Understanding and managing people

Working with people may be one of the easiest things and or the hardest undertaking in any environment or organization. Properly understanding people provides a humble base or foundation in managing them and well managed people are easier to understand. This should be the aim and the belief of persons or an organization expressed as a rule of behaviour or conduct for success of both understanding and managing people. With so many motivational theories on the offing some are practicable and some are not. For better understanding and managing people theory X and theory Y of (Macgregor) 2008 are intensely considered.

Applying this theory, research is done in one of the best performing schools in both academics and sports. The school comprises of 1000 students, 55 teachers, 5 security people, 5 cooks, 3 drivers, 2 librarians 1 nurse and 4 farmhands. So in total the non teaching staff is made up of 20 members. All the staff members and the non staff members participated in the questionnaire exercise. Because the number of people was small, the error margin was nearly zero. For uniformity and consistency same questions were answered by teachers and the non teaching staff.

The trend in the school is that no one is seen as a boss and nobody is monitoring others in any activity. This trend has encouraged the research in the school to ascertain what triggers the success and the motivational behaviour. The research is only done on the head teacher, teachers and the non teaching staff members. The theory applied here is motivational Theory (model) Y. The reason why it is used is because duties are performed without strict supervision from any quarters. Interview was used as a way of collecting data and the sampling method was used to analyze the data.

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Below is a summary of some of the sample of data that was collected. The above sample proves theory Y model correct. All teachers and the non-teaching staff have the independent of performing their duties without supervision. They are not monitored. They are ever at the right place at the right time. Rewards are given on merit? In fact all concurred that there is freedom and nobody is monitoring anyone and nobody is barking orders. 95 percent know what is to be done and at what time. The 95 percent applies to the entire school community (teachers and workers).

In the entire school community there is an aura of freedom. Rewards are given to the people whose departments perform distinctively excellent. The reason behind successful understanding and managing people: There are several steps that are taken to ensure that people are understood first and then successfully managed according to the research that has been done. Creating a friendly working environment but with a strict code of rules that are oriented in the first day a new employee joins any institution. This ensures tradition is maintained.

There should be regular assessment of different skills in the work place. This assessment is to ensure proper and timely or real time application of these skills. Handling individuals according to their temperaments and capabilities. There are those who are slow but do excellently well. There are those are willing to work but they rush over and many other examples of temperaments. The better way of handling personalities is first by having a good know how of a person’s background. Possessing positive attitudes toward people is a definite way of knowing them better.

Listening is a forgotten skill in any working environment where women and men of differing calibers work. Listening to the people or employees problems and grievances is a strong factor of understanding them and the governing or managing them. The management style should be guiding not dictating. Attending to the needs of people during problems upholds self esteem in them. Needs may be within or without the work place. For instance a worker receives a phone call from home that the child is sick. Then here are two or three scenarios.

One, the boss tells the worker to finish some work before leaving; two, the worker is told to wait until lunch time and three, the worker is replaced immediately and given the company vehicle to rush him/her home pick the sick child and then to hospital and then the worker is told to report the progress of the sick child after treatment and the driver to bring the report back to office. In the three scenarios who do you think will respect the work ethics of the organization or company? In fact the third scenario elevates and motivates the worker or employee to respect his/her work.

There is no day the worker will disappoint the boss and fellow workers. Teamwork is another factor that will enable any management to monitor and motivate the workers. This will ensure no idle time during the usual working ours. There should be an active and enthusiastic team leader who cheers up fellow workers and listens to them during good times and bad times. Team leaders in many organizations have proved to boost efficiency to higher levels notwithstanding sometimes hard times. This is the point where networking of skills is demonstrated fully.

Solving arising discrepancies, complaints and problems will done right here in the team. Workers to be involved in everyday changes and participate in the changes they demand Gratton, Hailey and Truss (1999). Motivational incentives have also played an important role in an organization. People will obvious put their maximum skills into full use and hence the progress of any organization. Yearly awards to the best performing person, long serving servants, best benefits and rewards presented to the retiring staff all contribute to boosting the morale or confidence of workers.

Workers must share the vision of the organization (Dave 2005). The vision will guide them to success. There are policies that have boosted the morale of junior workers in any organizations. The most appropriate one is the open-door policy that has worked successfully in many companies that have employed it in their daily operations in the workplace . Junior employees have no restrictions when they want to see their boss anywhere anytime. Another policy is where everybody is a manager in her/his own. The self- manager policy where everyone is a leader on self capacity. These values to be consistently advocated for.

Advocate for the virtue and value of self discipline among the people. They should remain focused in their duties to achieve the set goals. Through the positive achievement they will not rely on the management to be dogging them.

Gratton, L, Hailey, H, V and Truss, C 1999, Strategic Human Resource management, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Fountain, D, 2005, Human Resources: What is your Plan? Public management vol. 87. Macgregor, D 2008 Human Relations Employee motivation, Organizational Environment and Productivity, viewed 30 July 2008, http://www. accelteam. com/human_relations/hrels_03_mcgregor. html

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