Developing Managers and Project Teams to Obtain Essential Skills - Research Paper Example

Senior Research Project

By

Tony Scales

Submitted to the faculty of

Brandman University

In partial fulfillment of requirements of

Senior Research Project (OLCU 487)

June 1, 2016

Abstract

This research paper inspects, critically analyzes and discusses literature written by different scholars and researchers on what methods are leaders using to develop managers and project teams to obtain essential skills such as critical thinking, time management, decision-making, and prioritization to improve organizational effectiveness and how lack of relevant skills limits effectiveness of managerial and project workers. It begins by examining what methods leaders are utilizing to develop their subordinates then focuses on two ways in which lack of relevant skills hinders managers from effectively dealing with conflict management. It looks at this in light of how managers handle conflicts and their abilities to identify behavior indicators that guarantee success.

Secondly, it examines how skills determine delegation of duty. Here it relates awareness of the potential danger of delegation with the level of managerial skills. It further looks at how ignorance of factors to consider when delegating a job can hinder effective operation of an organization. It comes out in this research that managers should invest in training development and project managers for their organization. It is an effective way of maintaining a low worker turnover because it is easier for companies to retain workers they train.

Worker retention enables an organization to have a workable plan for both short-term and long-term projects. In addition, it underscores the importance of two regular assessments on the effectiveness of team managers and how their contribution influences the attitude other stakeholders like workers and external parties. Following the conclusions, the paper recommends pooling together the skills of workers for growth of an organization; understanding effects of management behavior on workers; motivation of team players; effective organizational conflict resolution; identification of excellence indicators; disambiguation of the role of delegation; sharpening skills for change; and tapping into knowledge of workers to promote growth.

Introduction

This literature review is meant to help leaders, managers, and project team members to familiarize themselves with the managerial environments that they will interact with in the diversely growing job markets. It enables them to acquire an overview of the strategies they are supposed to implement so as to build team leaders who will be of much value in bringing about organizational effectiveness. This might include such methods as those helping them to develop critical thinking, analytical skills, decision-making, and time management.

Research Purpose and Questions

The purpose of this research is to help leaders, managers, and project team members to know how their actions and behavior affects the performance of those on their teams. It builds on and supports what has been previously provided to address team dynamics. It is also about how to understand others and how this can eventually lead to better delegation and conflict resolution, and a more effective team motivation and overall performance. The literature review to this research will address the following questions:

• What methods are leaders using to develop managers and project teams to obtain essential skills such as critical thinking, time management, decision-making, and prioritization to improve organizational effectiveness?
• If relevant skills are not obtained is it detrimental to managerial and project team effectiveness?

Literature Review

Research Question One: What methods are leaders using to develop managers and project teams to obtain essential skills such as critical thinking, time management, decision-making, and prioritization to improve organizational effectiveness?

Organizing work around teams is now an important aspect of organizational life. A majority, if not all organizations implement team structures to assist in organizational work. Imaginably giving an explanation why teams have flourished, recent research studies conducted on high-level managers indicated that approximately 90% of them concurred with the declaration that teams in the workplace are essential to organizational success. Subsequent research has been conducted further to explore the importance of teams in the workplace. One field that has started to get increased attention is the functions of leadership within team settings, and the methods used by leaders to develop effective managers and project teams (Collins & Holton, 2004).

Great leaders make high performing teams. Whether in the places of work, local community or professional sports, team development necessitates a deep understanding of individuals, their weaknesses and strengths, and what prompts them to function with other team members. Team building serves as both science and art and the leader able of developing high-performing teams steadily is worth their weight in gold. Teams that give good results consistently have the capability of accomplishing significant feats with a combination of insights, abilities, and skills that each teammate gives.

Robust teams profit the people who comprise them since they give every individual participant the chance to learn from each other. The organization benefits greatly as well since effective teams enhance the results delivery and can as well endorse changes across numerous aspects of the company by cross-disciplinary issue management (Jordan Ashkanasy, Härtel, & Hooper, 2002). Currently, teamwork is the main focus area in organizational management across various industries and needs concerted, interdisciplinary teams and strong leadership practices for maximizing performance. Research indicates that leaders are using various methods to develop managers and project teams that will ensure business sustainability and high performance.

Making use of a Learning Workplace

With an increasing level of uncertainty in the market, organizational leaders have increasingly perceived workplace learning as a method of not only achieving short-term to middle term goals but also long-term organizational strategic objectives. The present that influences the leader's approaches to organizational and workplace learning have their foundations in employee development, flexible learning and work system design. Workplace learning reach, which leaders have many times linked to "on the job training," has additionally been expanded to include on the job learning (Sundstrom, De Meuse & Futrel, 1990). In this regard, leaders have continuously perceived learning as vital to the manner in which work is formulated.

Leaders have continuously created creative learning opportunities to ensure team members and managers are motivated enough and kept interested in their work. Leaders aim at motivating the teams through elevating their skills so as to generate a greater sense of responsibility. For instance, scholars have pointed out that team members at various organizations and departments are offered to train in all stations and therefore are capable of undertaking multiple roles and multitasking during periods when the organization is running at full scale.

Leaders are also interacting with the managers and the team members to gain invaluable information, which later assists them in formulating educational programs for their managers and team members. More significantly, operating in such a way that team members and their leaders engage each other in an uninterrupted information sharing process, and contribute suggestions, information and ideas proactively, which can make improvements to the processes and the work involved to enhance workplace learning (Edmondson, Roberto & Watkins, 2003). Organizations have different work environments and cultures, and this affects their level of strategic planning and emphasis about team development, as well as the cultivation of a learning environment.

Leaders within some companies are actively encouraging workplace learning through indoctrinating a strong organizational learning culture that stresses on sharing of knowledge across all levels of the organization. Developing a successful learning atmosphere needs the leaders to take up a nurturing position (Cohen & Bailey 1997). This denotes valuing the team members as people with personal intentions of advancing their careers and enhancing their capacity to be valuable contributors. Leaders are therefore amending the organizational mission and vision statements to incorporate workplace learning aspects to make it a culture adaptable by all within the organization.

Leadership Brand and Organizational Reputation

Leadership brand is a reputation for advancing good leaders with a diverse set of skills that are exclusively meant to accomplish investors' as well as client's expectations. An organization with a good reputation inspires faith that managers, as well as employees, will at all times fulfill the organizational promises. Developing leadership brands starts with a clear statement that has similar characteristics to an organization's vision statement, which links what the company desires to be understood for by its clients.

Once leaders have crafted statements that relay the organizational leadership brand, they need to evaluate team members progressively to ensure they are living up to the name. This needs that leaders assess managers from the client's perspective and evaluate the results less by what the individual teams and managers or the organization achieve. A good leadership reputation and focus results in desirable management, which is unmoored from individuality, yet are sustained over time (Edmondson et al., 2003). As leaders start to graduate and develop excellent managers, they produce a reputation for very high-quality management, which forms the core of an organizational leadership brand.

Such leadership workable strength is easily observed in the level to which a company has high turnover levels or levels to which managers leave the organization to go on to other higher positions in other organizations. Organizations with the very good reputational record and strong leadership brands are rather unaffected by management changes as organizations that have weaker leadership brands. In addition, such organizations become sure about their workbench capacity that they transform negatives – losing managers – to positives.

Training

Human behavior is influenced by many elements which work independently or in combination with each other. Some elements are uncontrollable; others are not. The intrinsic nature of every team member is not within the managers' powers to change or control. The manner in which team members are ascribed to sub-teams and roles can be manipulated. In extreme scenarios, managers may choose not to use certain persons if their conduct or character is undesirable. It is in this regard that managers can engage team members in training sessions aimed at improving or developing their project teams (Collins & Holton, 2004).

By engaging the right training and development material and resources, upcoming project and development managers are oriented on how to distinguish between workgroup and team, as well as how their participation in the team effort may be successful. The project heads are additionally informed on the appropriate methods of paying attention particularly to behavioral tendencies and told to be on the lookout for indicators that have a possibility of enabling accomplishment of desirable team performance. Similarly, they are taught on the appropriate methods of improving team effectiveness. Professional developments also enhance skills, confidence and motivation among team members (Mc Laren, Woods, Boudioni, Lemma, Rees, & Broadbent, 2007).

Coaching

Organizational leaders source one to one in a combination of or in one of the following methods: providing training to line managers so that they can in turn coach the team members, the commissioning of external suppliers and the utilization of in-house experts both as coaches. In the recent past, it has become clear that in most organizations, the duty of developing project teams and their leaders is exclusively a mandate of the line managers (Tekleab, Quigley, & Tesluk, 2009). In particular, there is now shift from the functioning of leaders as controllers to becoming a mentor or a coach, whose one of the underlying responsibility is the development of staff.

Leaders usually place team members in different departments, locations or functions for the team members to acquire experience of diverse segments of the company's environment. This enables them to shadow or observes other employees. Leaders also act as coaches by arranging the employees' duties (liberal gradation of responsibilities). The leaders also candidly give feedback and at times debriefings while also assisting the employees evaluate their occupational roles for them to be cognizant of the skills and competencies needed. Assessment of the environment of the individuals participating in the exercise preparedness in the present work environment is executed for determining the effectiveness of coaching, as well as the present level of employee coaching competencies (Wong & Law, 2002). A strategy for the development of a reliable learning and training environment is developed, and primary behavioral methodologies are adopted, which are intended to make improvements to the coaching strategy.

Research Question Two: How lack of relevant skills is detrimental to managerial and project team effectiveness?

Lack of relevant skills hinders managers from effectively dealing with conflict management (Tekleab et al., 2009). This is seen when they mainly act retroactively when dealing with conflict cases among colleagues and juniors. Managers who are ineffective handle issues regarding staff relationship stand-offs half way or in ways that make kit necessary to address the same thing all over again in future. Prolonged conflict threatens the success of an organization because it rules out all the possible positive outcomes of a conflict.

They are also not able to point likely indicators that could bring down a project. When dealing with a conflict, is necessary good management skills help to know both the positive and the negative outcomes that may result from it (Sundstrom et al., 1990). Most conflicts can end up in detrimental effects on a project, but before they come to be seen, a good manager should be able to read indicators. Conflicts play a complicated role in the success of projects because besides having the potential to bring down development as a result of weakened team cohesion (Edmondson, et al., 2003). Having good skills enables one to distinguish clearly between all the differential effects of managing a conflict.

Secondly, inadequate skills can lead to a poor delegation of growth. Unskilled persons might not recognize the underlying dangers in delegating of duties to junior officers (Pearce & Sims Jr, 2002). While delegation of duty helps to reduce the burden of work for managers and train the junior officers to deal with issues better, a good manager has to recognize that depending on a particular job that needs to be done, delegation sometimes can hamper success. For example, some duties require specialized attention and giving them to junior officers may compromise quality. Assigning junior workers some duties also endanger their positions and those of the managers. Besides, the manager should consider their ability to explain the demands of the duty to the worker taking delegated responsibility.

They may also not know when delegation is necessary, and even when they do, they do not know how to assess the effectiveness of the delegation process. There are times when delegation is indeed inevitable, especially when working against deadlines. Before delegating, a manager should ensure that giving out some of their responsibilities to juniors does not jeopardize their ability to lead the work on a project. It means that even if they can tell from experience that delegation is necessary, they should be in control by adapting effective was to oversee the whole project (Cohen, & Bailey, 1997).

Conclusions

It is essential that managers invest in training development and project managers for their organization so as to maintain a low worker turnover, and have a workable plan. There is no set of management skills that are universally agreed on, but everyone thinks they can manage. Entrusting managers with developments and projects without helping them to gain the right training is detrimental to a company (Collins & Holton, 2004). Managers who have the relevant skills for their duties lead confidently; approach conflicts assertively; analyze issues to make sound managerial decisions; are diplomatic and good in time management.

It is important to carry regularly out assessments of how effective team managers are and how much they contribute to the worker’s attitude and performance. Evaluation of performance ensures effectiveness in management. The attitudes and performance of workers as well as the external image of a company is determined by the skills of the managers. Regular assessment of team managers is also the primary way of determining areas of weakness that require strengthening in the leadership at all levels (Jordan et al., 2002).

Recommendation

Companies should target organizational growth through enhancement of their teams’ competencies (Collins & Holton, 2004). Organizations with competent workers are well-managed and have duty equity leading to effectiveness. They also have low labor turnover because of retention. Secondly, managers should seek to understand how the organizations’ behavioral style affects the actions of others (Jordan et al., 2002). Managers’ leadership competencies affect the morale of junior workers and this impact on general effectiveness. The resultant work culture of an organization defines it in the market, determining organization’s image and sales volume.

Thirdly, they should find appropriate means through which team players can be motivated (Wong & Law, 2002). The work of a manager is not only to reprimand weakness but also to motivate good performance through reinforcement of effective participation in the teams. This can be done through promotions, rewards, team-building activities and organize proficiency development opportunities. They should also explore means of organizational conflict resolution (Tekleab et al., 2009). Conflicts may have both good and bad effects on a company depending on how and when it is handled. Timely analytical approach to relationship and situational conflicts give opportunities to improve policies and teamwork. On the other hand, the retroactive approach may allow conflicts to develop beyond remedy, thus causing a permanent negative effect on an organization.

Fourthly, the team leader should demonstrate competency in managing the team’s activities necessary to deliver the achievement of the primary objective. In addition the team leader should demonstrate exceptional inter-member relationship skills and prove his/her concern for team members social needs. The mentioned approaches are essential in enhancing team’s effectiveness (Wolf, Pescosolido, Druskat, 2002).

Fifthly, it may be beneficial if the organization develops a top management team and embraces the concept of behaviorally integrated top management team. Behavioral integration includes social integration, collaboration and quality, and frequency of member exchange. A strong group cohesion, frequent and quality information sharing, and harmonious relationship encourage critical thinking thus enhances decision making, which consequently improves group effectiveness (Carmeli & Schaubroeck, 2006).

According to Pearce and Sims Jr, (2002), it is also necessary for them to understand the behavioral indicators that can bring out effective performance. Success or failure of an organization does not happen overnight. Both can be predicted from behavioral indicators which managers with ability to appreciate are better placed for success than those who are not. Based on past information, the consequences of certain behavior can be predicted. A manager is able to link specific behavior to an outcome. By using this approach, managers can make necessary changes to avoid experiencing the predicted unfavorable outcome.

Management should explain how delegation can be advantageous to the organization and the individual, argued Pearce and Sims Jr, (2002). Before a manager delegates or allows other workers to do so, he/she should make the workers know what is expected of them in the new duty and how it will benefit the worker or the whole team. Unless one can clearly state out the two, delegation of duty will be frivolous and fruitless. Delegation of duty is significant in an organization as it makes clear the line of hierarchy and the responsibilities of every employee and manager.

Wong and Law (2002) contended that leaders also need to learn to sharpen their skills in leading and managing change. In the 21st Century, the driving force behind business opportunity is the ability to create a change or adapt to environmental changes. Through good training, managers can incubate innovations and creation of new sales frontiers. Lastly, the management ought to manage organizational growth and performance through application of learned concepts as Jordan et al. (2002) explain. Training and experience are important resources in labor that can be used to drive growth and success of an organization. Proficiency training, seminars, and workshops are of no use if the knowledge gained does not draw the organization closer to excellence.