Diverse Teams Produce Better Results - Coursework Example

?BLOG ON LEADERSHIP By Theme Diverse Teams Produce Better Results A team refers to a collection of individuals with a common objective. The objective determines the reason for being together to create the team. The world is increasingly becoming a globalized place and there is a high possibility of having several employees from different backgrounds under the same workmanship. According to Herrera etal, (2013), the central feature of all organizations is team work. Therefore, current management teams tend to focus on the required combinations that are required in terms of employees for economic and productivity values. When evaluating the effects of team diversity on business performance, (Kochan, et al., 2002, p. 12) indicated that different levels employee sourcing create a very strong case for the diversification of the required returns. The diversity under consideration in this situation includes cultural, demographic, technical and cognitive. After this integration, the group processes will include communication, creativity, conflict and cohesion. The required outcomes in this regard are; reduced turnover rate, satisfaction of all stakeholders and improved performance. It has been noted that diversity, if not well managed have adverse effects on the running of a company. Conflicts and ineffective communication are an inevitable part of life in any group setting. However, these can take a different dimension when dealing with diversity (Herrera, Duncan, Ree, & Williams, 2013, p. 5). Lower levels of cohesion and miscommunication are some of the negative issues that must be looked into before effectiveness of the whole company is upgraded. In fact, the relationship that exists between diversity and performance in any company is dependent on the human resource enforces the good practices of creativity and innovation at the initial levels of hiring employees. Therefore, diversity must be effectively handled if it has to give the best results (Mirza, 2011, p. 4). Effective handling of diversity has several advantages. McDonalds Company is one of the companies that have highly benefitted from the aspect of work place diversity. Increased productivity has been highly seen as a result of the diversity created. The company, a US grocery company has a very wide base in more than 118 countries and in particular commands a very huge market in the UK (Mirza, 2011, p. 7). The use of diversity has made the company create a diverse work force with different talents that have highly reduced the turnover rate of the company and in turn increasing its stores all over the world. Another benefit that has come to the company is increased creativity and the rate of solving company problems. Different cultures come with different needs and concerns (Kochan, et al., 2002, p. 13). The company has concentrated so much on diverse work force that it has equally created a diversified customer base based on the cultural range of products sold. So committed to the issue of diversity it is, that the company has created a World Leadership Development. Because of the company external development strategy, it does not discriminate (Mirza, 2011, p. 3). The third advantage as seen in the McDonald’s case is the attraction and retention talent. The company has been seen to highly involve itself in the community based programs where it creates the diversity needed. According to Mirza (2011), the company supports groups of networked individuals in the composition of gay and lesbian employees, because these are very important to the company employment cycle. In fact, the company has a Chief World Diversity Officer, Patricia Sowell Harris whose work is to see that the values of these individuals are upheld. According to the company, they are important, not only as a customer base development team but also worthy employees. Tasked with making sure that people deliver their best, she has made sure that the company effectively responds to the aspect of diversified talent. With the inclusion of the right management practices, the company has been able to save money on litigation cases arising as a result of lawsuits lodged on the basis of discrimination (CRichard, 2000, p. 166). This is because the created diversity leads to the different employees from the different backgrounds respecting each other. This is just the right thing to do. In conclusion, workplace diversity is a very important aspect of any organization. If it is however not taken good care of, it might be adverse to the company. It also starts from the time of recruitment to the very high posts in the company. As was seen in the case of MacDonald’s, the advantages of diversity as the correct way to have an employment team are highly diverse. Knowledge of diversity at MacDonald’s has been used to know the type of goods to produce in whatever country of operation and in what season. Diversity therefore has been seen to increase productivity and creativity, attract and retain talent, enhance communication and create a diversified market share. References CRichard, O. (2000). Racial Diversity, Business Strategy, and Firm Performance: A Resource-Based View. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 164-177. Herrera, R., Duncan, P., Ree, M., & Williams, K. (2013). Diversity As A Predictor Of Leadership Effectiveness. Journal of Diversity Management, 8(1), 1-13. Kochan, T., Bezrukova, K., Ely, R., Jackson, S., Joshi, A., Jehn, K., et al. (2002). The Effects of Diversity on Business Performance. Cambridge: MIT Sloan School of Management. Mirza, B. (2011, Nov 1). Mcdonald's Makes Diversity Part Of The Business. Retrieved Nov 20, 2013, from Society for Human Resouce Management: http://www.weknownext.com/workplace/Mcdonalds-makes-diversity-part-of-the-business Theme 2: Most Effective Leadership Style Management teams face very varied conditions and situations in their respective companies. There is management of situations and management of people. In both cases, there has to be a direct application of a method that would solve the issue. Moreover, in the lines of management, there are vertical and horizontal partnerships in the management of situations and people. Leaders understand that there are several stakeholders to any company and the methods of handling each one of them is varied. Therefore, analysis of the symbols used and their respective applications with respect to the company reputation must be put to practice. Analysis of the company structure usually gives the right line of command to the extent in which the company ought to run and the leadership style to be applied (Popovici, 2012). In the old days, leaders used to view employees as tools that can be used to achieve given strategic objectives. Therefore they would practically invoke the use of leadership styles such as authoritarian. In this case, the command of the orderly is the final and lack of adherence to it is simultaneous to weird repercussions. Things are however changing and there is a great lean on the contingency approach to leadership in which case situations are handled based on the way they are being experienced. In this case, the leadership style has to be very much aligned to the changes that happen in the company. To implement this, management has tried to involve the use of consultative leadership. In the event of applying the consultative leadership, there is a great deal of democracy as a leadership style that is put in place. Democracy simply means a leadership by the people. To this end, we see the difference between leadership and management. Much as management involves the strategic setting and achieving of the goals of the organization through the use of management functions, leadership is the ability to make others follow you in your advice, actions and deeds (CCL, 2011, p. 4). Therefore, management involves forecasting, training, organizing, coordination, monitoring and evaluation. Leadership involves influencing and guiding. Therefore, as far as leadership is concerned, democracy is the best method. However, different people like to be treated differently (Iqbal, 2011 , p. 10). A newly appointed branch supervisor may be scolded by the top management whereas an experienced manager may not take the issue lightly. Some employees are used to being pushed on to do some piece of work and without such pressure, there would be no work done effectively. Therefore, an integration of two or three management styles would work well. In democratic leadership, there is a high sense of information flow to and from different stakeholders. There is full involvement of the junior employees in the decision making processes. In this case, each member is aware of the on-going issues as far as the departmental matters are concerned (Lencioni, 2010, p. 17). There is therefore freedom of choice on what to communicate in whatever capacity and in the same sense retaining the respect between the junior and senior employees. On the basis of leadership, the best leadership styles in connection with democracy as a management style is the situational leadership. Much as there are several laid down strategic plans, there is also supposed to be a platform for communication on situations so that the junior members can give their views on the matters prevailing. The advantage of situational type of leadership is that it allows for flexibility on the part of leaders and in doing so allows the subordinates the aspect of satisfaction. The leadership task in this case is usually an easy thing to achieve and therefore allows the leader to make plans for other plans to be amended (Sherk, 2007, p. 21). All the managers need to make sure that they understand the team members’ requirements so that effective actions can be taken. In conclusion, leadership is slightly different from management. Whereas management involves implementation of the functions of the manager, leadership involves hands-on actions in the implementation process. The discussion by CMI (2013) that leadership and management is supposed to be situational is a true fact only if the members of the team in the company understand their duties well. It should however involve other styles of leadership because it would be very ineffective to involve just one management style in varying situations. As a member of a team, the best way therefore to be managed is that involving a consultative process in which actions are not just sanctioned. References CCL, C. f. (2011). Setting Priorities: Personal Values, Organizational Results. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Iqbal, T. ( 2011 ). The Impact of Leadership Styles on Organizational Effectiveness: Analytical Study of Selected Organizations in IT Sector in Karachi. New York: GRIN Verlag. Johnson, C. (2003). Enron’s Ethical Collapse: Lessons for Leadership Educators. Journal of Leadership Education, 2(1), 46-54. Lencioni, P. M. (2010). The Five Temptations of a CEO, 10th Anniversary Edition: A Leadership Fable. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. Popovici, V. (2012). Similarities And Differences Between Management And Leadership. Journa of Economics, 2, 126-135. Sherk, J. (2007, 8 31). Upwards Leisure Mobility: Americans Work Less and Have More LeisureTime than Ever Before. Retrieved 5 21, 2013, from The Heritage Foundation, Leadership of America: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/08/upwards-leisure-mobility-americans-work-less-and-have-more-leisure-time-than-ever-before Theme 3: Managing Change Change is a transformation from the already existing norms and ways of doing things to new ones. It is always accompanied by challenges as well as and that is why most people would prefer to remain in their current states of status quo and resist it very strongly. There are many reasons as to why people resist change, either at the work place or in organizations. Therefore, these many reasons cause some of the founders of change to either give up along the way or simply do nothing and continue in their conservative ways. Change or resistance to it is not only a professional but also psychological issue (Y?lmaz & K?l?coglu, 2013, p. 21). With all these reasons for resisting change, there is little or nothing that can be done by the management to resist the change (Judge, 2013, pp. 8-24). Much as resistance is always anticipated, the numbers of reasons for resistance outweigh the need for change in all situations. First, according to Y?lmaz and K?l?coglu (2013), the reason for the need for change may be unclear. If the management does not make the reasons for change clear, then there is very little they can do to the resistance from the subjects. The second reason is the fear of the unknown circumstances in the expected change. People can only accept change if they believe that the reasons for change outweigh the need to remain conservative. It even becomes extremely difficult if the past methods had been successful in achieving the desired goals in a company. Thirdly, when there is lack of confidence and trust in the management. This is even more serious because if the subjects have enough evidence to prove the incompetence, then there will be a lot of resistance that outweighs the ability of the management to control. Another reason would be if the change is considered a temporary fad. Long term plans that have been successful would be the real reason for the resistance. In such a case, the management may have little to prove in encouraging the change. However, the management usually has all the power at its disposal to go over the resistance to the initiated change. It can therefore not be true that total resistance will lead to total abortion of the planned change. They can still use experience and careful planning to execute the desired change. One of the methods that can be used to initiate the change is to identify the confusion that is bound to befall the imminent change. In doing so, they would involve leaders of projects, leaders of the designed projects, senior leaders and executives. Involving all these agents of change will make it possible for the process to be introduced in a known way. The second method would be to use the states of change. The states of change during the current state, the transition and the future of the change can help convince the individuals to accept the fact that there is need for change. The last aspect and reason would be to connect the people to the processes. This will make them be implementers of the process hence avoiding rigid resistance. However, resistance to change is important in that it makes the planners to come up with the best ways to plan and the change would bring out the best change results. MacDonald’s Corporation in the UK has followed all the key values of the people it serves as the core of all it does. When initiating a change, the customers are mostly put to the knowledge so that they would be aware of the expected remedies. Jim Skinner, the Chief executive officer indicated that their work would be to bring change at a time when all the customers have knowledge of what is expected although the change starts from the company micro-environment (Mcdonalds, 2009, p. 66). By conclusion, resistance to change is very important and can determine a lot the outcomes of the resistance. In some circumstances, there are resistances that the management can do about. However, the management can try to generate a due process that can be used to manage the change without rendering it impossible by the forces of change resistance. From the possible example of MacDonald’s Inc. it is possible to initiate change every necessary time. References Judge, S. P. (2013). Improving the Quality of Working Life. London: Chartered Management Institute. Mcdonalds. (2009, 12 12). The Values we Bring to the Table. Retrieved 11 20, 2013, from Mcdonalds. Y?lmaz, D., & K?l?coglu, G. (2013). Resistance to Change and Ways of Reducing Resistance in Educational Organizations. European Journal of Research on Education, 1(1), 14-21. Theme 4: Ethical Leadership Ethical leadership is an important aspect of individuals and institutions. Ethics are values and principles used by individuals and organizations to guide their principles and social objectives. From a traditional perspective, it has been known that the role of leaders is to make profits regardless of the procedures that are followed. However, a need for attraction and retention of the market customers created need for upholding ethics in an organization. This post seeks to establish the importance of ethical behaviour on both individuals and organizations. Positive and negative effects of ethics will be discussed by the blog as well as outlining organizations that have benefitted or lost as a result of maintaining or lack of maintaining them (Kelchne, 2008, p. 2). Development of ethical leadership has got several advantages to parties involved in it. Et5hics have got an impact on reputation, productivity and bottom line engagements with the company. Kelchner (2008) indicates that there are several aspects of ethics in a company ranging from business ethics, corporate ethics, professional, financial and code of ethics. Leadership ethics usually have a direct effect on the employee morale in the company. When the leaders show a high sense of moral standard, it encourages the employees to desire to also operate at the same level of commitment and diligence. A good ethics equally improves the position of any given company in the financial market. This improves the business of the company in totality. To the employees in an organization, ethical behaviour makes sure that the employees are in a position to complete their work, having worked with commitment and full of integrity. The employees that adhere to ethical behaviour usually have a high adherence to employee policies making the entire management system to be acceptably simple to manage. Organizations are able to run very effectively. In this case, the quality of the work is assured and in the long term, the reputation of the company is upheld in the entire market. As related to the organizational culture, the leaders that adhere to this practice of ethics create a general ethical culture in the organization. In fact, a reinforcement of the behaviour can be done by rewarding the workers who have complemented the name of the company by high level ethical behaviour. Some companies however do not operate on the standard level of ethics. A good example where a company failed was the issue of Enron Corporation. This was a large scale gas pipeline company that was in scandal after scandal. The reason for the failure was that there were some values that the employees could not agree on with the management. Due to this, the company became bankrupt hence failing to continue service (Johnson, 2003, p. 50). The conclusion therefore is that there was an untrustworthy set of leaders that created the same notion in the employees leading to heavy losses due to this mistrust. Under the same conditions, there are companies that have benefited highly from upholding ethics and making them the foundations of their performance and operation. The famous Forbes magazine listed the success of many world companies in 2012 as being related to ethical management. Marks and Spencer was one of the most ethical companies and this involved a high creation of ethical behaviour to the employees, the customers and the government in general (Smith, 2012, p. 1). By conclusion, there are very many advantages of upholding ethics in an organization. Companies have failed in their operations because of lack of ability to uphold ethics. In this regard, the ethics determine the future of the company at all costs. Since ethics bring together a factual view of the customers, employees, management and owners of the business, ten it is necessary that all companies maintain the same. Marks and Spencer has maintained a high status in the market because of its listing on the famous Forbes Magazine as the best company in terms of ethics in the British economy. It is therefore an inevitable fat that one cannot escape the aspect of ethics in their operations if they are to remain relevant in the market. References Johnson, C. (2003). Enron’s Ethical Collapse: Lessons for Leadership Educators. Journal of Leadership Education, 2(1), 46-54. Kelchne, L. (2008, 10 10). The Importance of Ethics in Organizations. Retrieved 11 20, 2013, from Demand Media: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-ethics-organizations-20925.html Smith, J. (2012, 3 15). The World's Most Ethical Companies. The Forbes Magazine, pp. 1-2. Theme 5: Double Weighted Leadership Leadership is created in some people while in others it is made to happen. Charisma in a leader is the best that there can be (Goleman, 2004, p. 85). Companies have collapsed because of bad leadership while others have flourished because of a very good leadership. After a good readership on leadership and management styles, this section is a personal opinion on the type of leadership that should suffice on a personal basis. According to IAAP (2009), there is a varied number of leadership styles in existences. These styles are contained in different people depending of the personal characteristics and the level of experience gained during the leadership period (IAAP, 2009, p. 12). Charismatic leader tend to be democratic as well and that is the best leadership style that has ever existed. Being a democratic leader, according to the lessons learnt is not letting people operate according to their own ways but agreeing to act in a way common to the understanding and knowledge of all stakeholders involved. Much as there is laissez faire, autocratic and dictatorship, the best choice of a leadership style, which is charismatic, is the democratic style. There are several leaders that have shown a great deal of charisma and democracy. From Bill Gates of Microsoft Inc. to Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. from a current and practical perspective though, the most inspiring of them all is Steve Jobs. He has been a leader who has given an ear even to the least of the employees in the company at large and in that case led to some of the wildest inventions in mobile industry. He is the kind of leader who made very tough situations look so ordinary and easy to work with bringing up the qualities of a leader that he had. One of the traits is that he created simplicity out of a tough situation. For instance, he eliminated the on/off button on the iPod, making it operate by a simple swipe as the power came on by a touch of the screen. Here, he led by example in practically showing people what was possible (Kalla, 2012, p. 2). Jobs was also innovative and full of confidence practically around everything he did. Even in tough situations, the leader was able to rally people to effectively do what was required without hurting their ego. The other characteristic is that Jobs always teamed with winners. When he wanted thing done, he would team up with the relevant group of professionals who were experienced in those respective fields. This worked well as he prevented very many risked from occurring by grouping effective people together. My peers have inspired me and encouraged on the democracy that I uphold. I do not usually look at any single issue from a single perspective. Whether the issue looks overly done, there is always a small clique of the same that would operate differently. Listening to different views and taking time to make effective decisions has upgraded the democrat that I am. Therefore, creation of the best democracy will involve toning me into a credible leader in the field of my study. Just like Jobs, there is a high belief in me that one day there wills a strong crop of democracy that will be seen all over. From a background perspective, there has always been a position to create will where there is no and lead group work based on the opinions of all those attending the discussion. The same thing has always been noticed in the different places i have worked. I tend to get easy with things moving in order. Through the developments in MBA, I will tend to develop the aspect of toughness as time goes on so that full charisma is realised. Sometimes I tend to be permissive more than is necessary and in that aspect compromising on the quality desired at long last. In conclusion, there are several leaders in the world with different leading style all to themselves. Some are democratic while others are authoritarian. Steve Jobs has done very well at Apple Inc. and remains one of the greatest leaders and inventors of the current generation. Personal perspectives determine the type of leader that one can be and for me, I choose democracy. References Goleman, D. (2004). Leadershi that gets Results . Harvard: Harvard. IAAP. (2009). Leadership Theories and Styles. London: IAAP. Kalla, S. (2012, 04 02). Ten Leadership tips for Steve Jobs. The Forbes Magazine, p. 2. Read More