Leadership, Teambuilding and Communication - Assignment Example

Leadership, Teambuilding and Communication Affiliation Leadership and Management Leadership theories Traditional, Contemporary, and Emerging Leadership Theories Leadership is the art and process of persuasion whereby one influences a group of workers to work towards achieving the objectives of the organization. The objectives can be achieved by successfully being able to direct the human behavior within the working environment. They are quite a number of leadership theories ranging from traditional contemporary to emerging used in the process of leading. The traditional theories include; traits approach characterized by those leaders who focus more on values, personalities, skills and motives (Lima, Costa, & Angelis, 2008). In this theory, shows that some people have better leadership traits than others. He concludes that there are those people who are born to lead while others were born to be led. Behavioral approach is one other form of traditional leadership style, in this leadership theory, there are three leadership styles that are distinct from each other. Their styles include; authoritarian leadership whereby, the leader maintains strong control over the group at work. In this form of leadership, motivation is by coercion, and there is no free communication between the leader and the staff. Communication comes from the leader only, and the workers are there to follow. In this kind of leadership, there is high productivity but with low self-motivation and autonomy by the workers. Democratic approach is another form of leadership style that is friendlier to the subordinate staff. In the case here, there is free communication from both the staff and the leadership. Decision-making involves everybody in the organization, and the staff seen as a whole and not as a leader. Therefore, it gives room for constructive criticism and autonomy among the employees in the organization. Lastly, there is laissez - faire leadership style, here there is little or no control from the leader (Murphy, 2005). The kind of leadership is so much of the essence in situations with poorly defined problems that need brainstorming to come over the problems. There are a number of leadership theories that include, transformational, cite suggested that leaders have the abilities to groom their followers into better leaders in the future. The grooming is achieved successfully by letting followers have the freedom to control their behaviors. In this kind of leadership, the leaders have vision of the level he or she wants to see the organization and shares the vision with the followers so as they can be able to realize together as a team. In transactional leadership, the leader is more concerned with the aim to achieve the already set goals and objective, the leaders of this kind do not utilize creativity to come up with new ways of doing things better. Power is the ability to influence the believe actions or the behavior of other people. It is geared towards making change possible or preventing a change from occurring. There are a myriad of different types of power, and they include; reward power whereby the leader can offer an incentive to the staff in exchange for a contribution that advances the organization towards achieving the goals. Coercive power is a crude way of ensuring that one works towards achieving the goals. The workers are obliged to for failure to work subjecting them to punishment; leaders are bestowed with this kind of power. Position power comes from the fact that the leader is ranked high in the organization hierarchy. Therefore, the subordinate have to follow the orders for the managers have powers to sanction and reward. Expert power, this is because one has a unique skill that differentiates him or her from the rest. Informational power is because the leader is respected and controls the people by the fact he or she has adequate and relevant information for decision-making in a particular area. Caterpillar, being the company I research on, is a company that produces and sells machinery. There are competitors coming up against in the world over. Therefore, there is a need to have that kind of a leader who can achieve the objectives of the organization well by working with the staff. To outdo the competitors there is a need for innovation and good relation with the workers to better both the quantity and quality of their market. 2. Organizational Stressors Being a large company that deals with production to marketing of their products each department has a myriad of peculiar stressors. At the retail department of the organization, the workers experience a number of stressors. There is increased need to meet the targets of the quota. With the poor economy and reduced rate of innovations, the workers in this sector have to worker extra harder to achieve the set targets by the organizations. By so doing, the workers are left with no option but to work for longer hours with poor pay of course. There stress comes into action for the fact that the staff has to be on duty or else lose their jobs. Secondly, there is role conflict on the worker that can be either internal or external. A good example is whereby one had issues in the family and quarreled. This worker is likely to extend this to work and therefore lead to stress and poor performance at work.at the same time, the staff member can have role ambiguity whereby he or she does not have a clue on what is done in line with that job. Stressors have a large impact on the organization, with stressed employees the productivity obviously is reduced a great deal. People’s ability to work is controlled by both the mental and physical stability. Failure of either will defiantly lead to poor production and job dissatisfaction and at sometimes there will be turnover (Hoobler, Wayne, & Lemmon, 2009).To prevent this from happening, the manager needs to approach the situation swiftly and find out the course and the stressors and the eliminate them. 3. Sustainable Team Formation One of the key attributes of the manager is the understanding of their employee’s situation and helps to make the working environment conducive. To form a group that will last and serve the purpose, the leader has to comply with the following, First, it is of the essence to be aware of the way the leader works in term of the leadership styles and techniques. Find out the effectiveness of the group and the acceptability as the leader of the group. One needs to be flexible to lead. Secondly, there is need to know the rest of the team by so doing, as manager you will have a clue on who to utilize where depending on their competences. Knowing the team helps to know how to motivate them and perform beyond that expected from them. Then Clearly Define Roles & Responsibilities (Weatherly, 2004).There is a need to define the responsibilities and the roles of each team member. With a known team, there is division of duty with each person performing the functions they can do to their level best. The shared responsibilities work towards forming a strong force by utilizing members both strengths and weakness. Be Proactive with Feedback. There is a need for a constructive regular and timely feedback. It keeps the team members on track and ready to achieve the set goals of the team as a whole. A team leader has to take some time with each team member to inform them on what they can do better and at the same time learn from the group members. Acknowledge and Reward. Once a group member has archived that goal set or they have made efforts, there is need to acknowledge and reward them, with that there is increased satisfaction and the becoming more purposeful. Always Celebrate Success. Celebration being a short-lived event, it does not take much time but it is of the essence in motivating the members of the group. It is a good time that as a group you remember the efforts and this fruits of it all hence giving more hope and power to carry on to the next task. The caterpillar company needs to have this form of team management with proper team formulation process. With periodic set targets of the group’s achievement, the company will, be able to achieve the set goals with the proper leadership style. 4. Conflicts Both internal and external disorders that emanate from the difference in values ideas or feelings among people or groups are the conflicts. Conflict is more expected among managers for the fact that they deal with a number of people with different believes and values in the organization. A team being made up a number of people there is also a probability of conflicts as they interact for the diversity in ideologies among humans. There are several sources of conflict in the group of people or the organization as a whole. They include, competition among the professionals, and the diversity in both professional and economical values can be a major cause of conflict. The scarcity of resources and poor definition of the rules and expectations too form part of the conflict sources. Conflicts are being viewed as different points of view among the employees, issues, forces and problems that confront each group or individuals. Crouse, Doyle, & Young (2011) came up with types of conflicts that includes. Intrapersonal conflicts occur within the individual, interpersonal conflicts also occur between the work groups or people. The conflict in this case is orchestrated by the incompatibility in the working styles or personalities. Organizational conflict takes place in the organization. Scarce resources bring it about. Additionally, change in infrastructure and differences between departments in philosophy and values lead to the scenario. There are several conflict management styles. They include competing in the management style. One of the groups that are in conflict wins and the other loses. The type of resolution style brings about withdrawal by the loosing team hence not advisable for the management of most conflicts. Collaborating in this case each team plays its role and them come together to come up with a solution. In this type of conflict resolution, each team is given an opportunity to achieve its goals amicably. Compromising occurs when each team has no option, but to give up something and get something to the other. This type of resolution style is important in a situation whereby each team has no option of losing no matter how incompatible the ideologies are. Avoiding is whereby the conflict is prevented from occurring; quick action is taken to deter the occurrence of the conflict upon foreseeing or noticing it in the initial stages. Accommodating is a situation whereby the one party suppresses its demands and gives the other an opportunity to carry on. Parties should not consistently ignore their feelings for the willingness to co-operate in the future diminishes with time. In the organization caterpillar, to manage conflicts is more crucial for each department plays a crucial role. Therefore, there is a need to have a detailed analysis of the conflict determining the source and the consequences of each to come up with an informed decision on the method to use in order to manage the conflict. For example in the most sources of the conflicts discussed above. Collaborative mode of management style is applicable more than the rest in solving the conflicts. The style is important for the fact that each department is crucial and should always be considered, 5. Communication Barriers Effective communication is of great essence in determining the process of attaining the goals of the organization. However, there are several barriers to effective communication. Key among them is a distracting environment in this scenario, it can be a failure of systems or internet or poor voice projection. It then will lead to poor or late communication. At the same time the message can be passed to the wrong audience, by default, it makes the message absolute and the management will always thing it has communicated while in the real sense it has not. It is always important to use the medium that is accessible to a number of the employees involved. The message should be clear, many instances there has been communication of a mixed messages. Improper communication is obviously disastrous in the company’s bid to achieving the organizations goals. The missed communication means a delay in the intended action that will definitely derail the process of achieving the goals of the organization. References Crouse, P., Doyle, W., & Young, J. D. (2011). Workplace learning strategies, barriers, facilitators and outcomes: a qualitative study among human resource management practitioners. Human Resource Development International, 14(1), 39–55. Hoobler, J. M., Wayne, S. J., & Lemmon, G. (2009). Bosses’ Perceptions of Family-Work Conflict and Womens Promotability: Glass Ceiling Effects. Academy of Management Journal, 52(5), 939–957. Lima, E. P. de, Costa, S. E. G. da, & Angelis, J. J. (2008). The strategic management of operations system performance. International Journal of Business Performance Management,litative Methods, 10(1), 108–132. Murphy, L. (2005). Transformational leadership: a cascading chain reaction. Journal of Nursing Management, 13(2), 128–36. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2934.2005.00458.x Weatherly, L. A. (2004). Performance Management: Read More