The Sunday Mail
Employees are not slaves and they should not be treated like they are not human. Sadly, the leadership style in most local companies subscribes to this ideology.
The current situation where employees in Zimbabwe are dragging their employers to the courts over unfair labour practices calls for the need to interrogate the managerial grid model.
The model is a leadership style developed by Robert R Blake and Jane Mouton. From a technical level, the grid focuses on the concern of people and that of production.
This model identifies five different leadership styles — country club, middle of the road, team leader, impoverished and product or perish.
A country club management style is where the manager is attentive to staff needs and has developed satisfying relationships.
However, there is little attention paid to achieving results.
Do local companies actually have such a breed of managers who considers and prioritises worker’s concerns?
When employees are dismissed without any benefits, it suggests lack of care.
Naturally, there are several questions that arise in such circumstances. For example, how will the individual survive if they are dismissed without any benefits?
The affected employee needs to re-arrange his or her life and benefits provides a cushion for that.
The produce or perish leadership style is premised on the need to concentrate on achieving results. In this case, the workers’ needs are virtually ignored or put on the back burner.
Although this management style may seem to be good for the company, ignoring the employee’s needs can be catastrophic. In most cases, workers make up and define production. High staff morale is therefore very important.
Employees are not slaves and they should not be treated like they are not human. Sadly, the leadership style in most local companies subscribes to this ideology.
At one of the seminars that I attended, I was shocked to hear a certain CEO telling his employees that “they should consider themselves lucky they still have their jobs as he can decide to fire them at any day if they make any demands”.
He also said if he is to throw a stone anywhere in Zimbabwe, it would hit a jobless Zimbabwean graduate who is desperate for a job.
Put simply, he was just telling his employees that they had no option, but to accept their situation, failure of which they would be easily dispensed.
But the middle of the road management style tries to balance all expectations by driving the needs of the business through team morale.
It is ideal as management expects the workers to be happy in the same way they expect the workforce to make them happy.
This leadership style is rarely practised in Zimbabwe, only the two extremes exist.
The management grid, however, also identifies an impoverished management style where the manager is typically lazy, showing no commitment to work.
It is mostly conceded that such managers must be fired.
If the people are not happy and the company is not performing, then what is the role of the manager?
There are so many self-centred individuals in Zimbabwe today, they only care about what they will get as individuals and have no interest on the employees’ welfare or the growth of the company.
This basically results in corruption, which is the greatest demon in Africa and elsewhere in the world.
Zimbabwe does not deserve impoverished managers, it needs managers that have people and production at heart.
There is also the team leader management style, which is a model that revels in high work accomplishment through leading committed people who identify themselves with the organisational aims.
This is arguably the best management style as it addresses all the company’s needs.
This is the kind of style we need in Zimbabwe if we are to grow as a nation.
Companies need to introspect and determine which management style they employ.
This management grid offers a number of useful insights for identification of management training and development needs.
It shows in an easily assimilated form where the behaviour and assumption of a manager may exhibit a lack of balance between the dimensions and/or a low degree of concern in either dimension or both.
Clearly, there is need for management training in Zimbabwe.
Taurai Changwa is an Articled Accountant and ACCA finalist. He is managing director of SAFIC Consultancy. He writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted at [email protected] or visit our facebook page SAFIC Consultancy or whatsapp on 0772374784.
