markets change and individuals are more mobile and flexible than they were 20
years ago. Employees must receive effective leadership to assist them with the
possible fear of beginning a new job or career. People have to learn throughout their
lives and be flexible. “The development of individuals must be uncoupled, if it is to
be effective, from moving up the corporate ladder. The opportunity to make an
achievement and assume responsibility must be the center of attention” (Malik
2001, p. 251). This achievement must also be a challenge, because individuals can
then achieve more than their potential. The goal of challenging employees to go
beyond their comfort zone and expand their potential should be practiced across the
board, from entry-level to management-level positions.
Malik very accurately states that, in order to develop employees’ potential, we
must ask something of them and not offer them something. Employees wish to be
challenged and rewarded appropriately rather than being stressed; they demand
structure with little reward. Although the development of employees and a company
are different, they do have something in common, as both must be task-oriented,
involve forming a concrete task plan, and focus on qualifications. For Malik, mana-
gement without the fulfillment of these five tasks cannot function or obtain satis-
fying results in the long run. They form the core of the manager’s occupation.
Additional tasks can be added if they represent progress and do not water down the
job. Many other activities can be summarized under these five tasks but may
decrease the value of communication and motivation.
Malik does not rank enthusiasm and inspiration of employees among the central
tasks of management. However my own experience shows that these two factors are
of great importance if leadership is to succeed. In Chap. 3, I will justify this in detail
and provide support from additional authors. A style of management that excludes
interpersonal relations and feelings, as well as the personal leadership style, is
flawed. Likewise, Malik does not include motivating, informing and communicat-
ing as essential tasks. Also improvement and change are shared with management
and leadership, but are used for special tasks only. However the execution of these
management tasks when under pressure to innovate requires special efforts and
special skills – like an alpine first ascent.
According to Malik, we have too little concrete information concerning motiva-
tion to classify it as a management task. “The whole motivation topic is like a
bottomless pit. On the surface, everything seems to make good sense. But once you
really start with this topic, you lose all frame of reference” (Malik 2001, p. 271).
Today we know a lot about motivation, partly due to the research of Reinhard
K. Sprenger and Frederick Herzberg, but if one is unwilling to leave the safe and
narrow confines of the rational and jump into the “bottomless pit” of the psycho-
logical, many valuable insights are lost.
In this regard Malik does his readers no favors by withholding valuable knowl-
edge and practical insights, only because he personally feels they are redundant.
And he attempts to steer clear of the larger part of the “iceberg” (see Sect. 3.1.1),
namely those aspects of leadership that lie below the surface: he assumes that
motivation will tend to itself if the manager masters the fundamentals, tasks and
2.1 The Craft of Leadership 39