Abstract

Utilizing practices such as delegation as well as mentorship are key strategies to ensure that managers are not overextending their abilities and becoming burnt out. These practices are key to ensure that errors are not just affecting the individual, but also those at home and work. To make sure an individual’s work-life balance is maintained, it is important to be able to properly manage your time and energy as it can not only affect an individual physically but mentally as well. The purpose of implementing these practices is important for overworked managers to realize they will only lead to a more efficient work-life balance.

Leader Development

Having an important leadership position within an organization is a very daunting task that requires a lot of time and energy to manage properly and effectively. In the case of Greg Stephans, an individual working within the technology department for United First Federal Bank for five years is having trouble balancing his work life and his personal life. As Greg has been going through his day, he has noticed the imbalance of life and work, only after recovering from the flu from the past week.

Due to this imbalance of stress at work with projects that must be completed before he leaves for the day, he feels that he is neglected not only his family but also his mental and physical health. However, despite Greg knowing these factors are beginning to weigh on him, he is having difficulty finding balance within his life. Due to his position within his company, Greg has a team of people who work under him and also depends on his leadership.

PSY FPX 6720 Assessment 4 Leader Development

For Greg to become better balanced within his work and personal life, he will need to practice delegation as well as mentoring trusted employees, to help his leadership become more effective. Changes within the work structure can be stressful for any leader, that is why it is important to design a system within the work where the followers are assisting leaders as much as leaders are supporting them (Muna & Mansour, 2009). The importance of leaders being able to use the practices of delegation as well as their ability to mentor is key to making sure that these errors do not just affect the individual, but also do not have any negative effects on the team. The practices of delegating tasks to employees, as well mentoring employees to manage situations as assistants will be helpful for Greg as he begins to develop better habits to properly balance work and personal life.

Leader Development

Studies have shown that when managers use delegation as well as tasks to mentor their employees to train under their leader, has resulted in a positive understanding when it came to the employee’s role clarity, organizational knowledge, as well as job satisfaction, knowing they are assisting their leader and expanding their role within the organization (Jokisaari & Vuori, 2018). The importance of this shows is that if Greg utilized these practices, his employees will know what to do in situations where he is unavailable, Greg will be able to focus on completing more managerial tasks compared to fixing problems that can be handled by staff, as well as be able to properly balance his work life and his personal life.

Time and Energy Management

Regardless of your position in an organization is Vice President or even customer service, being able to properly manage your time and energy when it comes to balancing work and life is extremely important and needs to be taken seriously. Studies have shown that individuals that prioritize their work over their personal life, are more concerned over their career success and have a tendency to develop an increasingly unsatisfactory relationship between the home and work (Sturges & Guest, 2004). The importance of this is to signify that if Greg continues to prioritize taking on all the tasks at work, without seeking help, he will continuously strain the relationships he has at home, which will eventually bleed into his work.

Overall, by learning to delegate your own time between your career as well as your life, the likelihood of mental and physical health will also increase. A way for managers, in this case, Greg, to better manage their time as well as energy is to start to delegate some work that his subordinates can handle that he trusts to take on certain tasks. With the use of delegation, managers are not only getting assistance from their team, but in addition, competent team members can have access to this exchange and have an increased relationship with the manager in addition to getting experience with handling managerial duties (Yukl & Fu, 1999).

This statement is important because, for managers to be successful in change, they need to be prepared for their followers to be able to take on some of their responsibilities. In addition, managers who can successfully delegate their tasks can manage their time and energy more successfully due to them being able to properly focus on tasks that need more of their attention.

Implementing Change

Despite knowing the issues that Greg is experiencing, he is lacking the willpower to change his current situation. To promote a better relationship between his work life and his home life, Greg will need to start implementing the delegation of tasks that his other employees can easily handle, as well as during this delegation, find a competent employee that he trusts to mentor them so they will be able to handle situations when Greg is unavailable. Studies have shown that developing subordinates into a mentee position through delegation because there is a need for managers to delegate since they are not capable of doing all the work themselves (Marks & Goldstein, 2005).

This is important for Greg to understand because currently, he is taking on much more tasks and responsibilities than he can handle. In addition, this stress that Greg is experiencing is not only affecting his work life but also his personal life. However, all of this burden of being able to handle these situations are not solely on Greg alone. Despite noticing all the work that has been on their leader’s plate, especially after coming back from a week-long illness, they waited for his return to solve a problem that arose in his absence.

Even if one employee had taken the initiative to try to solve some issues, especially the one that was displayed in the scenario, their leader would not have been so bombarded with tasks that caused him to stay late. Studies have shown that implementing intervention strategies to prevent occupational stress has been proved to increase the quality of work-life balance (Mosadeghrad, et al., 2011). This factor is important for overworked managers to realize because using these tactics to implement better time and energy management will only lead to a better work-life balance.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is important for managers to complete the tasks that they need to do. However, it is their primary objective is to ensure that others are doing what it is they have been assigned to accomplish. It is important for struggling managers, who are experiencing the negative effects of not properly balancing work as well as personal life, to utilize the practices of delegating as well as their ability to mentor a subordinate, to ensure that tasks will be completed and the building is still standing when the manager ultimately returns.

When managers are not able to properly manage their time as well as energy within an organization, not only do their mental and physical health tends to decrease, but also the lingering effects of this stress will hurt the team. To managers who are struggling with this management, they are not only straining their relationship at home, but they are also straining their relationship within the workplace.

References

Jokisaari, M., & Vuori, J. (2018). Leaders’ resources and newcomer socialization: the importance of delegation. Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Marks, M.

B., & Goldstein, R. (2005). The mentoring triad: mentee, mentor, and environment. The Journal of rheumatology, 32(2), 216-218.

Mosadeghrad, A. M., Ferlie, E., & Rosenberg, D. (2011). A study of the relationship between job stress, quality of working life, and turnover intention among hospital employees. Health Services Management Research, 24(4), 170-181.

Muna, F. A., & Mansour, N. (2009). Balancing work and personal life: The leader as an acrobat. Journal of Management Development.

Sturges, J., & Guest, D. (2004). Working to live or living to work? Work/life balance early in the career. Human Resource Management Journal, 14(4), 5-20.

PSY FPX 6720 Assessment 4 Leader Development

Yukl, G., & Fu, P. P. (1999). Determinants of delegation and consultation by managers. Journal of Organizational Behavior: The International Journal of Industrial, Occupational and Organizational Psychology and Behavior, 20(2), 219-232.