Leadership, Teambuilding, and Communication - Case Study Example

Leadership, Teambuilding, and Communication Personal development is important for every employee, which much dependent on the company that one works. Personal development in this case implies both financial, leadership development and motivation. In this regard, I have always admired working for Google Inc. based on its reputation and leadership style that has propelled it to such a status. I strongly believe that by working for this company, I would be able to achieve my goals in life. Google Inc. is an American multinational internet-search company providing internet-based products and services. The company’s profits mainly come from advertisement services. Google inc. was founded by Sergey Brin and Lary Page of the University of Stanford in mid 1990s before going public in 1998 and headquartered in Mountain View, California. The company has witnessed tremendous growth in the past decade and is currently running over one million data service centers worldwide and processing numerous search requests. All the achievements certainly came as a result of the leadership characteristics and style adopted the company leaders (Duthel, 2008). Therefore, there are several leadership traits that I would expect of the leaders of Google Inc. Firstly, I would prefer them to be democratic. A democratic leader in this regard means a leader who allows participation and consensus in decision-making. Through democratic leadership style, the company would be able to engage it employees on matters relating to the company which will certainly be beneficial in propelling the company to prosperity. The benefit of engaging employees in matters relating to the company is because employees of Google are certainly the ones who deal directly with the company’s customers and as such understands their needs and where they want improvements effected. Democratic leaders will, therefore, benefit from the consensus building as far as running of the organization is concerned (Adeniyi, 2007). Secondly, the leader needs to be one with a vision. In this regard, the leaders of Google Inc. should be one who is confident and belief of what he or she is doing, with a clear vision of what he or she wants the company to go. This characteristic is important because such a leader would be able to inspire the employees towards the attainment of such a vision for the prosperity of the organization. Truly, a leader without a clear vision cannot inspire people to follow his or her commands (Adeniyi, 2007). The leader should also be one who inspires his followers rather than command. Research indicates that a leader is marvelous when his followers barely know of his existence when he or she does his work. Therefore, the leader should be one who aims at inspiring their followers to the extent that they do not feel that they are being bossed around. Doing this makes employees feel that they are working out of their own initiative, which is motivational. As such, the leader should also offer encouragements where necessary. This would motivate employees to work even harder leading to greater productivity (Adeniyi, 2007). The leader should also be one who admits mistakes. Many leaders tend to lead by ego by trying to conceal their poor strategy in an attempt to prove that they can be right. Nevertheless, this in most cases lead to company failure. As such, a leader who accepts where mistakes might have been made is good because this gives room for the mistake to be corrected before things get worse. This kind of leadership trait certainly puts the company secure all the time (Fujishin, 2001). The leader of Google should also be one who is ready and willing to delegate some of the responsibility to others. It is no doubt that a leader cannot do all the work himself or herself. Leaders who try to control everything just display their lack of confidence on his followers, which is certainly not good for the employees as far as motivation is concerned. Therefore, by delegating work to followers is essential because it has motivational elements since it makes employees feel that their contribution in the organization is being recognized. As such, the followers will try to work harder in order to be able to get some works delegated to them from the leaders. This also leads to improved productivity from the employees, which is good for the company (Adeniyi, 2007). Finally, the leader should be one who recognizes his followers’ efforts through appreciation. This should be something that is done regularly and not only when things appear good in the organization. Recognizing qualities of other people is good for the company since it motivates employees to put more effort and improve on their weaknesses. Recognition may be done through gifts and other forms of award or appreciating in the presence of others (Adeniyi, 2007). Organizational Stressors The working environment of Google is associated with a number of stressors on both the management and employees. The stressors that the employees undergo in the organization include work demands, role demands, physical demands, and interpersonal demands. For instance, the company being more of technology savvy has many work demands which employees are expected to accomplish within the stipulated time limit. As regards, role demands, the employees of Google sometimes face the pressure in meeting the expectations that are difficult to meet. This is because some employees are given too much work that they are not able to do within a short period of time give. At times, employees face the challenge of not knowing what is expected of them, thereby creating a lot of pressure on the employees. Interpersonal demands are also eminent in the organization especially to new employees who sometimes fail to receive a warm reception from his colleagues or managers who sometimes appear inhuman (Fujishin, 2001). These stressors are likely to have a huge impact in the company. The impacts include high employee turnover. This is because when so much stressors such as work demands, role demand and interpersonal demands come in the way of workers, they tend to get demoralized and opt to quite the company. Secondly, too much stressor may lead to many mistakes from the employee, which may prove costly for the company. In overall, the stressors will not do much good to the company, rather lower the productivity of the employees thereby leading to poor performance of the company (Maddux and Wingfield, 2003). In this regard, it is imperative for Google to formulate proper strategies to address such stressor in the company. This needs to be designed in accordance with each stressor. As regards task demands, the employers should ensure that the job is well structured in a manner that gives the employees the autonomy and leverage to perform their duties in a comfortable manner without necessarily subjecting them to unnecessary pressure. This may include avoiding constant supervision of what employees are doing because this makes them feel uncomfortable in their work (Maddux and Wingfield, 2003). As regards role demand, the management should put on measures that avoid role conflict. This can be achieved by ensuring that the roles are well defined so that every employee is aware of what he or she is doing. The employees should also be given enough time to do their jobs rather than allowing little time as this put them under extreme pressure leading to more mistakes. Indeed this can also be addressed by ensuring that there is enough employees to meet that can meet the workload in the company (Fujishin, 2001). Interpersonal demands can be addressed by creating a friendly working environment to all workers regardless of whether they are new or old. This can certainly be achieved by creating a teamwork culture in the company, where all employees feel the same and valued by everyone in the company (Maddux and Wingfield, 2003). Analyze critical elements for effective group and work team performance to determine the steps you would take to develop an effective team or work group within the company you researched. Google is a company that values a lot teamwork, which has helped, prosper it to where it is today. However, there are certain elements that are critical for team performance. First being diversity of personality and skills. This implies that the group needs to have multiple talents to compensate for others weaknesses. Secondly, the efforts of the team must be directed towards achievement of a defined team goal, which requires harmony and effective communication in the team (Fujishin, 2001). The following are some steps I would take to develop effective team within Google Inc. Company: Firstly, I will make sure that group goals are clear, explained and accepted by all members of the team. Secondly, I would ensure that people clearly know their responsibilitiesso as to avoid possible conflict. Thirdly, I will ensure that a trust is build among members of the team by spending some time with them in order to promote openness. I will also create an environment for team building where members of a team can build trust. This includes creating social events that encourage open communication among members of the team. Finally, I will participate in decision-makings on issues, which rely much on consensus among members of a group (Fujishin, 2001). Identify potential sources of conflict within the group or work team. Evaluate the five (5) conflict management styles (e.g., competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding, accommodating) and explain which style of conflict management is most appropriate for the potential sources of conflict described above. There are a number of potential sources of conflict within a group such as personality differences, lack of consensus and trust, lack of shared goals, values, styles, and poor communication (Fujishin, 2001). The conflict can, however, be managed to use different styles namely competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. These are explained hereunder: Competing is a win-lose conflict resolution where one party act strongly without corporating to achieve his goals Collaborating is a style where the conflicting parties pair together to accomplish their goals. Compromising a loose-loose conflict management style where there no party achieves what they need. Avoiding is a strategy where one party to the conflict avoids the matter creating conflict. Accommodating is when a party to the conflict accepts to cooperate fully regardless of whether it works against the party. As far as these potential conflicts are concerned, Collaborating will be the most appropriate management style to adopt. This is because it aims at bringing the conflicting parties together for a common objective. It would also be preferred because it is directed towards a win-win situation (Maddux and Wingfield, 2003). Potential barriers to communication and how the barriers may impact group and work team performance The potential barrier to communication in a team may emanate from differences in perceptions and languages in a group, lack of attention, information overload, too much noise, and time pressures (Maddux and Wingfield, 2003). The communication barriers highlighted may affect hugely the performance of a team in that the team will not be able to understand each other making work difficult. This will certainly lead to conflicts in the team thereby resulting in a collapse of the team. When the team collapses, it means work cannot continue thereby affecting production (Maddux and Wingfield, 2003). Recommendations for addressing the barriers Therefore, to address the problem of communication barrier, it would be imperative for the management to consider forming groups by factoring in language differences. This involves paring those who understand each other together. With regard to barriers created by noise, the company should consider reducing the noise level to an acceptable limit that does not cause disturbance. Other strategy that may be employed by the company is by reducing information overload. References Adeniyi, M.A. (2007). Effective leadership management: An integration of styles, skills & character for today CEOS. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse. Duthel, H. (2008). Google Inc. Services - Google Tools - What is Google? New York, NY: Lulu.com. Fujishin, R. (2001). Creating effective groups: the art of small group communication. Lanham, ML: Rowman & Littlefield. Maddux, R.B., & Wingfield, B. (2003). Team building: an exercise in leadership (4th ed.). New York, NY: Cengage Learning. Read More