Leadership is the process of influencing others to engage in work behavior that would lead to the achievement of goals. A successful leader must provide direction and leadership to motivate his employees to accomplish essential tasks within the required time frame. Manager has to set effective policies and formulate strategies to improve firm’s overall performance and effectiveness.

One of the theories in function of leading is Traits Theory. Traits Theory focuses on personal qualities and characteristics. Traits that are important for leadership success are self-confidence, honesty and integrity, full of ambition, flexibility and motivation.

Another theory in leading function is Fiedler’s Contingency Theory. Fiedler’s Contingency Theory states that a firm needs to examine the work situation and seek a manager whose style is suitable for that situation. The three factors that will influence the effectiveness of leadership are leader’s position power, structure of team’s task, and the quality of the leader-member interpersonal relationships.

Other theory in the leading function is Behavioral Theory. Behavioral theory focuses on how leaders behave when working with employees. There have two types of leadership styles which are task oriented managers and employee oriented managers. Based on Michigan Studies on leadership behavior, task oriented leader is a leader who pay close attention to an employee’s job and work procedures involved with that job. While employee oriented manager is leader who develops cohesive work groups and ensure employee satisfaction.

Motivation is an organization’s life-blood. Thus, an effective manager must have the skills of motivation. According to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the manager motivate the employees by providing physiological needs for survival, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs, and self-actualization. A manager must have the ability of discover the employee’s talents and place the potential employees in the best fit position in an organization. Misplacements can cause a company substantial financial loss due to turnover, lawsuits, and loss of customers. Manager must communicate the vision with employees and invite employees to give feedback. Managers can win over employees’ loyalty, showing care, listening to them.

Herzberg’s theory categorized motivation into two factors: motivators and hygiene. Motivator factors are related with achievement, recognition, and produce job satisfaction. Hygiene factors are referring to pay, job security, and produce job dissatisfaction when hygiene needs not met. Money is a primary motivator. Special achievement incentive rewards, spot bonuses, and cash-equivalent rewards all play a role in the economic reward package. Autonomy is crucial to achieving a sense of self-worth. Autonomy strongly influences the decision of individuals to join and stay with an organization.

Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair is the general manager of Showa Rubber Chemical Industry Incorporate. Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair say that the things that motivated him the most is getting the management trust, recognition and praise when achieving goals, objectives and targets sales. Issue of challenges by management and recognition through awards and incentives could also motivate him to work. Furthermore, Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair gives constant guidance and encourages his subordinates to talk in the meeting and training sessions. A manager has to being reasonable and accepting some useful ideas that expressed by the subordinates. He will also praise and give incentive rewards for the employees who have achieved high performance in their job. It is an important ways to rewards or recognises employees whose suggestions help improve the operation of company. Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair always attends company’s social meetings, such as having dinners or lunch with subordinates and some other open discussions which are better for interactions and ice- breaking.

The challenges that he faces when leading his employees is he felt it is difficult to gaining respect from all the subordinates and superiors. This is because he is unable to remember all the name of his company’s staff and greets to them. A manager who fails to greet employees or respond to greetings will lead to a high degree of de-motivation and disloyalty. He always feels that he is lack of knowledge of job. So, he always explores his capacity to learn something new. Moreover, another leading challenge that Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair faces is he has to performed strong character, leadership qualities and interpersonal skills when giving a public speaking and presentation. It is very important for a manager to made decision and judgements after analyse the idea suggested by his subordinates. This is because any misjudgement could be cause the company bankruptcy.

When a decision is needed, Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair does not just fall into single preferred style, such as using employee oriented style. In practice, things are not that simple. Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair has access the Behavioural Theory in his company. He is highly emphasising the interpersonal relationship with the employees. This practice is very similar to the concept of Behavioural Theory. He always encourages his subordinates to express their own idea through meeting and he also promise rewards for the employees who has good performance. There have a number of issues that make this style difficult. The one of the problem that comes with this kind of leadership is that he is hardly to get to know the follower because he feel he do not has the time to do so. It is not such easy. But I can say is having the employee-oriented leadership will surely increase the group productivity and employee’s job satisfaction.

Furthermore, Mr. R. Bala Krishnan Nair has access the concept of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs in his company. He has the ability to realize the employee’s talents and place the potential employees in the right position. He always communicates with employees about the vision, company goals, market, industry and business information and future plan, and invites employees to give feedback. This is because he knows that as a smart company will actively and continuously solicit feedback from our internal customers like employees to find out how well our company is meeting their needs.

As we see it, active, risky, self-conscious, and committed learning is required in order to become the leaders demanded by today’s complex and crisis-oriented environment.