«Leasdership Assigment» - Great Essay Sample

Case 1

Group decision making plays an important role in the growth of the level of employee satisfaction due to the increase of participation in the various aspects of work. However, some decisions may not be appropriate for group decision making process in companies and professional groups. For example, some decisions require people to support maximization of individual benefits for each separate employee, giving no or small opportunities for people to unite to support some common ideas and views. Group decision making should be used by managers for the cases when employees may derive personal and collective benefits and do not act in opposition to each other, because such cases may worsen the relations inside teams.

Group decision making is a complicated process, and the manger should pay significant attention to the issues they are putting for group consideration (Koontz & Weihrich 2015, p. 721). The free choice of vacation schedules by all members of personnel presupposes the desire of each person to take the most convenient days with regard to various external factors, which may be similar for different employees. Therefore, some people are likely to decide to take vacations on similar dates. However, there is no general interest in making the system work to grant every person vacation days during the period they prefer, so every person needs to support only their private interests. In this case, the group is not capable of effectively resolving the problem of establishing proper schedules to satisfy different employees.

The second decision used to test group decision making procedures involves the reconsideration of the productive standards for employees. For instance, a factory may have a system of bonuses for employees who make more products than determined by the standards. It had just modernized the equipment to make the rate of production per employee higher than it was during the initial period. Thus, employees were asked to consider whether they support the increase of productive standards with regard to new improvements of machines that enable the staff to produce a greater quantity of goods. However, the workers decided not to increase the standards, explaining this by the fact that their real salaries had not been growing for a long period of time, while the preservation of the old productive standards under the new rates of productivity will help people increase their salaries. In this case, one may see that employees were faced the necessity to decide whether to protect their personal interests or improve the level of profitability of the enterprise and increase the income of shareholders. At the same time, there is a continuous tendency towards the decline of the real incomes of factory workers and manual labor employees. Therefore, one may see that employees came to the decision to resolve a systematic economic problem at the expense of shareholders rather that agree to the reduction of their salaries. Consequently, the decision was not appropriate for group decision procedures.

Primarily, the manager let their employees make decisions, the scale of which was too large. In this case, they should have established a concrete framework for people to act rather than give them with the task to make a vacation schedule. Employees had a number of aspects to consider, while the existing approach made them combine all factors into a single decision-making process. Primarily, the manager should have asked employees to consider whether the system of priorities for the schedule's conflicts should be based on the level of productivity of the person or the maturity of the employee as the most important criteria. Thus, only a clear resolution of the first issue could have helped the personnel to focus on the effective creation of a new schedule graph. Moreover, the manager should have allowed themselves the right of final ruling to confirm the schedule the employees want to have. On the one hand, such an approach could have increased the rate of employee participation in the decision-making process of the department. On the other hand, it could have prevented the emergence of interpersonal conflicts inside the team due to the manager making the final decision instead of it being reached through a consensus of employees.

When talking about the problem of introduction of new standards, the significant issue was the luck of knowledge of the persons about the sources of the introduced modification and their inability to assess the growing level of compensation received by workers. These factors could negatively affect the long-term financial stability of the plant. Therefore, the manager should have developed materials for the personnel clearly determining the main financial issues related to the decision they were required to make. What is more, the staff should have been given other opportunities to gains financial benefits in case they adopt the new standards to decrease the actual level of compensations they may receive. For example, the personnel could have been offered to receive a certain amount of shares of the company for taking the decision to lower their salaries. In this case, the alternative price of the reduction of salaries could have been outweighed by the growing sense of belonging of individuals and increased their desire to improve and promote the plant further. Moreover, the manager should have been present during the meeting at least in the advisory capacity to be the representative of the plant and motivate the employees to think about the other party dependent on their decision.

At the same time, the very idea of changing the scheduling system could have been wrong due to the probability of it causing interpersonal conflicts in the sphere. On the one hand, the ruling of the manager is an external factor, which can distract an individual, but one is required to obey it regardless of the personal attitude towards the problem. On the other hand, the inability to effectively communicate with colleagues to ensure the most convenient schedule for oneself could make the person feel weak and distracted from their own position within the team. Thus, the determination of the working schedules represents a rather problematic issue which did not constitute a matter of concern for the employees, while its consideration was making people focus on support of the private interests instead of collective ones.

Furthermore, one may see that the very problem with the decision to adopt new standards was the necessity for employees to either refuse the chance to increase their salaries or to preserve the old standards and have higher gains. In this case, only a significant increase of the level of informational support to the staff accompanied by an introducing of alternative value could have made the decision appropriate for managers to involve the participative approach. Thus, the decision was inappropriate because it made people protect their private interests of earning higher salaries, while having no wide perspective on the issue.

Group decision making is an important component of the effective participation of employees in the process of governing their establishments, but the manager should consider the issues to be resolved by the staff. For example, such problems should have collective meaning rather than touch the sphere of interpersonal relations of employees. What is more, the manager should participate in the process of informing the employees and developing a system of motivation for them to adopt non-beneficial decision that can benefit the company instead.

Part 2

In the modern economic environment, leaders play an important role in the process of improvement of their organizations and increasing the efficiency of their performance. What is more, a leader should be effective in the creation and promotion of their vision to make employees follow a common goal and focus on the realization of the organization's tasks while still promoting their personal interests. In this regard, Marsha Brown showed herself as a good manager because she simultaneously improved the operations of the branch office and empowered her employees. Marsha Brown combines transformational and charismatic leadership traits when performing as a manager, and such approach helps her to be effective when improving the performance of the branch office and promoting the vision of the company.

Marsha appeared to be an affective aspirational leader working on empowerment of employees to perform the new functions crucial for their development. Primarily, Marsha found that the employees of the branch were distracted due to the role of department in preparation of future management for the head office. Employees felt as if they were required to teach new personnel without receiving any personal gains. In turn, Marsha negotiated her employees to be able to participate in the same programs to motivate them to work on self-development by establishing clear goals, including gaining a new position within the head office. Moreover, Marsha introduced cross-training programs to teach employees how to work in various branches of the bank. Such an approach helped to make the banking branch more adjustable to the peak seasons by enabling employees to undertake the functions that experienced the most significant pressure. What is more, it increased the knowledge of the personnel about the different areas of operations of the bank. At the same time, Marsha often asked her employees to conduct the meeting instead of her, delegating responsibility to them and teaching them the basis of managerial work from the practical side. Thus, she used both the building trust and inspiring leadership behaviors. One may see Marsha's leadership style as focused on aspiration of employees for the further development by establishing opportunities for professional growth. At the same time, Marha is similarly good at creation and modernization of the existing processes within the company, because she can effectively determine the main issues with the operation of the company and develop ways for their resolution.

Marsha realized that the vision of her branch office is preparation of future managerial staff for the head office of the company. This led her to consider that the development program should not be changed, but include more participants from the branch office who were willing to get the new posts in the head office. Consequently, she determined the most important goal of her branch as preparing effective and motivated managerial staff to run the whole bank in the future. Marsha introduced cross-training preparation for all employees to learn more about the various aspects of the work of the banking institution. Such step could have increased the efficiency of preparation of the managerial staff as well as improved the performance of the company. Additionally, she had focused on the growth of the overall employee satisfaction from the work in the bank, increasing the quality of future management as well as reducing the flow of the employees by creating high potential inside the bank. At the same time, she resorted to delegating her own duties to various employees of the bank to make the personnel more engaged in the different spheres of performance of the company. All those actions had resulted in the growth of commitment of employees to the bank and increased the overall quality of procedures performed within the branch office. Therefore, one may say that the effective determination and realization of the vision helped Marsha to promote her office.

Marsha represents a combination of charismatic and transformational leadership character. As a transformational leader, Marsha was able to effectively realize the exiting state of affairs at her office and considered the changes that were required to improve the quality of performance of the branch and increase the level of satisfaction of its employees. For example, she developed an effective structure to increase the rate of participation of employees of the branch office. At the same time, she introduced a new system of development of the staff to make the current employees more satisfied with their future career opportunities. On the other hand, while being a charismatic leader, Marsha had enough personal power to make employees accept her decisions in the short period of time. What is more, one may witness Marsha's focus on empowering her employees thought various means, including delegation of her own duties. Surely, such an approach was effective in showing Marsha's desire to help employees in their development, increasing their level of work satisfaction, and the loyalty of employees towards Marsha. Therefore, her focus was not only on the processes, but on the development and engagement of people. This makes Marsha a charismatic leader. In this case, one may say that Marsha has the traits of both a transformational and a charismatic leader, and her leadership style is an effective combination of both.

Marsha Brown is an effective leader combining transformational and charismatic leadership styles in her performance. Marsha had managed to improve operations of the branch office and motivate employees to focus on their development and professional growth. In this case, she anticipated that defining the vision of the branch office as the effective preparation of employees for the head office would be highly motivating, because the employees will be able to understand the various aspects of performance of the bank.