Leadership and Organization: Leadership Assessment - Assignment Example

Leadership and Organizations Leadership and Organization Analyze the leadership style of a senior executive in your current or previous organization who made a positive or negative impact on you. There are several leadership styles as identified by Robin Benincasa (2012). These are the pacesetting, authoritative, affiliative, coaching, coercive, and democratic leaders. In my experience in the past, the General Manager of our company a coaching type of leader on the outside but by observation and experience is actually a very coercive leader. Involved in sales, he motivates people and teaches them techniques through informal training on techniques and strategies for selling. A coaching leader is defined by Benincasa as one who develops people and “build lasting personal strengths that make them more successful” and promotes the “try this” phrase. The training was perceived motivating by staff in the beginning. After a few months however, he would demand greater performance and sales output. In time, he became a coercive leader, demanding immediate and unreasonable compliance to unrealistic sales targets he has determined. As Benincasa put it, “this style is summed up by the phrase, ‘Do what I tell you’” (2012). His leadership style left a negative impression on me and developed resentment from staff as his directives gradually dictated how people should go about their jobs. The sense of independence of approach to selling by staff was not allowed and they should go about their jobs according to his standards and practice. This resentment towards our manager gradually evolved in absenteeism and low morale of the staff as they were always criticized for not going about their work in the fashion he has dictated. 2. Analyze the organizational structure and culture of the company for which you work, determine its approach to team development, and whether that approach helped you enhance your relationship skills in the workplace. Ying Tat Leung and Jesse Bockstedt (Dec 2009) divided the analysis of organizational structures into four components - activities and processes, organization, strategy and marketing. Activities and processes involves “actual action within the enterprise; organization are entities and relationships involved in the structure; strategy is anything related to the enterprise’s purpose and objectives; and marketing are entities and relationships relevant to sales and customers”. The culture in a workplace can be analyzed through the prevailing cultural perspective, values and assumptions of the staff (W. Gibb Dyer Jr., 1982). Perspective is the groups’ set of actions in dealing with problem areas; explicit values including accepted approaches are values; and, values reflect the relationships and nature of the staff members. Activities and processes in the company involve operations, under which sales, inventory, credit collection, cash management and marketing fall, and administration, where payroll and procurement is under. Each section is handled by different individuals. Operations people track sales and inventory, keep a steady supply chain and coordinates with credit collection people for payments. A good relationship between operations and administration staff exist. The prevailing culture is working together and having good interpersonal relationships, with good communication lines among staff. Workers up to the supervisor level usually meet after work and discuss work related concerns informally. Existing and potential problem areas topics of discussion within the staff and there is a collective brainstorming of possible solutions and a desire for the company to succeed is fostered. However, this level of solidarity does not include upper management as they are seen as highly authoritative and demanding by the staff. Though they promote staff teamwork and provide strategies, they are generally perceived to be poor in actual marketing and operations work. This creates tension between management and staff. Overall, as the culture of the company staff members promotes camaraderie and collective decision making, combined with continued updating on the progress and plans of each section of the company, the relationships within the workplace is high and supportive of each other up to the supervisor level. There is a good working environment among staff members but there is a gap with the managerial and executive levels as the staff perceives their cultures as individualistic and unrealistic in terms of targets. 3. Evaluate the performance of your selected leader based on his ethical conduct and effective communication to determine if this leader was successful in motivating and empowering you to improve work performance. Explain your answer. Ethics are moral values established and applied within organizations and relates to the notion of right and wrong, good and bad, and how these are accepted and applied. Ethical leadership is the motivation of people according to the sense of morality. Jerry Brown (2003) stated that when leaders are ethical, employees “feel less pressure, observe less misconduct on the job, more satisfied with their organization, and feel more valued as employees”. Effective communication is an essential component within an organization as it is the medium of giving orders to achieve objectives. It is also the avenue for feedback and motivation between staff and management. The best communicators are great listeners and are skilled at reading a person by sensing the moods, dynamics, attitudes, and concerns of his staff. They can read their environment well and have the ability to adapt their messaging to different situations (Mike Myatt, 2012). In the case of the leader in Question 1, he was an effective communicator as he starts his approach by mentoring the staff on how to go about their work and is open to questions. As sales targets gradually increase, the pressure he exerts on staff also mounted. In the long run he insists on his methods and utilizes coercion tactics to do as he directs. This atmosphere erodes communication channels and staff members gradually develop resentment towards the Manager. In addition, while trying to achieve their targets, they see the manager as just directing operations of the company and not providing assistance to them in terms of closing sales. In some instances, the manager could not close sales commitments while other staff can. The skill of the manager was now questioned by the staff. Added to this is the fact that the manager limits overtime pay and commissions from sales. From an ethical view, the staff felt the manager’s demands in a negative way and affect work. Communication avenues regarding staff concerns eroded due to the attitude of the manager. While it is true that he mentored some of the staff on sales concepts, the actual application of the concepts could not be seen from him. Empowerment failed as communication lines from the staff to the manager also failed. A common reason from staff was their fear of losing their job. Overall, due to the inadequacy of ethical standards and dictatorial communication approaches of the manager, he can be considered a failure. 4. Determine three best practices leaders can use to motivate employees and discuss their potential benefits. Patricia Kreitz (2007) defined best practices as “practices most appropriate (and) considered acceptable; techniques or methodologies that, through experience and research…reliably led to desired or optimum results” Several practices stand out which could lead to best results and harmonious dynamics in a company. First is leadership commitment as it presents the vision of commitment communicated by top level management. This is necessary to foster unity and common ideals to achieving company goals among all staff. This is beneficial to a company as everybody works for a single objective. Second is the need for accountability. This practice ensures that all levels would be responsible for actions by linking performance assessment and compensation. It ensures that blame would not be passed on to subordinates and compensation for a job well done is assured. This system of reward and punishment promotes a positive attitude among everybody to work better and attain set goals and objectives. Thirdly, for any organization to attain sustainability, succession planning is necessary. This is the ongoing, strategic process for identifying and developing a talent pool of an organization’s potential future leaders (Kreitz, 2007). By identifying and training future leaders, they would be indoctrinated on the company’s culture and the need to achieve goals. This is also positive reinforcement for jobs well undertaken by recognizing staff abilities and possible elevation to managerial and executive positions in the future. 5. Discuss some challenges leaders encounter when managing diversity and how diversity helps business organizations better compete in global markets. A sensitive topic, diversity is also discussed under civil rights, discrimination, racism, and sexism. Approaches to managing diversity came into focus due to many changes in the dynamics of economy and the work force. One factor is change in global markets where business became intensely competitive at an international level. Another is that the workforce makeup began changing dramatically and became more diverse in terms of nationalities and culture. Workers increasingly acknowledge their cultural origins and promote uniqueness as a race. At first glance, diversity in organizations may be seen as impeding harmonious relations among workers. In a global economy, this diversity could prove beneficial to an organization by combining different cultural work ethics from a diverse pool of workers. It also has an advantage of retaining the best talent as women and other cultural groups is a rich labor pool to tap (White). An organization with diverse cultural backgrounds is a rich source of ideas and strategy development when working in the international economic environment. Strategies and approaches to marketing could be developed by the pool of diverse staff since they have different cultural backgrounds from which experiences, values and norms could be applied when dealing with international and mixed-race clients. The real challenge however, is how to manage diverse organizations and uniting them to a common company value and culture and creating harmony within an organization. 6. Develop an effective business strategy to address the challenges and issues you identified above. In order to address diversity of organizations, top management plays an important role to success. Leaders must show commitment to deal with cultural differences. Diversity must be part of their strategic business objective. Without incorporating this issue, a program cannot fully succeed as it must be linked to business goals. Third, there must be a system of accountability must be put in place to scrutinize compensation to insure fairness. A diverse workforce needs efficient communication channels where leaders insure that there are open avenues for employees to communicate new ideas, grievances, input and feedback. Lastly, a multicultural organization must value diversity, where differences in culture must be celebrated instead of merely tolerated. All employees must respect and support cultural diversity respecting each ones’ culture. References Benincasa, R. (May 28, 2012). 6 Leadership Styles, And When You Should Use Them. Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/1838481/6-leadership-styles-and-when- you-should-use-them Brown, J. (Dec. 31, 2003). Setting the Stage for Modeling Ethical Behavior. Ethics Resource Center. Retrieved from http://www.ethics.org/resource/setting-stage-modeling-ethical- behavior Dyer, W. G. Jr. (Feb 1982). Culture in Organizations: A Case Study and Analysis, Working Paper. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved from www.dspace.mit.edu/.../cultureinorganiz00dyer.pdf Kreitz, P. A. (May 2007). Best Practices for Managing Organizational Diversity. California: Stanford University. Retrieved from www.slac.stanford.edu/cgi.../slac-pub-12499.pdf Leung, Y. T. and Bockstedt, J. (Dec. 2009). Structural Analysis of a Business Enterprise. Retrieved from http://www.sersci.com/ServiceScience/upload/12556582800.pdf Myatt, M. (4 April 2012). 10 Communication Secrets of Great Leaders. Forbes Magazine. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2012/04/04/10-communication- secrets-of-great-leaders/. White, R.D. Jr. (1999). Managing the Diverse Organization: The Imperative for a New Multicultural Paradigm. Public Administration and Management: An Interactive Journal Vol 4 No. 4. 469-493. Read More