Communication Development and Leadership - ABC Company - Case Study Example

Running Header: Group management Your name: Course name: Professors’ name: Date Client brief The workplace group is this case involves people from the technical department from ABC Company tasked with the mandate to ensure that there is adequate network coverage in Michigan surroundings covered by the company’s WiMax connectivity. The team consists of people with different technical background but all work towards the realization of the organizational goals. The team consist of hands-on personnel, radio planning technicians, network designers, network monitoring group and network implementers. The entire team work in support of each other in order to ensure that the network infrastructure is completed as planned and that it works with the expected efficiency with minimal or no downtime. The organization plans to increase coverage within Michigan and other areas in order to increases its clientele base within a relative short time. The ABC Company has been in business for about 3 years and it consist of different departments such as the marketing and sales team, customer support, the human resource, the finance department, the logistic and supplies, the technical department and the subordinate staff. In this case, the workplace group to be analysed is the technical team mandated the task of implementation of network requirements for the large clientele base within the region. Over the past 3 years since its formation, the ABC Company provides WiMax services in other parts of the U.S. such as the Hammond, IN and Valparaiso, IN. The technical department has worked as a group and hence achieved the milestones that it has achieved so far. The network coverage in Hammond, IN and Valparaiso, IN meet the standards and even maintain a high uptime hours because of the team’s effort to create protection of its backbone network as well as redundancy of the radio transmitters in the region coupled with good radio planning which ensures 3600 transmitter coverage even in high-rise places. The team success in these two regions was not achieved without some challenges. Most team members were still new to each other, communication was therefore a challenge, other teams were more active than others and they felt that other teams were letting them down during the network implementation process. The current issues that the team is facing are still the same but with a few more issues surfacing in the course of the implementation. The first issue is unclear leadership of the team. This is mainly because different sectors of the technical department have their separate managers and hence no overall management to spearhead the entire team. Secondly communication is wanting, the team communication protocol is not working as expected and hence the tensions and the blame going on within the team. Thirdly, the role of individuals and the role of the entire team are not well defined and hence the many issues that develop in the process of the project implementation. The identified issues in ABC technical team should therefore be addressed by consultants in order to ease the implementation process. Consultant report Changes needed to improve group performance and member satisfaction The first step in solving the ABC problems from a consultant perspective is restructuring the whole organization and specifically the technical team which is experiencing challenges working as a team. The initial step will thus be the creation of an effective team. Team building The concept of team building is an old but an effective concept that has helped organizational development since the early twentieth century. Initially team building was seen as an attempt to get the goals of an organization met while satisfying the individuals within the team. An effective team building process generally attempts to improve the group functioning by essentially helping the members work together by alteration of organizational structures such as norms, patterns as well as roles. Notably, team building should be conceived as a holistic process and not a single action. In this case, in order to ensure that the ABC technical team creates an effective team, then four main sequential stages should be used where each stage contains social and task related factors (McFadzean & O'Loughlin, 2000, p.104). Forming- This is the initial stage of the process, at this stage the group should be made to focus on the objectives and possibly establish the best possible way of achieving these objectives with the available resources. In the social aspect, the members should commence developing behaviour that is best suited to achieving the team’s objectives (McFadzean & O'Loughlin, 2000, p.104). Storming- At this stage the individual may feel disconnect between the jobs demand and his/her interpretation of the job details.. This usually leads to what known as “task resistance”. Socially, these opinions can polarise, mainly on interpersonal issues and the individuals can begin to focus on their own personal issues, this can possible derail the focus of the individual with respect to the group since the needs of the individual starts to supersede those of a group. It is at this level that maturity develops and a sense of commitment to the group is established. This stage presents challenges that mainly focus on the integration into the group, if challenges are not resolved at this stage, and then the focus of the group can be further derailed (McFadzean & O'Loughlin, 2000, p.104). Norming- This stage begins with an open forum which allows free and open exchange of opinions and varied views. This is normally characterised by willingness to cooperate with other team members. It is also at this stage that social normative standards can be developed, more often at this level; there is a conscious effort to harmonize the team in order to evade negative conflicts which may potentially derail the team’s focus (McFadzean & O'Loughlin, 2000, p.104). Performing- At this level, solutions begin to emerge and the goals of the team met. In the social aspect, the group has developed a cohesive focus with relatively high support and flexibility levels. The group objective thus centres on the issues at hand. These four stages of team building are essential in the sense that every individual joining the team at the start will have the chance to know the team members, integrate with them share opinions and views and know the objective of the team before becoming part of the team needed to achieve these objectives. At ABC Company, this process seemed to have lacked and hence the issues that the technical team is experiencing in cooperating for a common organizational goal (McFadzean & O'Loughlin, 2000, p.104). This is evident from the fact that team members do not clearly know their role in the team and hence the reason why they are struggling to work in the team and as a team to achieve objectives. Leadership As evident, a clear leadership is lacking in ABC technical team, this is a major setback as the team members of different sections do not know exactly who to answer to. Leadership is important and vital for achieving team success, when there is leadership vacuum; efficiency of the team is decreased. Leadership plays an imperative role is setting the pace for the team in order to achieve its set objective. In this case, ABC technical team requires a leader, a leader who is able to merge the barriers between the conflicting sectors and inspire the team to focus on the goals rather than on their personal difference. The best leadership option for ABC technical team is transformational leadership, the rationale for this is because transformational leadership inspires the team to achieve higher heights. Transformation leadership a leadership which considers the opinions of all the team members and most importantly play a critical role in settling the difference among the team members in order for them to work towards attainment of the goals and objectives of the organization. More so, transformational leadership stimulates creativity among the team members and encourage the team to finds new ways of providing solutions to problems that the team is facing. Transformation leadership also supports and encourage individual followers in order to encourage supportive relationship. This is normally accomplished through ensuring that communication lines are open for the members to share ideas and for the leader to offer best support in terms of direction (Northouse, 2001). Once the ABC technical team has a transformational leader, the team will be inspired to work towards its organizational goals and hence help the team achieve its core objectives. Transformational leadership servers as a role model for its followers by ensuring that the team has trust and respect for the leader hence fostering the team to internalizes ideals necessary in spearheading accomplishments. In summary effective leaders are part and parcel of great success within an organization and their vital role cannot be wished off (Bass &  Riggio, 2006). Communication development According to Keyton (2005) communication is important in any team; communication can mean the success or the failure of the team. In ABC it is evident that there is a communication issues which needs to be resolved in order to ensure that the team works effectively. Poor communication thwarts sharing and gathering of information openly. It is therefore paramount to create an effective platform that encourages communication and open discussion of matters facing the group. Notably, it is essential for a team to have adequate time to create information sharing platform. Having plenty of time to make decisions is important because it hinders premature consensus that may actually be unwise. Time for discussion of pertinent issues is therefore imperative in a group situation. There are many approaches of ensuring that group communication is encouraged. One of such approaches is encouraging the group to break into smaller subgroups for easy discussion (Adams & Galanes, 2011). This technique is effective especially in a situation where the team is large, by breaking it down to subgroups during discussion; it becomes relatively easy for most of the group members to air their views and hence making the discussion more fruitful as compared to a relatively large group. In ABC, this technique is relevant as the entire technical team is made up of subgroups of people focusing on different aspects of the network implementation. In this case, each group will have its own leader who will be responsible for guiding the discussion and taking the opinions of the team members. The leaders of each group can thereafter meet to deliberate on the views of their respective groups. This process will make the decision making process relatively easier as compare to looking at a team as a whole and trying to engage every member simultaneously (Adams & Galanes, 2011). Within the groups, conversation can be encouraged by employing the devil’s advocate- individual given the responsibility of expressing conflicting views and engaging the group to discuss these alternatives in a more sober way. The main demerit of this style is the fact that the individual taking up this responsibility may not be very popular (Keyton, 2005). With this consideration, the leader may decide to rotate this responsibility and also make it clear to the team of the importance of this role in decision making process. More so, this person will be required to challenge the view of the core group while maintaining a healthy discussion. The leader is important in this case at he/she will be responsible in setting the direction of the group. Summary of actionable recommendations The initial step as already indentified is building an effective team that is able to work towards the achievement of the organizational goals. This step is essential because it irons the differences individuals in the group may have before focusing their efforts towards the common organizational goal instead of personal desires. An effective team will always be ready to achieve the set goals or the purpose of the group. After the creation of an effective team, leadership follows. As proposed in this case, transformational leadership will be important, this is mainly because of the transformational leader will inspire the group to achieve its objectives (Northouse, 2001). More so, this leadership style encourages creativity and new ways of providing solutions. It encourages participation by every group member in a unique way. Thirdly, fostering a sustainable communication within the ABC technical team is essential. Communication is the key to the success of the team because once the team can share openly information and other issues that relate to the current project, the progress of the project implementation can be greatly enhanced. Communication also ensures that the individuals working within a team know what is required of them in the project. Breaking down the group into subgroups and having subgroup leader and the devil advocate is also essential and necessary for a successful debating of pertinent issues affecting the project (Adams & Galanes, 2011). Why the changes should be effective These changes are effective because of a number of reasons; first a team building process will help in setting up the pace through definition of the team objectives. Secondly, establishing a strong and objective leadership is important because it ensure that the team stays in course of achieving the set organizational goals. Without an effective leadership, the organizational goals cannot be achieved. As proposed, transformative leadership is mandate the task of ensuring that the team achieves its objectives. Transformational leadership encourages innovation and better ways of solving issues. Thirdly, by creating an effective communication platform through which the team members can engage, achieving the organizational objectives in the workplace can be achieved in time. Communication creates the much needed platform for information sharing within the team, an aspect that is necessary to achieve the objectives of the team. References Bass B.M., &  Riggio R.E.(2006). Transformational Leadership. London: Routledge. Keyton, J. (2005). Communicating in groups: building relationships for group effectiveness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McFadzean, E., & O'Loughlin, A. (2000). Five strategies for improving group effectiveness. Strategic Change, 9(4), 104-114. Northouse, P.G. (2001). Leadership Theory and Practice, second edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Adams, K & Galanes, G. (2011). Communicating in Groups: Applications and Skills. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education. Read More