Leadership Assessment: Instruction - Assignment Example

Assignment 2: Leadership Assessment (instruction) Assignment 2: Leadership Assessment (instruction Analyze the leadership style(s) of a senior executive (CEO, CFO, COO, Director, etc.) in your current or previous organization who made a positive or negative impact on you. (Use references) Organizational leaders are expected to create realistic visions for their companies and the employees they guide, but these visions often have characteristics or properties that differ. There is, therefore, the realization that there is no one best leadership style to guide employees toward accomplishing organizational goals (Laming 2004). However the style that is thought to be most effective when used by a senior executive is the one that experts refer to as transformational leadership. This type of leadership combines characteristics that are exhibited in many different styles of leadership. Some of its characteristics and its relationship with other different styles include: Leaders who practice this style of leadership have integrity. The leader in this case sets goals, establishes benchmarks against which the results are to be measured and provides procedures to be followed when undertaking the task. The procedures must be followed and a reward and punishment system is established for achievement of the goals. They inspire their followers with a sense of shared vision of the future of the organization. The leader instills a sense of ownership of the task on the followers. Therefore the followers feel proud of positive outcome and take responsibility for anything that may go wrong when undertaking the task. They set clear goals and motivate their followers towards achieving them. The goals set are in line with the overall objectives of the organization and since the followers have a sense of ownership of these goals, they work towards achieving them. They manage delivery of the task they undertake to perform. This mirrors the style of leadership experts call task oriented leadership. In this style, the task at hand is the driving force and the leader is usually keen on deadlines. They communicate well with their teams. This communication includes both vertical and horizontal which involves followers and superiors, and peers respectively. This mirrors the style referred to as democratic form of leadership where communication channels are open since the leader depends on the feedback from his followers in making various decisions. This style of leadership can make a positive impact on the followers since the open channels of communication allow the followers to seek clarifications from the leader. According to Laming (2004), the sense of ownership of decisions instilled in the followers boost their confidence, an aspect that is key in leadership. 2. Analyze the organizational structure and culture of the company for which you would like to work to determine its approach to team development, and whether that approach helped to enhance your relationship skills in the workplace. (Choose a bank and do not use references) The ideal organizational structure for a banking institution is the one experts call horizontal or flat structure. It is characterized by few intervening levels between management and staff and fairly decentralized decision making structures. This kind of organizational structure is advantageous for the following reasons: It promotes employee involvement through a decentralized decision-making process. Fast communication between the employees and management. A sense of responsibility is instilled in the employees since they tend to own the decisions. Customer queries are addressed faster due to the sense of responsibility exhibited by the employees. It improves the personal relationship between managers and employees. This structure helps in developing teams in organizations since everyone takes part in decision making and owns the outcome of such decisions. It also enhances relationship skills since the interaction between staff members is quite often. However, some decisions such as financial decisions must be centralized for effective controlling and reporting. 3. Evaluate the performance of your selected leader based on his or her ethical conduct and effective communication to determine if this leader was successful in motivating and empowering you to improve on your work performance. Explain your answer. (talk about a good business 201 professor that you had and who also run a successful company and do not use references) The United Nations Guidelines for Evaluation highlights the following aspects of ethics in performance evaluation: Responsible use of authority. Ensuring credibility Responsible use of resources. Impartiality. Conflict of interest. Accountability. Using a business professor who also runs a successful private company as an example, we can evaluate his performance as a professor based on the above aspects. The professor has some authority over his students and may decide when to come to class or not. Proper use of such authority influences how the students would evaluate the performance of the professor. At some point, the company may make donations to various institutions of learning as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility. The distribution of such donations may have an impact on the professor’s perceived impartiality and hence his overall performance. If the professor denies responsibility for any negative outcome either at the university or in his company, then his accountability is affected and hence his performance rating. 4. Determine three (3) best practices organizational leaders can use to motivate employees and discuss their potential benefits. (use references) Motivation is the psychological feature that arouses a person to action towards a desired goal (Laming, 2004). Though different people are motivated by different things, a manger can initiate the following practices to motivate his employees: Providing meaningful and challenging work: People feel proud when they realize that the work they are performing is important to the overall objective of the organization. They generally tend to feel a sense of achievement, responsibility, enjoyment and recognition in whatever task they are performing. Once an employee realizes that his/her work is meaningful to the organization, he/she develops the inner drive to continue performing the task. This technique is anchored by Frederick Herzbergs two-factor theory. Setting clear goals and measuring performance: Goals give employees a sense of direction. The efficiency of a goal is affected by three features: proximity, difficulty and specificity. Goals should not be too easy or too difficult to achieve. People tend to feel that there is a substantial probability that they will succeed in attaining their specific goals (Griffin, 2011). The clearer the goals are, the more focused the employees will be when performing their respective tasks towards attaining the overall objectives of the organization. Measuring performance of employees from time to time gives them a hint of how much more effort they need put into their different tasks in order to achieve the overall organizational goal. Give direct supportive feedback: Every employee would like to know what his boss feels about his performance. Feedback needs to be timely and presented in such a way that the individual is clear on what efforts he needs to put in order to accomplish his goals. Designing people’s roles so that they can use their own strengths: When people use their own strengths in performing their tasks, they feel effective and internally motivated towards achieving their goals. Allowing people to have a choice of how the task is to be done: Once the manager has set goals, he can leave the employees to apply their own schedules of performing the work as long as the goal is attained. This way, the employee feels the internal burden to prove to the manager that his schedule can work, and reduces the need for close supervision, which a negative motivation. 5. Discuss some of the challenges leaders encounter when managing diversity and how diversity helps business organizations better compete in global markets. (use references) According Griffin (2011), diversity refers the variety of experiences and perspectives which arise from differences in race, culture, religion, mental or physical abilities, heritage, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and other characteristics. In organizational life, diversity is categorized into three: structural diversity based on different tasks performed by employees of the organization, business diversity based on markets, products and services, and workforce diversity based on different types of employees. When managing diversity in an organization, managers are faced with various challenges which can be categorized into two: interpersonal challenges and organizational challenges. Interpersonal challenges: These arise due to differences within the workforce. These challenges are usually manifested in social identities such demographic characteristics like gender, occupational differences and membership to different clubs and societies. When these differences are allowed to arise within a group, then the performance of the group is affected and may lead to members’ dissatisfaction, employee turn over and failure to implement ideas. Organizational challenges These arise when the organization alienates some members of the larger society from the reach of its resources e.g. hiring people who only exhibit specific characteristics to handle certain tasks. This makes the people who are left out feel discriminated against. This can lead to sabotage and hence poor performance of the entire organization. In as much as diversity is a challenge to the organization, it is very useful if well managed. It increases the opportunity for creativity and quality of the product of group work. By getting ideas from diverse categories of people, the quality of the ides is seen to improve and hence improve the output of group works. 6. Develop an effective business strategy to address the challenges and issues you have identified above. In order to address the challenges brought by diversity in an organization, the following three points can be used. Planning and fully implementing a diversity plan: Plan to have people of diverse backgrounds and to have an out of office session. In this case they may have a weekend retreat. Have these people perform the same tasks and have them assess the strengths of each other. By participating in these activities, these people will learn that each of them have different strong points and will appreciate them for that. Make these people understand the ease with which tasks would be performed if their diverse strengths were synergized. Education: It is important that the management conduct education on conflict resolution skills. This ensures that disagreements are addressed before their effects badly hit the organization. Communication: It is important that the management communicate to the employees anti discrimination rules. Communication channels should be opened so that every member of the organization airs out his/her dissatisfaction before it degenerates to hate. References Griffin, R. (2011). Management. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning. Holt, M (2012).Key Tools to Manage Workplace Diversity. Retrieved on December 2, 2012 from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/key-tools-manage-workplace-diversity-3027.html Laming, D. (2004). Understanding Motivation: What makes People Tick? Australia: Blackwell Publishing. Mor, B. & Michal, E. (2000). “Beyond Affirmative Action: Toward a Model of Diversity and Organizational Inclusion”. Administration in Social Work, 23(3-4); 47-68. Ospina, S. (2006). Managing Diversity in Civil Service: A Conceptual Framework for Public Organizations. Retrieved on December 2, 2012 from http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/un/unpan002313.pdf Read More