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A Fast Learner's Guide to Leadership
Rensis Likert
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Rensis Likert expanded on the Michigan leadership studies with extensive research into what differentiates effective managers from ineffective managers. In New Patterns of Management (1961) he wrote that "supervisors with the best records of performance focus their primary attention on the human aspects of their subordinates' problems and on endeavoring to build effective work groups with high performance goals." Likert defined two styles of managers. |
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Job centered managers were found to be the least productive. | |
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Employee centered managers, were found to be the most effective. | |
| Likert also found that effective managers set specific goals, but gave employees freedom in the way they achieved those goals. This has been called general supervision, as opposed to close supervision. In modern business jargon is called empowerment. | ||
Rensis Likert's management systemsThe Table of Organizational and Performance Characteristics of Different Management Systems appeared in Likert's The Human Organization in 1967. It shows four types of management systems and is reproduced on the following page. This table shows varying degrees of organizational variables. Likert surveyed hundreds of managers and asked them where they felt their most productive departments would be on each of the variables. The results showed that almost without exception the most productive departments were closer to System 4 than lesser producing departments. Likert therefore discerned that for high productivity a manager should lean toward the System 4 management styles. |
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The Table of Organizational and Performance Characteristics of Different Management Systems
| Trust | Motivation | Interaction | |
| System 1 | no trust | fear, threats, and punishment | little interaction, always distrust |
| System 2 | master/servant | rewards and punishment | little interaction, always caution |
| System 3 | substantial but incomplete trust | rewards, punishment, some involvement | moderate interaction, some trust |
| System 4 | complete trust | goals based on participation and improvements | extensive interaction. Friendly, high trust. |