BUSM4176 Intro to Management: Reflective Report on Effective Manager

This reflective report explores the journey to becoming an effective manager, drawing upon seminars, workshops, and presentations attended by the author. It delves into the organizing function, highlighting the importance of teamwork and its challenges. The report also addresses workforce diversity, emphasizing the difficulties in managing diverse teams and the need for effective motivation and delegation. Furthermore, it examines emotional intelligence, focusing on self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, social skills, and empathy as crucial components for managerial success. The author reflects on the evolving context of managers' work and concludes with insights on how to improve their managerial capabilities, emphasizing the importance of understanding employees, fostering motivation, and employing emotional intelligence to achieve organizational goals. The author aims to improve their EI from average to perfect score.

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Effective Manager
By
[Student’s name]
Course
Institution
Date

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Artefacts...........................................................................................................................................3
Organizing function.....................................................................................................................4
Work force diversity....................................................................................................................5
Emotional intelligence.................................................................................................................6
Conclusions......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
Being a financial management enthuast, I have utilized every chance that has come my way to
attend a seminar, workshop or even a presentation that is focusing on financial management.
Management itself is very complex and that is the reason every person has opinion about what is
good management and what is bad management. In future, I would like to become the best
financial manager ever because I have the passion and zeal that will propel me to achieve my
target. That dream is motivated by my desire to operate an organization efficiently so as to
maximize the stakeholder’s wealth and also enhance corporate governance which seems to have
fallen out of favor with many financial managers (Erkens, et al.2012, p.402). To be effective
manager, I have to learn how to address certain factors which cannot be avoided and which at the
same time can help me develop my career and achieve my dream. This is a reflective report is
written to address how one can become an effective manager.
Artefacts.
Artefacts refer to observations that are made after carrying out research. The observations help
us to understand is not clearly understood and also increase our knowledge (Curkovic, et al.2000,
p.889). To fully understand how one can become effective manager, I had to select three
artefacts which will help me understand what management is, how context of managers’ work
has changed and key functions that managers need to address in order to be effective.
Organizing function
Organizing is a management function which is responsible for organizing human resources,
physical resources and financial resources. It is measured qualitatively. These resources enable
the organization to have the capacity to execute the operations of the organizations and achieve
the goals of the organization (Meyer, et al.2013, p.502). In many presentations and workshops, I

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have attended, team work has been advocated as being a very important component of
organization. No one can dispute the claims as unity is strength and helps in breaking down
complex tasks into simple tasks that can be easily executed. Teamwork has many advantages
which can help managers address many challenges and also help in understanding what
management is because different people have different views concerning management.
In the presentation about team work, I learnt that composition of the team is very important. The
team should be comprised of people with the same goals and objectives so that they can be
motivated as achievements of the team are also achievements of the team members (Acosta, et
al.2012, p.13). With the changing nature of managers’ work, team work also helps the
management to come up with ideas that will be used in addressing challenges such how to
improve the competitive advantage, pricing decisions, dividends decisions and even investment
decisions.
The presentation could not end without someone voicing out the disadvantages of the team
which if not well addressed can lead to the organization not achieving its goals and objectives. It
is extremely hard to find a group of employees with similar goals which the manager can group
them together to perform a certain task. In most cases, the group members have different goals or
each team member is following his own goal (Agrawal, 2012, p.390). This will lead to failure of
the organization and manager will be considered as a failure in the organization. As a future
manager, I will be required to come up with a criteria of forming teams so that my organization
can be effective.
Work force diversity
This refers with organizations’ staff having different capabilities, skills, goals and ambitions.
Organizations need work force diversity so as to accomplish different functions in the

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organization as similar work force cannot be effective (Cohen, et al.2011, p.95). This artefact has
hardened the managers’ context of work because managing different people becomes very
difficult. The manager’s work becomes very difficult when it comes to motivating the employees
in the organization (Okoro, and Washington, 2012, p.57). The manager has to make sure that the
employees needs have been satisfied. The needs include social, security needs, growth and self-
actualization according to many theorists who decided to venture in motivation of employees.
Poor motivation will lead to poor performance of the organization. Motivation is not only tied to
monitory value but also in other intangible aspects which are very important to employees.
According to the many articles I have read about employee motivation, poor motivation will lead
to increased employee turnover and this will increase the hiring costs of the firms. Such aspects
make the managers work very difficult.
Delegation of duties in an organization with work force diversity is a night mare to the manager
(Olsen, and Martins, 2012, p.1174). The manager cannot perform all the tasks and this means he
will delegate the work to the subordinates. In the process, the work can be delegated a person
who does not have the skills and abilities to perform well (Seiler, et al.2012, p.67). This will lead
to poor performance in the organization. As a future manager, I will be required to spend more
time understanding my employees so that I can motivate them well. This will also force me to be
cautious when delegating duties and this implies that I will have a lot work at my disposal. Such
work can divert my attention from more important aspects of the organization.
Emotional intelligence
Refers to the ability to understand the emotions of one’s self and those of others and know how
to manage them well (Cavazotte, et al.2012, p.451). It has five components which when used
well can lead to high performance in the organization. The components are self-awareness, self-

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regulation, motivation, social skills and empathy. The manager should not allow emotional
feelings cloud the judgment when making critical decisions. Managers with perfect score is over
160 while average score is between 90-100. Managers need to have empathy when performing
directing functions so as not to hurt the feelings of the employees (Brunetto, et al.2012, p.432).
The manager should first enquire why the employee is underperforming before making decisions
that can lead to poor performance of the employee.
Emotional intelligence also gives managers self-awareness and self-regulation when making
decisions. Such components help managers when planning and setting targets so as to avoid
setting unachievable targets due to influence of ego and desire to show other people that you are
the king. As a future manager, EI will help me to be able to have empathy on my employees
when they are going through difficult times and they need motivation (Farh, et al.2012, p.890).
This will help me to become the best financial manager as my employees are well motivated.
Since there is still room to improve my EI from average, to perfect score, I will do my best to
improve the score so that I can improve my self-awareness and self-regulation. This will help to
trim my ego to the right measure so that I don’t end up setting unachievable targets.
Management is a broad aspect which cannot be understood by just reading few books and
shallow research. Through secondary research, I have learnt that organizing is part of
management. Managers context of work continue becoming more complex because of much
information and diverse work force in organizations. Motivation as a function of management
should be well addressed if the goals of the organization are to be achieved.

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Conclusions
From the findings above, it is impossible to talk about organizing without mention the word
management. Organizing is a component of management which without it, management is
incomplete. Organizing is concerned with assembling the production resources so that operations
of the firm can start or continue. In the assembling process, manager is required to assemble
teams that will perform different tasks in the organization. Although the teams have
disadvantages if not well assembled I still will use them when I become a manager because they
have more benefits such as more ideas which can lead to innovation and also breaking down
complex tasks into simple tasks.
From the report above, managers’ work is evolving each and every day and becoming more
complex because of work force diversity. Managing people in the organization becomes very
difficult and this can lead to poor performance in the organization. With diverse work force,
managers should be very cautious when delegating duties so as not allocate duties to inefficient
staff who will not perform the tasks well as expected. Work force diversity is very important as
this is the only reason organizations are able to perform different tasks efficiently. In this case, I
can conclude that work force diversity is inevitable in many organizations. As future manager,
more time should be spend understanding employees so as to motivate them well and lead to job
satisfaction and high performance.
Emotional intelligence is the component that separates humanity from animosity. Managers
should employ high degree of emotional intelligence so as to motivate the employees well. The
employees feel appreciated and cared for and this will improve the productivity of the
employees. In order to be effective, managers have to demonstrate a high level of self-awareness
and self-regulation so that they can lead by example. This will help the managers not to make

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decisions that are clouded by personal emotions and we all know that such a move is suicidal to
the business development. Empathy and social skills should be used regularly so as to create
relationships and bonds between the managers and the employees. In my view, managers that
interact often with their employees have performed better that their counterparts who have no
social skills to interact with their employees. From the reflection above, it is now clear that
managers’ context of work keep on evolving and motivation function should be well addressed
by all managers.

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References
Acosta, H., Salanova, M. and Llorens, S., 2012. How organizational practices predict team work
engagement: the role of organizational trust. Ciencia & Trabajo, 14(1), pp.7-15.
Agrawal, V., 2012. Managing the diversified team: challenges and strategies for improving
performance. Team Performance Management: An International Journal, 18(7/8), pp.384-400.
Brunetto, Y., Teo, S.T., Shacklock, K. and Farr‐Wharton, R., 2012. Emotional intelligence, job
satisfaction, well‐being and engagement: explaining organisational commitment and turnover
intentions in policing. Human Resource Management Journal, 22(4), pp.428-441.
Cavazotte, F., Moreno, V. and Hickmann, M., 2012. Effects of leader intelligence, personality
and emotional intelligence on transformational leadership and managerial performance. The
Leadership Quarterly, 23(3), pp.443-455.
Cohen, J.J., Gabriel, B.A. and Terrell, C., 2011. The case for diversity in the health care
workforce. Health affairs, 21(5), pp.90-102.
Curkovic, S., Vickery, S. and Dröge, C., 2000. Quality‐related action programs: Their impact on
quality performance and firm performance. Decision Sciences, 31(4), pp.885-902.
Erkens, D.H., Hung, M. and Matos, P., 2012. Corporate governance in the 2007–2008 financial
crisis: Evidence from financial institutions worldwide. Journal of corporate finance, 18(2),
pp.389-411.
Farh, C.I., Seo, M.G. and Tesluk, P.E., 2012. Emotional intelligence, teamwork effectiveness,
and job performance: The moderating role of job context. Journal of Applied Psychology, 97(4),
p.890.

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Meyer, R.E., Höllerer, M.A., Jancsary, D. and Van Leeuwen, T., 2013. The visual dimension in
organizing, organization, and organization research: Core ideas, current developments, and
promising avenues. Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), pp.489-555.
Okoro, E.A. and Washington, M.C., 2012. Workforce diversity and organizational
communication: Analysis of human capital performance and productivity. Journal of Diversity
Management (Online), 7(1), p.57.
Olsen, J.E. and Martins, L.L., 2012. Understanding organizational diversity management
programs: A theoretical framework and directions for future research. Journal of Organizational
behavior, 33(8), pp.1168-1187.
Seiler, S., Lent, B., Pinkowska, M. and Pinazza, M., 2012. An integrated model of factors
influencing project managers' motivation—Findings from a Swiss Survey. International Journal
of Project Management, 30(1), pp.60-72.