Managing Challenges in Multicultural Teams - Term Paper Example

? The Functions of Management Introduction Supervisors have an integral role in contemporary organizations, which is to ensurethat organizations meet their set goals. The supervisors accomplish five fundamental management roles, including planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. In order for supervisors to accomplish their roles effectively, they need to possess skills like decision-making and creativity that would harness their performance. Organizations attain success if managers, supervisors and employees craft a positive relation towards a common organizational goal. This can be promoted through instructive and motivating organizational leadership. The functions of management are discussed, and the traits of effective managers in relation to the management functions. Finally, the relations between managers, supervisors and employees are evaluated and the challenges of a multicultural workforce presented. The Role of a Supervisor in a Typical Organization Supervisors or managers are important in management of teams and processes within an organization. They help in management and coordination of the organization, usually characterized as a pyramid. The supervisors help in achieving essential objectives and goals within the organization through communicating with each other at various levels within the organizational management hierarchy (Cassidy, Kreitner, & Kreitner, 2010). Supervisors are committed to grooming organizational personnel for success. Their roles entail the functional duties coupled with a variety of responsibilities. Organizational supervisors train their workers on new information and competencies. Workers ought to be prepared well to ensure they are successful in their duties, and this can be necessitated through supervisors’ training and orientation. The process of training is continual and highlighted for new personnel as well as other workers. Collectively, the supervisors have a responsibility of ensuring that organizational personnel benefit from intermittent professional development opportunities and training (Cassidy, Kreitner, & Kreitner, 2010). Supervisors evaluate objectives, goals and future organizational needs to enable them prepare plans, which offer the required resources and action items for the organization to realize success. The supervisors help in strategic planning, implementation and execution of organizational plans. In addition, supervisors prepare schedules for appropriate staffing and availability of resources to satisfy the needs of customers and production. They are responsible for arranging human, informational and material resource productivity. They are tasked with maximizing organizational efficiency through scheduling inventories, equipment and facilities. This ensures that quality in production of goods and offering of services is attained (Cassidy, Kreitner, & Kreitner, 2010). Managers are responsible for inspiring and motivating workers to work appropriately and accomplish common organizational goals. The teams in organizations ought to work collectively, and it is the responsibility of the supervisors to recognize the uniqueness of every employee, establish various incentives and rewards to motivate them (Cassidy, Kreitner, & Kreitner, 2010). Three Traits of an Effective Manager Effective managers need to have entrepreneurial thinking and creativity qualities. Contemporary organizations are continually changing, and there is need for the managers to possess creativity and entrepreneurial skills to work effectively in such environments. Supervisors with entrepreneurial traits perform their responsibilities effectively because they adapt swiftly and resolve organizational problems creatively. Supervisors are tasked with maximizing organizational efficiency. This can be best achieved if supervisors are entrepreneurial and creative because such traits would help them to develop new ideas to improve productivity and enhance quality besides increasing profit margins and expanding on the organizational market share. Creativity helps supervisors to try out new strategies and changes in an organization (Marquis & Huston, 2009). Supervisors have a duty to make important strategic decisions within the organization; therefore, they require decision-making skills to help accomplish such duties effectively. Organizational roles of supervisors include making routines or complex decisions, which may have long-term as well as short-term effects on the success of the firm. In order for supervisors to make such decisions effectively, they require the capacity to collect information, validate the facts, categorize the outcomes, analyze the data and focus on the goals and objectives. The organizational decisions made by the supervisors ought to be ethical and in the best interest of the organization and the society at large (Sank, 1974). Supervisors or managers are an important part in management of teams and processes within an organization and to achieve this responsibility effectively, they require team-building and leadership skills. The organizational teams are very important part of success in modern organizations. Leadership and team-building skills assist supervisors to recruit, train and motivate employees toward attaining a common organizational goal. To achieve such common organizational objectives requires that personnel are organized into effective teams, which can be inspired and motivated by managers (Sharma, 2009). How the Traits of an Effective Manager Fit the Four Functions of Management Planning as a management function encompasses determining the organizational goals, objectives and philosophies. Moreover, planning entails supervisors developing policies, rules and objectives that help the organization to realize its success. Organizational planning accomplished by the supervisors can either be in short or long term (Marquis & Huston, 2009). Planning of organizational objectives, policies, procedures and rules among others require decision-making skills because routines require complex or simple decisions with short or long effects. Effective decisions can be arrived at through appropriate data gathered and analyzed as per the organizational goals. Decision-making skills are a pre-requisite for gathering information, validating the facts, identifying the outcomes and analyzing the data to meet the goals required (Tewari & Sharma, 2011). Organizing in management entails dividing roles and responsibilities to suitable duties, such as posts, work distribution or delegation of authority to employees for effective execution. Organizational planning is important for efficiency of businesses. The activities essential for accomplishment of set goals are performed with activity duplications and repetitions avoided. The operating costs of such organizations may be maintained at minimum and profit margins maximized (Jayarum & Kotwani, 2011). Team-building and leadership skills help supervisors accomplish organizational planning through identifying the unique skills and capabilities of employees and harnessing them into effective outcomes focusing on organizational goals. Such skills enable supervisors to establish plans that suit the skills and various employee teams. Leadership skills would help the supervisors and managers to work effectively within the organizational structure and understand the employees appropriately using power and authority. Through controlling, supervisors accomplish responsibilities, including reviewing of employee performances according to the target goals and plans within the organization. This would ensure the objectives realized within the organization meet the pre-determined objectives. Control as a function of management ensures that supervisors help organizations by making necessary decisions and changes in the policies when needed. Creativity and entrepreneurial traits would be beneficial to the supervisors such that they would know when to make an appropriate change to help in realizing the preplanned organizational objectives and goals (Dixon, 2002). Supervisors have a duty and a responsibility to guide and lead the subordinates to ensure that they perform their functions in a better way. This can be accomplished through inspiration and motivation so that the workers accomplish their duties with enthusiasm, zeal and confidence. Directing is fundamental for organizational personnel to realize their outcomes effectively. Skills in team-building and leadership help supervisors to recruit, train and motivate their staff appropriately in working toward the ultimate objective of an organization. Supervisors are leaders who need to motivate and inspire their teams to accomplish the goals and objectives required in an organization (Sank, 1974). The Relationship between Managers, Supervisors and Employees, and Its Contributions toward Organizational Success Organizational employees, their supervisors and managers all work collectively toward a common organizational goal. This is accomplished through individual employee goals, departmental and the overall business goals. Each an employee has a responsibility within the organization that contributes to the ultimate success or achievement of the venture or its demise. The departments within the organization, which are made up of individual workers also have customized goals to meet the common goal of the organization. All the organizational stakeholders should work together in understanding their responsibilities and duties related to the success of the organization. Subsequently, the success of an organization require that the employees, managers and supervisors all establish appropriate, fruitful and positive relations through coordinating and balancing the requirements of each individual and the business needs (Sharma, 2009). The structure of an organization is characterized as pyramids with the supervisors, managers and employees relating with each other at various management levels. Organizational managers are interdependent, and they need to communicate with each other effectively to focus and realize fundamental organizational goals and objectives. The managers develop strategic plans; make significant operational and financial decisions, which are implemented by supervisors (Cassidy, Kreitner, & Kreitner, 2010). After casting of the strategic missions and visions of the organization by the managers, the supervisors translate those strategies into operational plans and plan on how the employees would accomplish them. The supervisors are essential for daily operations and organizational success. They always have regular contact with employees, which are essential for the successful implementation of the organizational vision and missions (Sharma, 2009). The Importance of Finding the Right Employee and the Challenges Supervisors Face In a Multicultural Society A multicultural society has employees with several differences, implying that the supervisors would have to ensure that despite the different work ethics of these employees they work effectively towards realizing the common organizational goal. Accomplish common organizational goals and objectives may be tasking for the supervisors managing a multicultural workforce because their success parameters, such as measure of quality, may differ. The strategies for training and developing such employees may differ, calling for development of a complex and inclusive program that would ensure that the goals are all achieved (Behfar, Kern, & Brett, 2006). The work performance expectations for a multicultural workforce differ, and this could be a challenge to the supervisors. Integrating diversity into the organizational corporate culture is challenging because of the challenge of leveraging individual employee strengths and talents to develop a more innovative, creative and effective workforce. If an organization, through its supervisors, find the right employees and integrate them appropriately into the organizational structure, such employees can help the organization achieve and surpass its goals because of enhanced energy and creativity from the employees. A workforce with the right kind of employees would be essential because it would be easier for the supervisors to offer right balance of structure and independence to the employees while leading them toward a common organizational goal. Having the right employees, supervisors can balance the coordination of employee efforts, the common goals and hierarchy of authority. Dividing labor for right employees would ensure that the organization accomplish its goals effectively. Having the right employees within an organization is significant because it would provide an appropriate opportunity to access and make use of the strengths of each individual effectively. The problems of coordination among the appropriate workforce would be minimized (Behfar, Kern, & Brett, 2006). Conclusion Supervisors plan activities, train employees, schedule events and motivate employees to work toward achieving the common organizational goals. Effective managers have among other traits decision-making, leadership and team-building as well as entrepreneurial and creativity skills, which help them to perform their functions effectively. The managers, supervisors and employees in an organization are related through organizational structure in which the common goals of an organization are enforced at various organizational levels. Right employees within an organization help it to function effectively and attain its goals. Nevertheless, multicultural workforce presents the supervisors with a challenging workforce to manage. If managed properly, diverse workforce is essential for the success of an organization. References Behfar, K., Kern, M., & Brett, J. (2006). Managing Challenges in Multicultural Teams. Research on Managing Groups and Teams, 9, 233-262. Cassidy, C., Kreitner, B., & Kreitner, R. (2010). Supervision: Setting People Up for Success. Mason, OH : South-Western Cengage Learning. Dixon, R. (2002). The Management Task. New York: Routledge. Jayarum, R., & Kotwani, N. R. (2011). Industrial Economics and Telecommunication Regulations. New Delhi: PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Marquis, B. L., & Huston, C. J. (2009). Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Nursing: Theory and Application. Philadelphia : Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Sank, L. I. (1974). Effective And Ineffective Managerial Traits Obtained As Naturalistic Descriptions From Executive Members Of A Super-Corporation. Personnel Psychology, 27 (3), 423-434. Sharma, S. K. (2009). Handbook of HRM Practices: Management Policies and Practices. New Delhi: Global India Publications. Tewari, R., & Sharma, R. (2011). Managerial Skills for Managers in the 21st Century. 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