Management Principle - DGL International - Assignment Example

DGL INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDY QUESTIONS: Introduction: DGL International is a company dealing in the manufacturing of refinery equipments. The company had problems with its technical service division that consisted of 20 engineers who were highly paid and best educated. The problem of this company division was that these engineers were the least productive division, and also recorded a high turnover. This problem prompted the company to bring in a new manager named John Terrill so as to look into these problems. John Terrill showed great concern for their personal welfare and asked them point blank what their problems were. The engineers overwhelmingly responded by saying that they were being made to write unnecessary reports in replicate to the management contrary to what they were hired to do in the company. They claimed that the reports were never even read by the management who ordered them. John Terrill then responded by promising the engineers that he will stay out of their way so that they can do their work and also try and keep the management off their backs too. He also called for the day’s reports and issued an order effective immediately that the originals be turned in daily to his office rather than mailed to headquarters. When the reports finally piled on his office desk, he decided to take them to the CEO’s office and told them together with other senior executive that the piled-up reports in his office were the reason for the lack of productivity in the technical services division. Hence, this report endeavours to answer the problems arising from the technical service division and their remedies. Question 1: What leadership style did John Terrill use? What do you think was his primary source of power? Discuss these two issues. Answer: While analysing the DGL International case study, we realise that John Terrill leadership style leans towards people orientation. That basically means that he used democratic leadership style in his capacity as the new manager of DGL international company in the technical services division. Researchers such as (e.g., Likrt 1997) created some similar behaviour topologies by differentiating between people oriented leadership styles that focuses on the needs of the followers by creating a supportive environment and job-centred (task oriented) leadership style, that focuses on rewards, coercion, and close supervision to influence the behaviours and performance of the followers. John Terrill starts by finding out what are the real courses of employee turnover in the engineering division, and why the technical service division is the least productive. When he first called the 20 engineers, they explain to him that they are forced to do jobs that they were never hired to do – writing stupid reports that end up not even read by the management. According to Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson (2001), personal power examples consist of referent and expert powers. John Terrill practises the former. As much as Terrill’s power is legitimate, his primary source of power is referent. His power seems to be legitimate in the sense that he posses power that is bestowed in him from the formal management position of the DGL International organisation and the authority that is granted to it. In real sense, John Terrill uses his ‘Personal Power’ that comes from his internal sources due to his special personality or knowledge. In that case, referent power is an example of personal power. Referent power thus originates from his personality characteristics as a leader and which he uses to command his subordinates admiration, respect and identification (Zaccaro, Kemp & Bader 2004). This kind of power will help the 20 engineers of the DGL International to emulate John Terrill. Referent power comes as a result of being respected and trusted (Yukl 2006). Zigarmi, Blanchard, O’Connor & Edeburn (2005) adjoins that referent power can only be achieved when followers trust what their leader does and respects him/her on how he/she handles situations. Daft (2008) also affirms that personal power comes from personality and charisma of a leader. A leader who projects sincerity, optimism, strength, hope and confidence will always inspire people through power even in a seemingly hopeless situation (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson 2001; Bergman, Stagg & Coulter 2012). A good example is depicted in the DGL International case study when john Terrill fairly treats the engineering department employees and coming to their rescue by relieving them of stupid job of writing reports and assuring them that his job is to stay out of their way so they can do their work independently, and that he will also try to keep the top management off their backs as well. Moreover, expert powers are acquired from knowledge, skill, and experience (Hellriegel & Slocum 2011). Expert powers are gained by leaders when they begin to utilise and mobilise other people to help them achieve their objectives as they gain experience in certain areas (Hellriegel & Slocum 2011). For instance, an experienced project manager who is an expert in solving certain challenging issues certifies to put the project on track John Terrill demonstrates leadership qualities by listening to the concerns and other problems facing the engineers of the DGL international Company and what is making them to record poor performance. He then goes ahead and shows the top management what exactly he thinks is behind the poor performance in the technical service division, he did this by presenting them with a pile of unnecessary reports that were wrote by the engineers and had been lying in his office for months without being read by the relevant departs. He terms the reports as the reason behind time wasting for engineers and that is what takes much of their time and hinders them in focusing on the major objective of the technical service division. This is after he changed the reporting procedures and the reports were now taken to his office where they piled up without anybody asking for them. Terrill therefore decides to work on the success achievement of the company by increasing the company sales and productivity in the engineering division by using his leadership powers. Question 2: Based on the Hersey-Blanchard theory, should Terrill have been less participative? Should he have initiated more task structure for the engineers? Explain and discuss these two issues. Answer: Hersey-Blanchard Situational theory Ken Blanchard is the author of the best selling ‘One –Minute Manager”, while Dr. Paul Hersey is a professor and author who created the “The Situational Leader”. This theory originated from the Ohio state Leadership studies and was also formerly known as Life Cycle theory (Yukl 2006). According to this theory, successful leaders should be in a position of changing their leadership styles based on the details of the tasks and the maturity of their followers instead of just utilising one style. This theory also states that leaders should be in a position of placing more or less emphasis on their relationship with people they are leading, and more or less emphasis on the on the task depending on what should be done to successfully accomplish the job (Hersey & Blanchard 1988; Ogawa 2005). The critical assumption of the situational leadership theory suggests that there is no single leadership style that can be considered to be “best” to be applied by successful leaders; instead, it is the leaders themselves who are in a position of successfully tailoring their way of leadership and management to their meticulous situational needs (House 1971; Vecchio 1987). Four styles of Leader behaviour: The four major leadership styles behaviours as described by Blanchard and Hersey (Hersey & Blanchard 1996; Mumford, Zaccaro, Connelly & Marks 2000) are depicted as follows: Telling (S1) – This is a primarily task behaviour. The role of the leaders is to direct the actions to their followers. The leaders gives instructions to their followers on when, how, where, and what to do on particular things. Selling (S2) – Leaders ‘sell’ their messages to get people on board. The appropriate direction and information is present by the leaders, especially communication with the followers. This is still a primarily task behaviour but now encompasses some relationship behaviour. It permits the follower to buy into the mission and feel connected. Participating (S3) – The leader shares decision-making responsibilities and works with the team. They also focus less on direction and more on relationships. This shifts the balance way from the task behaviour and the balance towards the relationship behaviour Delegating (S4) – This is primarily relationship behaviour. Leaders become less involved indecisions but at the same time monitor progress while they pass most of the responsibilities to the groups or follower. The responsibilities and process now lies with the followers while the decisions involves a lot of input from the followers. Maturity Levels: Knowing when to apply either of the leadership behaviour styles is mostly dependent on the maturity of the group or people being led (Creighton 2004). These maturity types are broken down into four different levels (Yukl 2006; Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson 2001) as shown below: M1 – This is a very low maturity level. People at this maturity level are considered to be lacking the necessary confidence, skills, and knowledge to complete tasks, and are often pushed to perform the required tasks, and hence their characteristics places them at the bottom of the scale. This group is often unable or unwilling to be responsible. M2 – As much as followers would be willing to work on the task at this level, they might still be in a position where they do not possess the much needed skills to successfully accomplish the tasks. M3 – At this category, the followers are still not confident with their abilities, but they have more skills than the M2 group. They are also willing and ready to work with the tasks. M4 – At this category, followers are committed to the task, have strong skills and high confidence and are also bale to work on their own. The figure below show maturity levels: Figure 1.0: Maturity Levels. Thus in regard to the Hersey-Blanchard theory, we figure out that the main issue in the case study was that john Terrill wanted to cut down the amount of the required reports and at the same time increase the efficient use of time per DGL International Company engineering employees. And obviously, this actions and efforts needed his participation of (S3) (participating and supporting) leadership (Tein, Matthews, Sharma & Scott-Ladd 2011). As depicted in this case study, john Terrill’s leadership style fits well with the GDL International’s technical service division’s situation in terms of fitting into S3 maturity level that illustrates the followers who have the appropriate skills to accomplish tasks but they lack the confidence of individually accomplishing the tasks. The technical service division employees proves their M3 maturity levels in the case study as it mentioned that they have the best necessary skills and capabilities of accomplishing their tasks by themselves. They are also the best educated and highest paid in the company. Previously before the entrance of John Terrill as the manger of the company, the engineers never used to get the support from the company management; this is because the company leadership was based on the Autocratic (Authoritarian) leadership. This is because these leaders used to instruct them of what they should do and how it should be done without giving them room for suggestion and participation on some pressing matters (Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee 2002). The management independently made decisions with little input on the engineers and thus created a division between themselves and the engineers. This is evidently shown in the case study where the engineers complain that they are forced to write unnecessary reports that are not even given attention, and hence end up eating into their productive and working time. Moreover, John Terrill’s remarks to the technical services employees replicated the recognition of the high maturity level (M4) inside the department. His decision remarks showed his determination intentions to provide the engineers with the sufficient authority to accomplish their tasks on their own way and also to establish goals without interference from the management leadership. Furthermore, in their research studies, Blanchard and Hersey asserted that low maturity subordinates with low maturity structuring management styles tends to work better and good working progress. Their leaders should therefore be in a position of increasing their considerate behaviours and decrease their structural behaviours. Bass & Bass (2008) also adjoins that both the considerate and structural efforts should be reduced to low levels to give adequate room for the employees to be self-directed in case the maturity of the subordinates continues to rise. Question 3: What leadership approach would you have taken in this situation? Discuss this issue. Answer: I would have taken the same approach as John Terrill in supporting his leadership styles since the employee maturity level M3 (High Competence and Variable Commitment) that is participative and supportive is the best leadership style according to the Blanchard-Hersey leadership theory (Hersey, Blanchard & Johnson 2001). This leadership style works well with other circumstances such as the one for GDL International technical service division. John Terrill practises this kind of leadership behaviour as shown in this case study by investing so much effort in his job and giving out supporting behaviours to the engineering employees and that shows a participatory/supportive leadership. He shows much concern to the personal welfare of the engineering employees by caring about their performance outcomes and enquiring why they have so many issues as far as their productivity and employee turnover is concerned. He makes his final leadership decision by assuring them that he will not interfere with the way they conduct their daily work operations. This leadership direction means that he will be doing very little in terms of providing directive behaviours. The research that was carried out at the University of Michigan was intended to verify how leadership behaviours lead to the effective group performance (Likert 1967). Likert (1967) presented evidence: - effective leaders (1) tend to set high performance goals, and (2) tend to enhance their sense of personal worth and self-competence and have relationships which satisfy the needs of their followers. The outcomes of the researches such as (e.g., Likert 1961; Katz 1955) revealed that leadership styles or behaviour patterns that are follower-centred are related to supervisory effectiveness. And this is the kind of leadership style that is practised by John Terrill in the DGL Case Study. Conclusions Many research outcomes have revealed that followers usually preferre democratic leadership styles, but not in all circumstances. John Terrill’s leadership style focuses so much on democratic style of leadership. For instance Hersey & Blanchard (1969), stated that leaders apply democratic leadership style when followers exercise autonomy and initiative, but a more autocratic style in situations where followers need directions (Davidson, Simon, Woods & Griffin 2009), depends on instructions, and are passive. Likewise, an autocratic leader, as intuitive in our personal experiences, may deliver best results in certain circumstances. 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Zigarmi, Z, Blanchard, K, O’Connor, M & Edeburn, C 2005, The Leader Within: Learning enough about yourself to Lead Others, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Read More