Leadership Assessment and Strategy - Case Study Example

Leadership Assessment Mayra Perez Prof. Indy James Bus302 3 March The chosen senior executive I chose is Mr. Fox, my family’s close friend and he is currently the manager of a specific branch of a company XYZ (not the real name of the company to protect its identity). Mr. Fox has been the manager in the company for several years and now he aims for expansion of his branch to the neighboring cities right from where he first established the firm’s identity and its product brands. The said manager has a significant contribution to the company because of his sales-oriented approach in dealing things. He has considerable background in sales, so it is expected that he must have substantial knowledge on how to handle his personnel, particularly those who are in the marketing and sales department. In this paper, An introduction of the leadership style of Mr. Fox and his performance as a leader is introduced. However, prior to that, Let us first set our discourse on the firm’s organizational culture and structure. The Firm’s Organizational Culture and Structure The organization adheres to teamwork, respect and innovation. For this matter, everyone is expected to work together as a team, considers one’s idea and gives it a considerable value, and pursues more essential knowledge to create a significant contribution to the organization’s prevailing goal for change. In particular, the entire organization has to follow a highly decentralized approach, allowing the branch of Mr. Fox to create its own best practices for benchmarking later on. In fact, most of Mr. Fox’s moves to increase sales are continuously recognized at the main branch, allowing him to receive compliments more than the other managers from other respective branches. This positive feedback has motivated Mr. Fox to always try something new and make a difference to the point that there are some required instructions at the main office that he would usually overlook or would not pay attention to but create and facilitate his own instead. This usually would produce conflict especially within the accounting and HR department, which are also currently aligning their policies, procedures and structures with the main office. Some personnel are already fed up with this usual situation leading to the point that a number of them have announced their resignation. As a result, although the sales department might be relatively performing well, the support group from the accounting department and the human resource would usually have conflict with the actual making of sales due to some policies and procedures that would not be met along the way. Mr. Fox is, therefore, very focused on making sales rather than working as a team with the other departments, which essentially breaks the organizational culture concerning teamwork that he must suppose to implement for his covered branch and the future branches under his coverage. Team development is, therefore, very poor while Fox is not fully implementing the entire essence linked up with the organizational culture. In the presence of a highly decentralized approach, Fox is not creating a positive output when it comes to successful implementation of teamwork. Mr. Fox’s Leadership Style Due to his strong orientation and background in sales, Fox ends up too narrowly focused on the marketing department and most particularly on making sales. A good leadership develops followers and not just mere subordinates (Lussier & Achua, 2009). Unfortunately, Fox has not come to this level yet. When he initiates a meeting, there would be usually another meeting among his subordinates after that, but that occurs when he is already out of their sight. Perhaps, Fox is trying to become more of a situational leader because he is motivated to influence the behavior of the sales department using a reward system or incentive scheme, and is convinced to do so the moment he saw the positive response of the team. In situational leadership, leaders are able to identify the behavior of the team and its actual response, which are important concerns that would also help determine their actual behavior (Banhegyi, 2007). However, Fox is not entirely seeing the whole point of view because he overlooks the fact that there are important considerations he needs to understand, which must concern the other working departments in his branch. He totally failed to understand their responses. He even did not acquire more of their existing needs. In leadership, good leaders must be able to stand sensitive to the needs of the entire team in order to create ways that could sustain their influence on the team members (Campbell & Samiec, 2005). Although Fox might be sensitive to the needs of the sales department, on the other hand, he also fails to identify the prevailing needs in the back office system, i.e., the other departments. Fox failed to realize the fact based on Herzbeg’s motivators and hygiene factors about the other probable cause of either dissatisfaction or satisfaction of the human resource in an organization. According to Herzberg’s motivators and hygiene factors, there are some issues in an organization that can either lead to complete dissatisfaction or satisfaction within the human resource (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2010). These issues are what Fox needs to consider, by which the key is to take time to ponder on his existing conflict with the other departments. Mr. Fox’s ethical conduct and communication Mr. Fox is clearly not adhering to the company’s prevailing core values that are the remarkable bases of the right and appropriate actions they need to implement within the firm. He is not adhering to teamwork in particular, which is a very fundamental core value that every employee should learn to embrace while working in the firm XYZ. He even failed to communicate the right way, as depicted on how the supporting departments outside of the sales department create complaints and vagueness concerning the way he implements his decision for making sales. This means that he was not able to communicate well all the linked courses of actions he has to implement under his administration or leadership. Based on this observation, one could therefore consider the point that Mr. Fox is not doing the right thing by not being able to stick on his firm’s standard for teamwork and even the right drive of a good leader. Our ultimate measure of what is right in this case should be the existing core values within the company by which every employee should not fail to consider the right way. Best Practices for Motivating Employees Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Herzberg’s motivators and hygiene factors, and Adam’s equity theory, knowing the needs of individuals is a fundamental move to understand the associated actions that could motivate them (Zastrow & Kirst-Ashman, 2010; Lucey, 2004; Daft, Kendrick & Vershinina, 2010). In other words, based on this theory, evaluating the needs of the human resource could be a corresponding best move to motivate employees. Understanding the needs of the human resource could pave the way for leaders to create competitive moves that could influence the team to produce a maximum expected positive output. A constant communication input such as meeting and reporting activities is another best move to motivate the employees. This could potentially create a way to know what they think or whether they understand their needs that are supposed to determine the actual behavior of the leader. Workshop activities or team building could also help guarantee the point of evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the team. These should suppose to give the leaders meaningful information concerning how they would pursue establishing the team with a maximum possible output. Managing Diversity and Its Challenges In the case of Fox, the organization’s structure and his team’s response, managing diversity has become complex. The following are potential challenges leaders encounter when managing diversity. The challenges include leadership skills, conflicts among employee groups, comfort zone, costs and frustration of employees (De Anca & Vega, 2006). Just like Fox, some leaders have difficulty in understanding the existing conflicts within the organization because of their lack of appropriate leadership skills. Based on the stated case, the policies created at the main office have eventually created conflicts among employee groups. People also tend to go along with those they are comfortable with, which becomes a major challenge in managing diversity. At some point, managing diversity may be linked up with financial and marketplace pressures. Frustration may arise for as long as employees will not be able to understand the fact that not everyone, for instance, could be a manager. Everyone has a specific role to play. In the global market, managing diversity is very important. The good thing about diversity especially in the global market is to acquire diverse talents in the workplace that could lead to the competitive advantage of an organization (Glicken & Robinson, 2013). In addition, generally it could lead to cost savings, attract and retain talents, and drive business growth (Williams, Champion, & Hall, 2011). Effective Business Strategy If we base it on the above discussion, the development of leadership skills is very essential in order to successfully manage the entire team or organization. As stated, the challenges linked up with managing diversity might at some point include leadership skills, conflict among employee groups, comfort zone, costs and frustration of employees. At the bottom line, all these concerns boil down to human resource management. For this reason, it is essential for the entire organization to undergo effective training programs especially during the hiring process. During the varying stages in hiring, an organization should be able to introduce essential training programs that will facilitate the development of certain values within an individual, which are also in line with the prevailing culture of the firm. This could potentially reduce the associated conflicts because the organization would be making it clear among individuals beforehand what are the expected things they should perform based on the prevailing culture and set standards. In addition, this could stand as a centralized approach of ensuring diversity, but on the other side of it, there is effective allocation of talents and skills for the competitive advantage of the firm. This could only be realized to the full if every team member receives the right training that would make them flexible enough to adjust and cope with change. References Banhegyi, S. (2007). Fresh perspective: Management. CapeTown: Pearson South Africa. Campbell, S., & Samiec, E. (2005). 5-d leadership: Key dimensions for leading in the real world. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing. De Anca, C., & Vega, A. V. (2006). Managing diversity in the global organization: Creating new business values. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Daft, R. L., Kendrick, M., & Vershinina, N. (2010). Management. Hampshire: Cengage Learning EMEA. Glicken, M. D., & Robinson, B. (2013). Treating worker dissatisfaction during economic change. Waltham, MA: Academic Press. Lucey, T. (2004). Management information system. London: Cengage Learning EMEA. Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2009). Leadership: Theory, application & skill development (4th ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage Learning. Williams, C., Champion, T., & Hall, I. (2011). MGMT. Ontario: Cengage Learning. Zastrow, C., & Kirst-Ashman, K. K. (2010). Understanding human behavior and the social environment (8th ed.). Belmont: Cengage Learning. Read More