Performance and Task-Oriented Leadership - Case Study Example

? Leadership This paper intends to analysis a case study of Consoli d Products related to leadership style along with theories. The analysis of the case revealed that the two leaders namely Ben Samuels and Phil Jones had different leadership characteristics and leadership styles. It has been ascertained that both the leaders possessed different outlooks towards the management of employees. Notably, Ben revealed relationship oriented leadership while Phil demonstrated performance and task oriented leadership. These differences in the leadership styles are ascertained to have diverse impacts on the employee satisfaction and performance. Question 1 Dominant Leadership Styles That Ben and Phil Demonstrated Among the two leadership styles revealed by Ben Samuels and Phil Jones, the style adopted by the Phil reflects more dominant nature during his tenure as plant manager in Consolidated Products. Contrarily, the leadership style adopted by Ben can be identified to be soft. Indeed, it can be identified that both the leaders depicted radically different leadership approaches. It can be ascertained from the case that Ben had decided to pick a soft approach towards the employees. He believed that “if you treat people right, they will do a good job for you without supervision or pushing”. Ben used to treat the employees in the organization as partners. He can be identified to be very much cautious about his employees’ health and problems. Owing to his deep concern for the employees in the organization, he had set-up fitness centers. In addition, Ben also undertook social activities sponsored by the plants such as company picnics and holiday parties for his employees several times a year. Ben believed that treating employees properly and correctly would increase their loyalty towards organization. He used to spend a lot of time with his employees discussing about their health, families and problems faced by the employees along with trying to resolve their problems. Even in the slack times encountered by the organization, he avoided employee lay-offs. Ben believed that it is often very difficult to find and replace skilled and talented workers. However, it is worth mentioning that his benevolent behavior does not make him a good leader. His leadership style strongly revealed empathic, compassionate, respectful and humble characteristics. Thus, it can be identified that Ben has adopted supportive leadership style. Although he revealed his care and respect for the employees in the organization and has been greatly liked by the employees but the productivity of the organization during his tenure was badly suffering. Moreover, he did not set any objectives or standards for his supervisors which can be attributed to the dismal performance of organization. Consequently, the company’s turnover was found to be the lowest among it’s five other plants. It can be stated that in the present day organizational purview, benevolent leadership approach hardly enables to derive long-term sustainability of the organization as it is apparent that without proper set goals and objectives employees find it quite difficult to drive home the advantage (Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters, 2013). Subsequently, it is observed that Phil started trimming the number of activities starting from removal of fitness centre from the plant, stopping funding for picnic and parties and human relation training programs for the supervisors. Phil Believed that “if employees don’t want to do the work, get rid of them and find somebody else who does”. He also established demanding goals and objectives and strict employee performance appraisal was also conducted in order to measure the productivity of each employees. He also went for employee layoff in order to ensure stable production within the plant. He demonstrated committed, passionate, accountable, and enthusiastic along with optimistic characteristics. Correspondingly, leadership style revealed by Phil can be firmly correlated with directive leadership style. Although the directive style followed by Phil simultaneously helped the organization to attain 10% increase in the level of production and reduction of the production cost by 20% but his leadership style also created dissatisfaction among the employees leading towards increased level of employee lay-off. Consequently, it can be stated a perfect balance needs to be maintained by a leader in the workplace wherein the desired level of output from the employees ought to be leverage but their welfare needs to be provided due concern to avoid frequent grievances on their behalf. Question 2 The Differences in Leadership Traits of Ben and Phil It has been observed from the case that both the leaders demonstrated different sets of leadership. Accordingly, leadership traits associated with Ben can be identified as revealing emotional stability, empathy and a lack of blame. He was relation-oriented leader and was more concerned about employee loyalty. On the other hand, the leadership traits associated with Phil can be highlighted as accountability, self-confidence, enthusiasm, tough-mindedness and dominance. He was less-concerned about building relationship rather he was a performance oriented leader. It can be ascertained that different leadership traits revel by both the leaders have significant impacts on the employees of the organization. In this regard, it can be stated that leadership traits demonstrated by Ben had certainly positively influenced the employees. Employees during the tenure of Ben were happy and satisfied. The employees showed their deep respect for their leader. These traits revealed by Ben facilitated in building cordial and emotional relationship with the employees. However, these leadership traits of Ben did not facilitate in motivating the employees to contribute their best towards the organization. On the other hand, the leadership traits demonstrated by Phil conveyed his strong commitment towards the achievement of the organizational goals and objectives. Although the leadership traits displayed by Phil was not appreciated by employees but he was able to influence their behavior in terms of increasing level of output (Kirkpatrick, & Locke, 1991). Theoretically, trait approach focuses on personal attributes (or traits) of leaders which include physical and personality characteristics, values and competencies. Fundamentally, the approach stresses on the fact that trait produces a pattern of behavior which promotes an individual to react in a situation in a particular manner. The trait approach further advocates that an individual demonstrating similar pattern of traits is more likely to respond in a consistent pattern across a variety of situations. Thus, it can be firmly advocated that trait approach serves as an essential measure to determine the effectiveness of leaders (Zaccaro et al., 2003) Question 3 Followership Behaviors and Its Consequences It can be identified from the case that Ben revealed numerous attributes of strong followership such and trust, emotional stability and compassion. However, these attributes of strong followership has certain negative impacts on the productivity of the plant. For instance, his sympathy towards employees had made them less concerned about their performance. The employees in the organization were engaged in building effective relationship with their leader than concentrating on increasing the productivity of the plant. Consequently, demonstration of such followership behavior had dramatically reduced the productivity of the plant as well as it had increased the cost of production. In terms of highlighting another instance, it is observed that his emotional stability had stopped him from employee lay-off even during the slack circumstances which had caused the organization to bear extra costs. On the other hand, the followership behavior demonstrated by Ben significantly facilitated the organization to retain skilled and talented employees which in turn helped in driving a pool of talented employees towards increasing the productivity of the plant. Another situation where followership behavior had positively impacted the productivity can be associated with workplace environment. In this regard, it can be ascertained that the employees during the tenure of Ben were highly satisfied and there were no work pressure. This had enabled the employees to contribute freely towards the productivity of the plant (Blackshear, 2004). It can be ascertained that the followership behaviour was ineffective as employees were much relaxed towards their work performance. They were not required to go through any type of performance appraisals which caused lowered productivity of the plant. Similarly, the followership behaviour demonstrated by Ben also caused employee to feel that they will not be cast-off despite their dismal performance which made them reluctant towards giving their best to the organisation. On the other hand, followership behaviour can be ascertained to be effective in certain situations. Responsively, it was effective as the organization was able to retain talented and skilled employees which facilitated it to ensure the quality of production. Similarly, followership behaviour facilitated to build cordial workplace environment along with reducing any possible conflicts (Forbes.com LLC, 2013). Question 4 Phil’s Leadership Behaviors and Contingency Theory From the organizational perspective, Phil’s leadership behaviors can be considered appropriate. Since the performance of the plant was dismal hence there was greater requirement for taking measures that would result in the increasing the level of production and reducing the production cost. On the other hand, it can be argued that the leadership style demonstrated by Phil was extremely unrealistic from the employees’ point of view. This is because he strictly omitted the aspect of relationship building and employee welfare. It would have been vital for Phil if he would have undertaken measures to increase the competency of employees rather than casting them off. Correspondingly, such initiative of Phil had negatively influenced the behavior of the employees. In order to cope up with the challenges of low productivity, he would adopt the contingency theory of building effective leader-employee relationship. Implementing of such contingency theory would have facilitated Phil to address the needs of both the employees as well as the organization. Furthermore, he would have engaged in creating friendly environment wherein every employee is motivated to contribute their best towards the accomplishment of the organizational goals and objectives (Bolden, 2003; Yukl, 1999). References Blackshear, P. B. (2004). The followership continuum: a model for increasing organizational productivity. The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 9 (1), 1-16. Bolden, R., Gosling, J., Marturano, A. & Dennison, P. (2003). A review of leadership theory and competency frameworks. Centre for Leadership Studies, 1-44. Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters. (2013). Leadership traits & leadership styles. Retrieved from http://www.capmembers.com/media/cms/Leadership_Traits_and_Leadership_st_3DC89AFC57F57.pdf Forbes.com LLC. (2013). Leadership 310: The four principles of 'followership'. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/garypeterson/2013/04/23/the-four-principles-of-followership/ Kirkpatrick, S. A., & Locke, E. A. (1991). Leadership: do traits matter. Academy of Management Executive, 5 (2), 48-60. Yukl, G. (1999). An evaluative essay on current conceptions of effective leadership. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 8 (1), 33-48. Zaccaro, S. J. (2007). Trait-based perspectives of leadership. The American Psychological Association 2(16), 6-16. Zaccaro, S. J., Kemp, C., & Bader, P. (2003). Leader traits and attributes. Retrieved from http://www.corwin.com/upm-data/5014_Antonakis_Chapter_5.pdf Read More