Leadership Team Formation And Strategic Management Within An Organization - Essay Example

Leadership Team Formation And Strategic Management Within An Organization Human resource is an important docket within any business environment as it is the main driver for profit generation within an organization. Human resource management provides efficient leadership necessary in the formation of an efficient team within the work force (Fottler, Naresh and Grant, 2010). The managers are solely responsible for ensuring that they have a skilled, trained and motivated workforce to ensure that they can efficiently implement the management short and long-term goals (Buble, Juras & Matić, 2014). The effects of a wrong workforce has far reaching impacts within an organization as it results to lose of cooperation, reduction of work output and high labour turnover. From this perspective, efficient human resource management is the backbone of organizational performance. From a personal experience, I have discovered the value of team formation and cooperation within a group work. When team members work in harmony, they are bound to deliver the best and achieve the goals that they set at the beginning of their team formation (West, 2012). A key lesson in this group work is that challenges are inevitable and the human resource managers have to be prepared for unavoidable challenges that may come along their way. The level of preparation for such situations will influence the way human resource managers react and their ability to resolve issues that would otherwise destabilize the organizational operations. In this essay, I shall reflect on my personal group experiences to illuminate on issues of leadership, team formation and strategic management within an organization. The experience of working with a harmonious group was particularly beneficial for our group but also led to the leadership issues as we opted to do away with the leadership within the group. Evidently, lack of leadership within our organization presented a number of challenges within our group and the importance of leadership dawned to us at the end of our experience. Using personal reflection throughout the essay will provide a practical way to present various issues of human resource management and provide a practical approach to develop value leadership within an organization. Team Formation For any group that intends to work together, team formation is an important aspect that defines how the involved individuals relate with one another. To begin within, there are number of issues that were important for our group. My group was made of friends and this was a upper hand on matters of cooperation, willingness to work together and alignment to the group goals. At some point, we had to absorb one student who lacked a group and the instructor requested that he joins out group. While we were classmates, this new individual was way distant to us and it became an important issue to assimilate him within the group and to get him on board our group targets and goals. This is expected in any given organization that some employees will join the work force at some point and there is need to align them to the management goals to enable them to work in harmony with other employees (Augier, 2013). This burden rests in the shoulder of human resource managers. One important aspects of human resource management is to establish a strong team which starts right from the moment of recruitment. The organization selection and recruitment process is an activity that the human resource managers take seriously to obtain the best work force within the institution (Nordensson, Ash, & Kelley, 2010). The selection process is an activity that involves selection of only qualified employees who suit the minimum requirements of the position and fill the existing employee gaps effectively. For an organization to achieve its goals, it requires skilled personnel with adequate skills and experiences to handle the needs of the organization. The applicants undergo scrutiny for academic qualifications, skills, experiences and leadership qualities. The human resource managers have to set clear the qualifications of the position in their advertisement to ensure that only the qualified candidates apply. Those with less than minimum requirements are dismissed at the preliminary stage even before the first interviews. Apart from this, the human resource managers provide a formal orientation to the successful candidates. The orientation process is a good way to facilitate employees work behavior and this helps them to adapt more quickly and to work become part of the work team more quickly. This is much similar to the experience within my group. When we received a new member, we had the challenge of introducing him to the way we do things within the group. Since he arrived a week later, we had already set up out goals and we had laid down a plan on how we would conduct our group activities. Therefore, the issue of orientation was paramount for the new member just like it is crucial within any business organization (Frick & Drucker, 2011). Orientation provides new employees with an opportunity to adapt quickly into the work environment and hence become productive as soon as they join the organization. Not after we communicated our plans to the new member that we helped him to contribute to our goals. However, it is important to recognize that an organization must go way farther in developing their work force. Since our group was small, the issues of team formation were much easier. However, in modern work structures, employee appraisal is a topic that has generated a lot of attention. The employee appraisal theories provide that an organization has to provide opportunities for the employees to grow as the organization grows (Augier, 2013). This motivates the employees to become establish long-term goals while working within the organizations. This way an organization profits from working with a committed team. For instance, employees must be able to benefit from sharing the organizational profits. This motivates them to work harder to generate more profits for the organization, as this is proportional to the reward that they get. Another important aspect of our group was the ability to form a harmonious team that works for common goals. Since our group comprised of friends, it was easy to work together as a team without any conflict. Notably, as friends we had a good understanding of one another since we had socialized for a long term. Evidently, people only work harmoniously if they understand one another and the unique tastes of each person. Often, the issues of diversity are crucial in the work environment as they influence harmony among team members. Diversity refers to the variance of personal characteristics that may influence the way different people socialize. Ideally, all human beings are unique and they have a preferable way of doing things, and this may affect the way that they relate with other employees and the way that they form part of a cohesive team. From my personal group experience, understanding one another played an important factor in our ability to deliver our goals. Diversity management is one of the global strategies that organization uses to address employees’ differences within the organization. Notably, cultural differences have become important today due to the existence of high level of cultural integration in the labor force (Aritz & Walker, 2014). The different cultural attitudes within a society influences the way employees form teams within a business entity. Thus, the human resource managers have the mandate to identify the various cultural differences that influence the way employees relate during their daily duties. Here, we identify various strategies that the organizations use to maintain cohesive teamwork within a diverse work force. First, the managers pay particular attention to understanding their work force. Since the time of recruitment, the human resource managers select employees who have a diversity experience to ensure that they are able to cope with the new environment easily (Mor-Barak, 2011). Secondly, the organization provides employees with an orientation to ensure that they understand the new work environment easily and that they are able to familiarize with the working teams. In addition, the organization provides social function in which all the employees meet and interact fostering the chances of them meeting new friends and understanding and appreciating different cultures. Creating harmony within a diverse workforce requires that an organization provides the employees with an opportunity to understand one another. The ability of our University to enhance social interaction may have contributed to the harmony that out team enjoyed during the group activities. Team Work and Motivation For a human resource manager, employee motivation is an important aspect of an organization as it determines the quantity and quality of work produced, which is proportional to the profit of the organization. Motivation ensures there is high job satisfaction, low employee turnover, high quality and work productivity. In the group formation, it is clear that motivation from within the learners was important to ensure that we managed our work within the shortest time period. As we worked together we understood that working efficiently was meant for our own benefit as it would affect our grade at the end of the year. From a critical point of view, people are more comfortable while working on duties that will contribute to the wellness. Since all our team members knew that their contribution and sacrifice would lead to a good grade at the end of the term, we were all determined to give the best. This was more vivid when we divided our work into different portion and assigned them to different persons. Each member worked hard to ensure that they provided work of high quality by making wide research on assigned topics and coming up with quality work. It is expected that managing a larger group of employees in the work place poses similar challenges. Ensuring that employees are committed to their assigned duties is important if the management has to realize its targets (Keskes, 2014). In organization motivation plan, it is vital to ensure that you pay fair wages for all the employees depending on their role in the organization. The amount salary is an important factor for any employee as they value an organization that provides the most satisfying salary (Bruce & Pepitone, 1999). Therefore, a fair salary will ensure that employees are satisfied. To ensure that there is high productivity within the organization, it is crucial to reward the employees depending on the performance of the company at the end of the fiscal year. For instance, 20 percent of the organizational profit will be shared to the employees, as way of recognizing their hard work. Since the employees will benefit depending on the amount of the annual profits, they will be motivated to work harder and to earn benefit more from higher organizational profits (Adyasha, 2013). From a close observation, just like the group members worked hard to achieve high grades, employees will work hard depending on the benefit that they obtain within the organization. However, it is crucial to note at this point that lack of motivation within a group has negative impacts on the team performance. Midway between the group meetings, one of our members absented himself from the group meetings and did not appear on several occasions. Resultantly, we had to do his work load at a time when time was limited and there was still a big work load for each one of us. His absenteeism was consequential as we had to take up his part of the work to ensure that we complete our assignments in time. As a result, we had to work extra hours and this may have affected our quality of work. I remember a time when I had to sleep past midnight to complete my research as a result of this additional work. This is the same fate that human resource managers have to face while they fail to satisfy their employees. Unsatisfied employees are always looking for new opportunities and they live as soon as they are obtain better paying jobs resulting in high labor turnover (Hee & Ling, 2011). The result is that some work goes unattended and the remaining employees have to shoulder bigger loads of work. Often, this results to reduction in work output in terms of quality and quantity, which culminates to losses within an organization. From this platform, I would recommend that human resource managers pay attention to team motivation to ensure that they win employee loyalty, which crucial for optimal profitability. Value of Leadership within an organization While I consider our team effective, lack of leadership within the group had its own challenges for our achievements. As friends, we were able to work in harmony and we saw no need of selecting a leader for the group. We felt that we did not need a boss who would provide orders which might lead to disharmony within the group. However, this was a source of weakness for our group. To begin with, we did not have a leader to monitor the members’ behavior. When one of our members failed to attend meetings, there was no one to make a follow up and know the reason for his absenteeism. Therefore, we had to work with fewer members, a situation that almost ended us in trouble. Secondly, it was quite a challenge for us to scrutinize our own work, since we considered each other as friends. There was no one to critic the work of the other, which is important if quality has to be achieved. Notably, we would fear to criticize one another as this would result to disharmony among us. On this ground, we failed to achieve optimal efficiency that is crucial for the highest grades. In a nutshell, we downplayed the role of leadership within an organization. Leadership theories associate optimal performance with the existence of the right leadership within an organizational structure. The concept of business leadership has become an issue of discussion as many scholars investigate the most efficient form of leadership for the modern business environment. There arises a question of whether there is a difference between leadership and management within the business environment (Northouse, 2010). From a close observation, there is a great difference between a manager and a leader especially in the roles that they play. In role playing, a manager has the mandate to control the people under him while the leader plays the role of inspiring those under him. In terms of power, the manager holds positional power by the virtue of the position he or she holds within the organizational hierarchy while the leader has personal power that emanates from his experience. In terms of role implementation, the manager relies of set guidelines and sticks to the plan laid down. However, the leader has the freedom to remain innovative by combining skills of creativity and logical decision making to arrive at the best solutions to organizational problems. This shows clearly that there is a great difference between a manager and a leader. However, there is an overlap between the roles of a leader and a manager (Ostojić, Vlatika and Sanja, 2012). Often leaders are involved in the roles of planning, organizing, staffing and controlling, the same as those that a manager plays. On the other hand, there are times when the managers are involved in influencing or inspiring a group of people to meet their goals, which is a critical role of leadership. This shows the two positions overlap and one can play the role of the other at some point. Transformational leadership is a contemporary concept that refers to modern leadership style that centres on the leader and their follower’s interactions. It refers to a type of leadership that accounts for value, relationship, motives, ethics and standards that influence the way a leader or manager interacts with their employees. Transformational leadership focuses on a wide range of mechanisms to achieve the organizational goals. It considers both the follower and leader characteristics that influence the way they handle their roles (Boykins, Campbell, Moore & Nayyar, 2013). The main focus of the leaders in this case is to win loyalty of their followers by satisfying their physical and emotional needs. The leaders achieve this by understanding the needs of the follower and developing strategies to achieve them. This is the most common form of leadership concept that applies today in many organizations. Transformational leadership is integrative and is based on mutual benefit of both the leader and the follower. Many modern economists advocate for this form of leadership as it is satisfying and provides a good ground for goals implementation. This appears to be the form of leadership that we required within our team to ensure that all activities run smooth. It is anticipatory that a team that lacks a leader has to suffer lack of coordination (Palestini, 2009). The leader shoulders the role of ensuring that all employee work in line with the laid down strategies and provides an evaluation platform to ensure quality is achieved. To this end, if we had a leader, it would have been easier to control absenteeism and ensure that each member provides quality work. Since every person is subject to the leader, it become easier to work monitored in the most effective manner. It is expected that organizations that lack efficient leaders are bound to lose their organizational value as monitoring and evaluation is crucial for any team. From this perspective, our idea to eliminate leadership was the source of weakness within the group. Conclusion The main focus of this essay is team formation, team work and motivation, and value leadership, issues that came up while we were forming our group. From the group experience, it came out that the issue of team formation contributes to the achievement of the group target goals. For organizations, complex teams require more efficient coordination to ensure that the management goals are attained. Therefore, human resource managers have to face the challenge of motivating their employees to avoid low performance and high labour turnovers. Evidently, motivation is crucial for team performance both in terms of quantity and quality of work. A key learning in this group this group experience is the value of leadership within groups. Since we lacked a leader, the roles of monitoring and evaluation became hard. Therefore, leadership is important and it would be recommendable that we have a group leader in future to guide and direct the course of the group. Bibliography Adyasha, R. 2013, A Motivated Employee: A Qualitative Study on various Motivational Practices used in Organizations. Aweshkar Research Journal, 15(1), 98-103. Aritz, J, & Walker, R 2014, 'Leadership Styles in Multicultural Groups: Americans and East Asians Working Together', Journal Of Business Communication, 51, 1, pp. 72-92, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 10 December 2014. Augier, M., 2013, Behavioural theory of the firm: hopes for the past; lessons from the Future. Management, 16(5), 636-652. 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