Leadership, Teambuilding, Communication and Organizational Stressors - Assignment Example

Company I would like to work: Apple Inc. Q1. Create profile of ideal leader Answer The leaders are individuals who are capable of motivating others towards common goal. In the current time of high competition, the leader needs to provide workers with motivated goals and sense of high achievement. Hence, he should be endowed with characteristics like visionary, strong commitment to the goals and objectives of the organization and have a positive attitude and strong ethical and moral consideration (McShane, 2003).

He should also have effective communication skills and be able to empower his followers so that are able to make decision based on informed choices. Moreover, he helps inculcate mutual respect and confidence so that they can work in multicultural environment with higher degree of commitment. He should have participatory style of leadership and encourage collective decision making. This type of leadership uses effective communication to promote shared goals and develop common vision so that workforce is equipped with higher motivation to adapt to environmental changes.

This type of leaders inspires higher achievement by providing workers with constant learning environment to improve and improvise their skill to meet the challenges of time (Kouzes & Posner, 2007). They learn to interact with other without racial or cultural biases. The empowered workforce is looked upon as important resource that can be tapped to improve and improvise the performance of the organization in the highly competitive environment of global business. They are encouraged to build relationship based on trust and mutual respect so that not only conflicts are resolved amicably but shared goals constantly motivates them for higher achievement resulting in improved organizational productivity. Q2. Analyze the organizational stressors Answer The major organizational stressors are work demand, constantly changing external environment and multicultural environment.

The company works in an environment of intense inter-firm rivalry. Innovation and dynamic strategies were therefore hugely critical issues within the firm. The recessive trend and market competition needs to be met with creative input on a regular basis. Moreover, the rapid globalization and expansion were important issues that had created a workforce with workers coming from different race, color, culture and nationality. These were vital organizational stressors that adverse impact on the organization performance.

Apple Inc is a leadership company in the field of technology and therefore needs to be driven by high sense of innovation and research. The work demand is intense. Success of new products fundamentally relies on timeliness, quality and competitive pricing. Slater and Narver (1995) strongly assert that demands of NPD is met when firms constantly acquire, process and disseminate critical knowledge about market, new technologies and business processes and products. Thus, innovation and research needs to be backed by operational efficiency, timeliness and quality.

Moreover promoting cross cultural understanding would help develop mutual respect with would reduce workplace stress. The learning environment of the firm is hugely facilitating and helps workers to constantly upgrade their knowledge and skills to meet the environmental challenges. Q3. Analyze critical elements of effective teamwork and group Answer Effective teamwork is one of the vital aspects of organizational performance that promotes common goals and shared responsibilities for optimal productive outcome.

According to Argote (1999) team learning thrives on collective acquisition, creation and sharing of knowledge. The team leader’s effectiveness and dynamic personality is important factor that motivates and guides team members to work together and resolve their differences so that targets could be achieved timely and efficiently. Team learning gets significant boost through training and feedback that is backed by technology. Most importantly, the collaborative approach, cross cultural understanding and shared responsibilities help to overcome workplace barriers.

Group dynamics on the other hand, play key role in ensuring smooth operation of the firm. Workplace diversity has emerged as important part of organizational structure and culture where building constructive relationship becomes highly pertinent issue. They are characterized by unique code of behaviour where value congruity between personal value and perceived value considerably influences acceptance of workers in the group (Hartley, 1960). The group dynamics are built over a time and therefore new workers often find themselves alienated unless they are ready to adopt group characteristics. Q4. Identify potential sources of conflicts Answer In the current environment of pluralistic society and advancing technology, the potential sources of conflicts are interpersonal rivalry, misunderstood values and lack of understanding amongst the workers, externalities in terms of market competition, new skills, asymmetrical knowledge, tacit knowledge etc.

To cope with the conflicts, various conflict management styles greatly help in resolving them and help create facilitating work environment. The major styles are: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodation. Competing on competencies is important for organizations to gain competitive advantage. The organizational leadership therefore promotes learning environment for workforce so that they are able to gain new skills and strengthen their core competency for achieving common goals.

To achieve targets, workers need to collaborate. The managerial leadership therefore encourages shared goals and collective decisions by developing cross cultural understanding and inculcating mutual respect. Thus, workforce is more ready to collaborate and evolve new perspectives on issue which also empowers them. The effective communication is therefore important element that significantly contributes towards collaborative approach While compromising on principle is not always possible but changing work paradigms necessitate inculcating new values that rely on understanding the issues and identifying core problems so that compromises are possible.

Moreover, it promotes flexible approach that is vital in current environment of constantly changing social values. One needs to be better prepared for changes and accept them to move forward for personal and professional growth. Avoidance has increasingly emerged as critical factor within organization that adversely impacts performance. In the fast transforming environment, changes often inculcate insecurity which leads to avoidance and resistance to change (Hitt et al., 2005). Effective communication helps to understand changes and prompts people to acquire new skills to cope with it.

It reduces job related insecurity and helps them to adapt to the changes. Accommodating nature is highly desirable attribute that helps people to adapt easily to changes. People who are flexible and open to new ideas thrive on changes and look for new opportunities of growth in them. The conflict management style that promotes critical thinking enables its workforce to strive for higher achievement leading to improved performance outcome. Q5. Determine potential barrier to communication Answer The various barriers to communication are damaging to organizational effectiveness and lead to low performance.

Identification of barriers is therefore important for improving performance. In the current times, the changing societal values and increasing pluralistic society, lack of cross cultural values is probably the major barrier to communication in organizational setting. In the highly competitive business environment, forging bonds and developing fruitful relationship becomes vital issue that helps to achieve shared goals. The understanding of cross cultural values and promoting mutual respect facilitates linkages that are designed to gain leverage.

It strengthens interpersonal relationships and inculcates confidence. Moreover, it also empowers individual with new knowledge that can be judiciously exploited for improved performance and higher productivity of the organization. Reference Argote, L. (1999). Organizational Learning: Creating, retaining and transferring Knowledge. Norwell MA: Kluwer Academic. Hartley, R E. (1960) Relationship between perceived values and acceptance of new reference group. J Social Psychology, 51, 349-58. Hitt, Michael A., et al. (2005).

Organizational Behaviour: A Strategic Approach. NY: John Wiley & Sons. Kouzes, James M and Posner, Barry Z. (2007). The Leadership Challenge. 4th Ed. Jossey Bass publishers. Slater, S. and Narver, J.C. (1995). Market orientation and the learning organization. Journal of Marketing, 5(3), 63–74.