Leadership is defined as a social influence process in which the leader seeks the voluntary participation of subordinates in an effort to reach organizational goals. A leader trait is a physical or personality characteristic that can be used to differentiate leaders from followers. A leadership prototype is a mental representation of the traits and behaviors possessed by leaders. In the business world there are various styles of management that are necessary based on the particular situation at hand. The idea that management styles should be adapted to each situation is referred to as situational theories.
One’s leadership style is the way that he or she typically prefers to manage crew, situations, processes, and themselves in personal and professional manners. There are many levels of leadership style. Some of the styles that are more common are: Autocratic leadership, Bureaucratic leadership, Charismatic leadership, Democratic leadership/participative leadership, Laissez-faire leadership, People-oriented leadership/relations-oriented leadership, Servant leadership, Task-oriented leadership, Transactional leadership, and Transformational leadership.
My personal preference to leadership styles is referred to as Situational Leadership. This is more like a melting-pot of all of the popular leadership styles whereas I typically adapt my ways of leading and the level of reaching I put into the role based on the individual needs of each situation. There are some cases where I can simply present a mission to my team and they can then handle things on their own. However, so new developments require me to get on the floor with the crew and physically involve myself with the details for getting the job done. There are several factors that require me to change my leadership styles for each case. Some of these factors include: developing of new concepts for the business, training new managers and crew members, VIP client projects, and so on.
I am the owner/developer of an office and marketing business within the virtual platform called ‘Second Life.’ Our firm is a grid-wide directory of businesses and skilled persons that need to market themselves to the rest of the over nine million Second Life users in rather affordable and useful mediums. I have a small group of sales reps and writers that is responsible for bringing more advertising clients to our group.
Motivating Staff to achieve personal and group goals
People have various levels of interest when it comes to working inside the Second Life virtual platform. Some are in it to make a few virtual dollars to support their entertainment habits within the program, others are there to develop and expand skills that they want to use in the physical world, and others are looking to make a real life income without having to work a typical ‘punch the clock’ style job.
Because of the variations of interest within the group, I as an owner have to adapt my approach to each one based on what they are looking to get back from working for me. The company’s goal is to produce enough of an income to not only support myself financially in the real world, but to allow those that wish to do the same to be able to.
In order to motivate those that wish to make a full time living off of this platform, I offer commission and equity rates that would enable sustainable income for making a reasonable amount of sales for the company. Seeing that this platform is run on an L$250 to $1 USD ratio, higher commission rates of 20-30% per sale are necessary. This drives the reps to see a real potential to make decent money for reaching out and bringing in big sales contracts.
Another motivational tool I use is to establish equity within my best employees. I do this by giving virtual land and office space to these people for free so that in addition to working for my company, they can startup businesses of their own here to further develop their income potential, while driving more diverse traffic to my primary business.
Motivational Results
In using these tools to motivate my employees, I have found true success within the Second Life virtual platform. I have a successful business that does make enough money to support my bills while I am in school. I also have a very small turnover rate, especially with those that are also here to make a real income from this project. While there are times that sales fall in the project, the ability to create and develop their own businesses for free has proven to be highly successful for all of us.
Learning your staff on a professional as well as a personal level is what I believe to be the key to developing a strong employee base and building a successful company. When you put some form of equity into you employees, they will invest of themselves into your company’s goals for they realize the potential for their own benefit just for helping the company reach their goals.
