Module 6. Human Resource Management And Leading Function

Welcome to Module 6!

Module 6 of the course is about human resource management and the leading function.

This module covers the following topics:

 

  • 6.1 Leadership identification. Different kinds of leadership.
  • 6.2 Sources of power in a negotiation.
  • 6.3 Managing people.
  • 6.4 Soft skills.

 

The instructors for this module are:

 

  • Pedro Neves, Associate Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (6.1, 6.2 and 6.3).
  • Aneesh Zutshi, Professor at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (6.4).

According to professor Pedro Neves, there are three main approaches to the leadership process:

 

  • Transformational leadership (that focuses a lot on the motivational and inspirational aspects of leadership).
  • Instrumental leadership (motivation and inspiration are very important, but if they are not grounded in a well-planned strategy, they will not work).
  • And the final idea is that leaders need to be authentic, so whatever they do it is important that people perceive them as being genuine and as doing things that are aligned with their way of being in life.

There are many different sources of power and what leaders have to do is to try to understand what is going on around them to see what sources of power are more or less effective in a given situation.

 

According to professor Neves, the most common sources of power are:

 

  • Formal position that one occupies in an organization
  • How one uses one’s relationships and network
  • Access to information

Managing people in big companies is not the same as managing people in startups. So, leaders should take in account concepts like:

 

  • Flexibility (which must be greater in startups than in established companies)
  • Innovation and creativity (startups need to bring something new)
  • The value creation (in startups, the ability to be part of something that you are creating from scratch is very important)

In this last video, professor Aneesh Zutshi talks about soft skills.

Soft skills are a set of skills which enable an entrepreneur to negotiate well, be more creative, build stronger connections and increase his/her own motivation and that of others. Probably the most important soft skill is “emotional intelligence”.