts and Articles. This assignment requires reading and thinking about what you have read. Taking notes can help.
   Make an Argument. While critically thinking about the assignment, it’s important to remember that every paper you write is ultimately making claims to support a specific point of view. Back up your claims with the readings/research.
   Never Forget the Big Picture. It is important to clearly explicate the implications the readings have on management. I expect clear and precise language which details how the articles/texts relate to the assignment.

Below is a mini-lecture that may help as well:
Managing Internal Processes
In managing internal processes the manager takes on the roles of the coordinator, monitor, facilitator and mentor. These roles emphasize internal process functions within the organization. In this role, the manager uses such tools as Total Quality Management for organizational empowerment. Total Quality Management organizations emphasize cross-functional teams & allow employees greater access to information. This is a must and a means to encourage the empowerment of employees to increase their involvement. Empowerment means employees get delegated managerial authority and the creation of opportunities to influence work outcomes. However, employees then become accountable for their decisions, actions and outcomes when they control their own destinies. Empowerment is transactional in the formation of technical and operational interdependence. It is transformational in the evolution of a new culture and mindset. Transactional characteristics of a leader must be balanced against the transformational characteristics of a leader.
Horizontal management is reinforced by high-speed communications, elimination of useless work and the people who do it, and running what remains with a new set of principles and skills. Leaders move toward horizontal management if they are faced with a strong motivation to change, such as globalization or tough competition, and they assess the outcomes of change. Managers work to close the knowledge gap between managers and workers by exposing workers to factors affecting organizational operations and outcomes. The challenge for transformational leaders is to provide enough coaching and training so that professional growth can occur in the right direction. The distinction between manager and non-managers blurs, especially with respect to information, control over assignments, and access to external relations.
Processes and Outcomes: Quality Programs and Reengineering
In the monitor role, managers add internal value by managing between the white spaces. Since vertical hierarchies are being replaced by flexible networks, adaptive systems, informal structures and horizontal structures, the new organizational center is cross-functional teams. Leaders must optimize the balance between technical knowledge of the work process and internal personal skills required for high performance. Leaders must set clear goals and assure that teams goals are aligned with larger goals in the organization. Once a team reaches maturity, the leader should empower the team members and gradually reduce leadership involvement.
Core competencies involve value adding for the organization as reflected in its collective knowledge and ability to perform activities. They include the transference and synergy, and coordination of technology and the human resources and knowledge needed to create and deliver value to the organization. Core competencies use systems thinking, managing across functions, leveraging collective organizational knowledge, network learning and integrating and communicating performance targets across organizational boundaries.
Broadbanding is a competitive line management organizational strategy that supports the streamlined developmental format of organizational structure. Managers organize staff specialists according to their contributions to the organization instead of their disciplines. Because broadbanding supports the creation of networked learning, it can enhance the ability of an organization to concentrate its synergistic brainpower to respond quickly. Using broadbanding and forming networked learning teams organized around core competencies will provide organizations with an integrated approach to organizational transformation. This achieves organizational flexibility and high performance by organizing around these core competencies. The challenge for organizational leaders is to also incorporate the need for integration and consistency.
Managers at the high levels should manage interfaces and be responsible for workflow processes. They should establish objectives, strategies, monitor internal and external feedback and evaluate performance and allocate resources. They should also be responsible for process improvement. Using business reengineering, management can focus on fundamental rethinking and radical redesign to achieve dramatic improvements in critical and contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed. Through this process, the organization can create operational and organizational breakthroughs. However, because reengineering is total system change, it generates resistance from people who are satisfied with the status quo. The leader must act as a catalyst for change by the act of reinforcing critical and creative thinking. High performance leaders must be able to institutionalize the process.
They should recognize when to use TQM and when to use BPR.
In the role of Facilitator, the manager fosters collective effort, builds cohesion and morale, and manages interpersonal conflict. The role revolves around generating membership and commitment to group goals in support of overall organizational goals. The manager clarifies the roles expected of individual team members and encourages interaction through the sharing of knowledge and unique strengths. The leader encourages organizational learning. Organizations learn by acquiring new knowledge and updating their organizational memory with that knowledge. Fluid organizational structures increase the capacity of an organization to process more information, acquire knowledge and improve organizational learning and memory.
Organizations learn by direct experience: communication intensive organizations can transmit knowledge rapidly and effectively across the organization. The choice of media to transmit knowledge can affect its timeliness, revision, summarizing, delay, etc; interpretations of history: learning happens by drawing on shared meanings, construction and management. Knowledge transfer will depend on the ability of organizational members to develop a shared language, symbols and rituals that glorify the past and rationalize the history and experiences of the organization. The retrieval of knowledge from organizational history is important. Knowledge is stored and retrieved by conforming to existing patterns of communication and regularized behaviors. Staff use symbols and patterns that differentiate themselves from other staff, but they also work and store information along core values. Personal learning occurs through reflection and experimentation while organizational learning occurs through sharing the experiences of people. Horizontal organizations benefit from the capacity of people to share knowledge much more than vertical command and control hierarchies and centralized networks of communication do.
Managers can leverage communication processes by creating lateral relations that increase the ability of a company to process information. In this way, cross-functional teams and self-directed work units enhance an organization’s responsiveness to customer needs and link organization internally. Managers can also increase learning by getting information externally through formal scanning processes and boundary spanning activities. Finally, leaders can increase learning by disseminating information through nondirectional communication relations between organizational members by converting environmental data into meaningful information. This process enhances organizational knowledge and guides decision-making.
In the mentor role, the leader must learn to leverage the people resources as the fundamental strategy for success. An underlying assumption of the competency movement is the identification of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors for successful job, team or business performance. This is the direct link to actualizing the shared mission of all organizations–achieve and maintain competitive advantage domestically and globally.
A high performance leader acting in the mentor role must recognize that followers as learners use a frame of reference and mental constructs that are based on their intuition and common sense regarding what works well and what fails. They are trained and develop requisite skills that conform to the need to become highly proficient and productive in fulfilling their tasks. They are taught to think critically, be decisive, initiate actions and add tangible value to their work units and organizations. The ability to understand the world from different perspectives allows the business manager to be more flexible and better able to cultivate useful working relations. Managers must recognize that continuous learning is like a race without a finish line.
The key to successful mentoring is developing and maintaining effective relations between the manager and their employees. The cycle of developmental relations moves through initiation, cultivation, separation and redefinition. Each phase has particular affective experiences, developmental functions and interaction patterns shaped by individual and organizational needs.
Mentoring can potentially enhance the career and professional development of employees and team members. Through psychosocial functions such as counseling, confirmation, role modeling, acceptance and friendship, team members can develop a sense of confidence and competence. High performance or transformational leaders will become self-defining with strong internalized values and ideas about the future direction and the role of their organizations. They recognize people as resources rather than costs. These leaders have trust and confidence in their employees and they are first to delegate and trust and empower their employees. As mentors, these leaders develop a cadre of competence managers with an inner purpose. They cultivate these employees with their congruent values who can potentially become future organizational leaders.
Source: Belasen, A.T. (2000). Leading the Learning Organization. Albany, NY: State University Press (Chapters 4-5; Chapters 8-9)