Adam's and Jeds Styles of Leadership - Assignment Example

PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE - ASSIGNMENT 1 Student’s Name Course Tutor Date Question 1 - (20 Marks) Which interpersonal role, if any, was Adam Border exhibiting? Justify your answer. Adams was able to sustain an ambient working relationship with his employees and build a strong team. Since Adams concluded that he was very happy with his job, it was an indication that he was successful. In the process Adams acted as the figure head and in the process performed ceremonial duties by motivating and encouraging the workers and creating relationships outside his area of jurisdiction. By performing his role as an information officer, Adams acted as a monitor by critically understanding the environment he was working in and got all he wanted to adequately manage his staff. He acted as a disseminator by sharing the information he gathered with other managers in the sales and marketing as well as with the suppliers. As a manager Adams exhibited three decisional roles; Adams played the role of an entrepreneur where he tried to make some improvement on the unit. This he did by receiving an idea and launching a project that will bring the idea to maturity. As disturbance handler Adams was expected to deal any threats posing a danger to the organization. This can include; strike, a local disaster and any threat of fire in the company. As a resource allocator he as a manager, was supposed to decide on who was supposed to get what resource. These resources may include money, time, people, information or equipment. As managers he spends a lot of time as negotiators, this is because it is only they who have the required authority and information that is required for negotiation. These negotiations mostly include resource, work, objectives, performance, or anything other problem that touches the unit or company (McWilliams, 2010, pp 34-51). Which decisional role, if any, was Adam Border exhibiting? Justify your answer. Adams was able to set priorities and developed schedules which enabled him complete tasks. Working schedules enabled Adams to make sure that the workers adhered to the working regulations and avoid underperformance. In doing this, Adams acted as an entrepreneur to the company. He ensured that he adapted to the units that existed in the company before his eventual promotion to create an incremental change in the company. He increased the number of employees, suppliers and expanding the production and the volumes of sales as well as the extent of the company’s penetration to the market. This was critical in the expansion of the customer base hence increasing the capital base for the company making it economically sound and giving it a secure future. As a middle manager, what managerial skill(s) are important for Adam? What skill(s) are least important? Adams needed to have comprehensive coordination abilities to enable him harmonize various departments like sales, marketing and the acquisition of raw materials from the suppliers. This ability would enable Adams to monitor and carefully manage the required performance of all the company’s departments to ensure that work is not hampered in any way for the betterment of the company and the stakeholders. Adams as a Middle level manager was required to turn broad company goals into more strategic ones. He was expected create good and viable objectives and link them with the employee’s actions. As middle level manager Adams was expected to communicate his ideas to the frontline management of the company and the top management. He was expected to plan the goals required by the frontline managers, and use the available human resources to assign, organize resources and align them towards the attainment of the company goals, provide leadership to the senior managers, and to play an important role in controlling the decisions arrived at by the senior managers. The least important could have been setting of goals and making sure that they are attained these can be the work of his juniors (Kotter & Cohen, 2002, pp 36-60). In his job, Adam needs to undertake which basic management functions? Adams was expected to do company planning. In this function, he was expected to do a creative and critical thinking in situations which needed to be investigated, lay strategies and set goals, identify the resources which are required to complete those specific goals. He was also expected to implement strategies which are determined. Planning form a critical part of management since it is the only way company goals can be accomplished. In his organization, he is expected to have good knowledge of what aspires in the organization. This includes the organization of human resources available in the company such as money, materials, information and any resources that are important to the company. This function alone sets the arena for goals achievement; it organizes all the required resources in a manner that they harmonize. Leading is another important function of Adams. In performing this he is expected to provide his employees with motivation and the morale to move things. By effective leadership Adams is supposed to let other employees to lead by encouraging them to utilize their strengths and skills for the benefit of the whole company. Control is the final function that he is supposed to do in his managerial duties. Control provides him with the power to perform the other duties in the company. At the same time he is able to influence change in any other of the other sectors. Control gave Adams to be confidence, efficient and effective in attaining the specific goals of the company (Manfred & Kets de Vries, 2003, pp 25-33). Question 2 – (15 Marks) How would you characterize Jed’s leader style? Use at least two leadership theories/models in your answer. Jed’s style of leadership can be described as emergent leadership because, just as expected, most groups don’t automatically accept a new leader. In order to stamp his authority, he had to stipulate his own roadmap of work that in essence defines his character, ambitions and expectations amongst his juniors. Jed is also displaying characteristics of transformational leadership. Such is only concerned with laying principal focus on making changes. As noted by Jed’s ambition of making his department to be a performer and if possible surpass other departments, the features of a transformational leader such as reforming self and others are well demonstrated. Visionary leadership is another characteristic possessed by Jed. It is not a surprise to find that very few managers have a clear perspective of what is going on in their organizations or departments. As demonstrated by Jed in his new assignment, he tried to make his workforce be visionary in order to perform as well as moving them in the same desirable direction. Jed can also be said to be a transformational leader. In regard to the theory of transformational leadership, leaders should be famous for acting as agents of organizational change, which they should carry out by guiding the workforce in working for the accomplishment of the targets. Transformational leadership is therefore very visionary as shown by Jed. In most cases, visionary leaders are goal-oriented. In order to effectively run an organization or a department as in Jed’s case, it is a fact that there is no one single leadership style that can suit a situation thus the rationale of the situational leadership theory. Effective leadership is characterized by relevancy of tasks and the most successful managers are the ones who stick to their styles of leadership to their maturity. This is shown by the capacity to set targets that are attainable (Certo & Certo, 2009, pp 12-27). Discuss the issue of power as it relates to Jed’s situation. Jed uses his power to drive his subordinates to be more productive. It comes out clearly that Jed is quick in stamping his authority to the new work station which is generally a characteristic of new managers. It is important to show authority for lack of it may result in redundancy and compromise the quality of work. Jed has to display to the rest of the employees that he deserved to be given the post by showing that he is a performer hence setting targets for his department. This is aimed at making the department the best in terms of performance. Use Fiedler’s contingency theory of leadership to analyze the appropriateness of Jed’s Behavior in the given situation. Contingency Theory developed by Fiedler explains that the performance of a team or group is mostly due to an interaction of situational conduciveness and leadership style. Just as demonstrated by Fiedler's model, effective leadership is as a result of close interaction between the leader’s style and the environmental characteristics of the environment that the leader operates. Leadership theory suits well Jed’s situation for it is system of interaction that aspires between a manager and the workgroup. Fiedler's theory makes an assumption that personal leadership method is set to relationship-oriented or task-oriented. Task-oriented managers mainly focus on job completion and are autocratic. Leader-member affairs refer to another confidence level and trust that team member’s accord to their leader looking at this situation Jed’s team seems to have accorded him this and cooperated with him to produce the best results. Task structure elaborates on how much the manager helps his staff members to understand the kind of task at hand.jed had spend a lot of time doing this. Question3 – (15 Marks) Which level of social responsibility best describes the company’s current operations? Social responsiveness is the best level of social responsibility for the company. This is where the company responds to the stakeholders demands. The stakeholders had requested the management to explain how they were willing to address the problem of pollution of both the streams by the industrial affluent they were channeling in the rivers and the gases which were being discharged into the atmosphere by the use of the petroleum products in the company. To do this, the company needed to use four methods; to deny taking responsibility for the environmental pollution and use a defensive strategy or accept a full responsibility for the pollution and agree to change its production processes. The company should make a declaration to sustain the environment by changing the productions processes that will be environmental friendly and without compromising the growth of the company. Finally it can choose to use a proactive approach where it does much more than it is expected by the society to address any social responsibility problems (Crowther, 2000, p 20). What environmental vision do you communicate to your task force? In other words, what social responsiveness strategy will you adopt at Rose wall Pty? As a manager I would have communicated to the task force to use the proactive strategy. These will allow the company to interact with people freely in the community to find out their views about the company’s operations and forge a good relationship. These might not necessarily mean the problem the company is causing them by polluting their environment is an end to negotiation. This can include education health and other social need they might be in need of. This will in a way create a good rapport between the company and its customers. By adopting environmental vision, this involves the company to produce products that can enter nature without polluting it. The company can also eliminate the deposition of contaminated water in the streams and to create products that can easily be recycled. Also by the use of renewable sources of energy such as solar and hydroelectric power than to use petroleum products that emits a lot of harmful gases to the environment as they affect living organisms. Proactive strategy will involve several simultaneous changes in the part of various resource domains which are important for firms to swing to a significantly higher echelon of pro-activeness (Habisch, Jonker, Wegner & Schmidpeter, 2005, pp 67-89). This change requires environmental strategies that are more proactive in nature and those which are associated with a broader exposure of stakeholders. It will involve environmental leadership which is not associated with the rising significance of environmental regulations. This strategy involves suggesting of roles for voluntary cooperation involving the government and the firm. Finally, a good linkage is required between the stakeholders and environmental strategies in the company’s management, based on several samples from firms operating in the same area and other studies earlier carried out (Gomez-Mejia, Luis, Balkin & Cardy, 2008, pp 19-27). Can sustainability be economically viable for Rose wall Pty? Defend your answer. Yes. It is very possible to produce without harming the environment. If the government puts stringent measures of environmental protection, the industries will adopt methods of production which are environmental friendly. In the case of Rose wall Pty suggestions were advanced on how the company could produce without harming the environment. Truly changing the processes will be an expensive venture, but if that is the only way out, and then they will have to do so. Better the cost of the product be high but we protect our environment. Through recycling of wastes such as scrap metals can be used to produce new products thus will reduce the amount of the waste that was being deposited to the soils which could not be recycled. The company was using petroleum as a source of energy instead; solar energy which is one of the renewable sources of energy could be an alterative. if adopted by Rose wall Pty, it can be used by the company to generate enough power to meet its energy requirements and also supply electricity to its neighboring population at a cost. A good example of a company that has been able to do this is the Padnos that has 636 recycling centers with solar panels, with the capability of generating 150 kilowatts of power in an hour more than enough for its company needs. It is worthy noting that if a business venture can not be economically viable then it is not sustainable. The company had focused on modern methods of processing its goods that are environmentally friendly, thus it was heading to economic sustainability. The next step is to grow roots in the market, get adopted and be strong. The electricity that is to be generated could go back to the consumers, and the company could get good premium by selling it. Companies that acquire Green Machine are not only investing in something that significantly reduces the cost of electricity, but in the process gains a lot of confidence to face their future. Conclusion Most of the companies in the world are going green by using renewable sources of energy and treating all their affluent to make them environmental friendly. Those companies that are polluting the environment need to adopt an approach that will make them not endanger the lives of organisms by polluting the environment. Social responsiveness is the best level of social responsibility for the company. This is where the company responds to the consumers and stakeholders demands, thus the need for upholding organizational ethics and integrity. The stakeholders had requested the management to elaborate on how they were willing to address the problem of pollution of both the water by the industrial affluent they were disposing in the rivers and the gases which were being discharged into the atmosphere by the use of the petroleum products in the company. Interpersonal relationship is used in most companies to sustain a good working relationship amongst employees and the management. An exemplary manager therefore needs good planning, organization, leadership as well as control and coordination of the company activities in a harmonious manner for smooth operations. Bibliography Certo, S.C & Certo, S.T 2009, Modern Management – Concepts and Skills, 11th edn., Crowther, D 2000, "Social and Environmental Accounting, London: Financial Times Prentice Hall. Gomez-Mejia, Luis R, Balkin B. David & Robert L.Cardy 2008, Management: People, Performance, Change, 3rd edition. New York, New York USA: McGraw-Hill. Habisch, André, Jonker, Jan, Wegner, Martina & Schmidpeter, R 2005, Corporate Social Responsibility across the Europe. Heidelberg: Springer. Kotter, John P. & Dan S. Cohen 2002, The Heart of Change. Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing. Manfred F. R. & Kets de Vries 2003, The Dark Side of Leadership - Business Strategy Review: Autumn. McWilliams, 2010, MGMT – Core Management Concepts, 2010 edition, Pearson. Cenage. Read More