Report on T-R-E-A-T leadership model for Knowledge-Based Organizations

What is a Knowledge-Based Organization?

It is an organization that depends on the Capability to employees to produce, Acquire and apply
knowledge to create products or services. Workers who are working in an organization will have a
proper knowledge respective to their sectors. Knowledge workers can be found everywhere like
programmers, healthcare professionals, scientists, engineers, lawyers, architects, consultants, arts,
designers, sports and Business and financial operators and other wok where people “think for a
living.”

Why an organization needs Knowledge workers?

To be successful in this age, organizations will need to inspire and sustain the innovative efforts
of their workforce, especially Knowledge workers plays an important role in driving success in any
organization. Rather than performing tasks of a physical nature for a living, knowledge workers think
to solve problems that are complex, develop new services or products. Their specific skills and
knowledge are extremely valuable as knowledge workers are often driving innovation in the
workplace.

What is meant by T-R-E-A-T model of Leadership?

Leadership is the process of influencing an individual or a group of individuals to achieve a

common goal. Leaders will have to develop a practice novel approach that can help them maximize
the potential as well as ensure the well-being of their employees. The T-R-E-A-T model of leadership
is a combination five behaviours they are: -

 T – Task-Oriented
 R – Relation-Oriented
 E - Empowering
 A - Authenticity
 T – Team-Building

Task-Oriented means focused on devoted to competing certain tasks in an efficient manner, and on
time, especially those that contribute to the success of a larger project or job. This can be done by
Clarifying, Problem solving, Monitoring, buffering etc. an effective leader acts as a buffer between
senior management and the juniors and saves them from undue political interference.

Relation-Oriented is also known as people-oriented aimed at creating strong interpersonal

relationships and supporting and motivating teams or works groups and the relationships therein.
This can be done by Inspiring like communicating to appeal to an individual’s emotion or logic I order
to generate enthusiasm for the work, supporting deals with acting in a friendly and considerate
manner towards sub-ordinates being patient and helpful, and showing sympathy and Recognising is
another very important aspect of relation-orientation includes providing praise, appreciation and
recognition for effective performance, and significant achievements and efforts, informing etc.

Empowering is the behaviour targeted towards providing freedom and choice of work. It includes
consulting and delegating behaviours. Leaders must take decisions about various activities relating
to work on a daily basis. Involving subordinates in the decision-making process is likely to lead to
better decisions as well as acceptance of those decisions. Once the decisions are accepted by the
subordinates, they are likely to be better implemented too. Consulting behaviours is about checking
with subordinates before taking decisions that may affect their work, inviting suggestions for
improvement of work, encouraging them to participate in the decision-making process.

Authenticity is about doing what you preach, doing what is right, having the courage to choose
what is right over what is easy and quick, and most importantly, practising values that you hold dear
and that you encourage in others. Openness in collaborating and interaction with other members
and Honesty is about being true to our words and not breaking the trust of others are very essential
in any organisation. Knowledge is essential to succeed at work but it should be complemented by
transparency.

Team-Building is very Important for Every Organization helps to form a group of individuals having
complementary skills and interdependent roles for a common purpose. Converting ideas into
products usually requires a team comprising members having skills to share information and
resources, help each other, and work together in close proximately for long periods of time. Thus, it
becomes more and more important for leaders to develop teams that share mutual Trust and
Respect. It comprises behaviours that facilitate the constructive resolution of conflict among team
members, encouraging cooperation and teamwork.

THE T-R-E-A-T TOOLSET

It helps to present a behaviour toolset for the leaders of knowledge workers. The T-R-E-A-T
leadership framework describes leader behaviours that are important for better performance of
workers. The exact combination of the behaviours that the leaders should exhibit is contextual and
will depend on the characteristics of the subordinates that they lead. The subordinates can vary in
terms of competence and commitment to do the tasks that they have been assigned by their
leaders.

Competence includes knowledge, skills and abilities that have to do in the given tasks and is
developed through formal education, on the job-training and experience.

Commitment is a combination of subordinate’s willingness and confidence to do the assigned tasks.

There are four types of Subordinates in an Organization. They are: -

1.Subordinates: Freshers

 subordinates who manage subordinates who are low on competence but high on
commitment.
 Need to “educate” their subordinates about the work that they are supposed to be doing.
 They must provide task-related guidance to their subordinates at times demonstrating work
to them.
 Work cannot be delegated to them without direct supervision at this time.

2.Subordinates: Unsure

 subordinates who are low on both Competence and Commitment.

 Leaders need to be high on Task-Orientation, Relation-Orientation, Authenticity, and Team
Building.
 Leaders need to build commitment as well as competence in them.

3.Subordinates: Unfairly Treated

 subordinates who are high on competence but low on commitment.

  Leaders need to energise their subordinates by exhibiting high levels of relation orientation,
authenticity and team-building behaviours in order to develop commitment in them.
 Leaders will need to monitor their progress more carefully.

4.Subordinates: Star Performers

 Subordinates will be the ones who are high on both competence and commitment.
 The leaders should “empower.”
 Leaders can be low on task-orientation and high on empowering behaviours.
 Subordinates’ competence levels are high and would like to be given more work-related
decision-making autonomy and less task-related inputs.

T-R-E-A-T a new way of thinking about Leadership

Moving away from the theories of leadership, in this article focus on specific behaviours that are
likely to enable leaders to lead knowledge workers. Organizations should try to promote
Empowering, Authenticity and Team-Building behaviours along with task-orientation and relation-
orientation that have traditionally been identified as important leader behaviour categories. “T-R-E-
A-T” leader behaviours can be of immense help to practitioners who often wrestle with the task of
identifying appropriate behaviours that can ensure leader effectiveness in today’s organisation. “T-R-
E-A-T” leader behaviours can be as a metric to judge the suitability of leaders for leading their
respective teams and organisations. Leaders who exhibit or deploy such behaviours while manging
knowledge workers may have a higher chance of producing better results.