AC 2.1 Explain the skills and attributes needed for leadership.
Having great ideas and assembling team to meet the set goal is the first step in forming a successful business venture. The ability to successful execute the ideas is what creates the difference between a dreamer and an entrepreneur. In that case, there are several attributes that contribute to good leadership skills. They include:
Communication
It may seem clear in you mind to know what you want to accomplish; however, making someone else understand to understand your goals can be a problem. As such, good leadership relies on the ability to explain clearly what you want to be done, by communicating your visions to your team. The benefit of a leader having good communication skills is to create a productive working environment in which the members involved can work towards achieving the same goals. For example, the leaders can practice an open-door policy whereby he can talk to his employees on a daily basis (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009). From the excerpt, Mrs. Hogan established a worker productivity group in which she encouraged worker to come up with goals and develop plans for achieving them.
Positive Attitude
As a leader, it is his job to keep the team motivated in order to ensure the success of the company, and to keep the morale of the workers at high levels. Workers feel happy and when treated to be as a part of the company and when they are appreciated. For example, a team leader can provide snacks, or give awards to the most hardworking employees (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009). Mrs. Hogan part of her method of leading her workers was the formation of the worker’s award group. The purpose of giving awards was to encourage workers to be devoted in achieving the set goals.
Ability to Delegate
One key element involved delegation is the ability to learn to trust your team with the company’s vision. Learning to trust your employees’ devotion towards achieving the company’s objectives is a sign of strength, and not a weakness. Delegating tasks within various departments involves identifying the strength of your workers. For example, it is important to find what each employee loves doing most, which establishes trust and enables the team leader to focus on higher tasks (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009). From the excerpt, Mr. Worthy trusted workers to do their work without his interference. Most workers never saw him, but they liked his leadership and some even had stayed for long time in the business while enjoying the freedom in their work. In addition, Mr. Worthy trusted the workers and this enabled him to attend to other tasks.
AC 2.2 Explain the difference between leadership and management.
Leadership involves motivating and inspiring the employees while the role of a manager is to plan, organize, direct and control. Mr. Worthy inspired many workers by not monitoring their workers at a close supervision. As a result, some of the workers loved their jobs and were motivated to continue working at the Fancy Footwear (Pride, Hughes & Kapoor, 2009). Mrs. Hogan more often engaged in organizing workers into groups and communicating down the ideas on notice boards so as to ensure the workers achieved the goals of the company.
A manager motivates while a manager develops (Mumford, Gold & Thorpe, 2012). Mrs. Hogan was a motivator and she gave out awards as a way of motivating workers to achieve the set goals. On the other hand, Mr. Worthy developed a self-motivating attitude to his employees by allowing them to work under minimum supervision, a plan that motivated employees to carry the company’s vision.
Furthermore, a manager is a copy while a leader is original (Mumford, Gold & Thorpe, 2012). Mr. Worthy had been in the company since when it was formed and therefore, had the leadership skills to operate the business. Mrs. Hogan had been an employee who was promoted to management position. She was relying on the company’s already established skills to advance her leadership style.
Another difference is that a manager focuses on doing thing right while a leader focuses on doing the right thing. What was the right thing to do for Mrs. Hogan was to ensure productivity of the workers, without being sensitivity to whether her methods were well received by the workers. For Mr. Worthy, he cared about the how the workers responded to adjustments and as one of his tactic; he used correspondent groups and memos to communicate his plans.
AC 2.3 Compare the leadership styles of Mr. Worthy and Ms. Hogan.
It is clear that Ms. Hogan adopted participative/democratic leadership while Mr. Worthy adopted autocratic leadership.
Participative leadership is a common style in small financial institutions. Leaders invite their subordinates to make suggestions in the process of decision making. This kind of leadership motivates workers and it facilitates personal development. As Mumford, Gold & Thorpe (2012) explains, it involves following written rules or ‘working by book.’ It is perceived to be suitable since workers in banks handle large sums of money. Mr. Hogan used the participative leadership to engage workers by communicating frequently with them, creating suggestion groups and even making an effort to know them by their names.
In contrast, autocratic leaders exercise powers over subordinates. In this kind of leadership, subordinates have limited opportunities to make suggestions and they just follow orders. This is an extreme form of transactional leadership where leaders have absolutes powers over their subjects. According to Mumford, Gold & Thorpe (2012), the subjects have limited or no opportunities to make suggestions even if they have views that could be beneficial to an organization. This kind of leadership tends to demoralize worker who feel that they are not treated fairly. Consequently, autocratic leadership usually experiences high levels of staff turnover and absenteeism. In extreme cases, it leads to workers’ strikes. However, the style is often effective when applied in some unskilled and routine jobs. Despite this, its disadvantages outweigh advantages. It is clear from the excerpt that Mr. Worthy practice autocratic leadership. He often used his secretary to communicate with the workers but never engaged in active supervision. As a result, the workers had to comply with the order from their boss.
AC 2.4 How do you think the people under Ms. Hogan can be motivated? Explain how Ms. Hogan can motivate the staff to achieve the objectives.
Further, management should motivate teams by instituting an effective reward system. Organizations should provide rewards to teams in recognition of good performance (Mumford, Gold & Thorpe, 2012). Examples of rewards and benefits are bonuses, special assignments, and office fixtures, time off, awards, promotions, recognition and verbal praise. Basically, employees in a team feel good and “naturally high” after completing a job and delivering high quality outcome. They feel that they are more competent, have achieved greater development jointly and at personal levels and that they have greater self control over their work (Mumford, Gold & Thorpe, 2012). An effective reward system has to satisfy the basic needs of all team members, needs to be distributed fairly and equitably and need to be comparable or better than those given by other, competitive organizations in the same area. Mrs. Hogan can use verbal praise to make employees feel good, especially the senior employees who had been in that industry for a long time (Mumford, Gold & Thorpe, 2012).
Mrs. Hogan can also use time-off; the can introduce contest that earn time. She can put goals in a scheduled time, and once these goals have been realized, she can reward the workers with time off. For example, allowing earlier dismissal and earlier lunch breaks will make people compete for the time-off. Furthermore, giving workers recognition for something they have already accomplished as a way of appreciating them. In Mrs. Hogan’s context, before implementing her management, she should first recognize the contributions of that had been made by the senior employees. It would enable her to “fit in” and even implement the changes without the resistance from the workers.
Leadership and Management LO3
3.1 The benefits if team working for the organization
There are several benefits of teamwork to the organization described in the case study. Firstly, team working will enable the enable the customer service personnel in the organization to work with a higher level of efficiency than before. As Daft and Lane (2009) explain, combining efforts enhances the morale of the workers. Ultimately, this influences them to work harder and to achieve more than usually. In the organization, the customer service personnel are going to work harder in providing services to the customers. Secondly, team working enhances the speed at which the workers carry out their tasks (Daft & Lane, 2009). As such, the customer service personnel will assist one another when providing services to customers. Hence, there will be no delays in the provision of the services. Eventually, the workers will serve more customers in less time. Thirdly, team work enhances creativity and innovation among the workers, leading better output quality (Daft & Lane, 2009). When working together, the workers will be able to come up with different ideas on how to solve the emerging problems and how to provide better services. As such, they will enhance the quality of the services offered to the customers. Further, team working will help to improve the effectiveness of the services offered by the customer service personnel. When there is overload of tasks in the department, for instance, the workers will be dividing the tasks among themselves. This will also help to prevent delays that may be present without team working.
When working in a team, the workers provide each other with mutual support as they work to achieve the set goals (Daft & Lane, 2009). They provide one another with encouragement and assistance. As such, the organization’s customer service personnel will gain confidence that will enable them to work together to achieve the set goal of improving in customer service quality by 15 percent. Lastly, team working will also be beneficial to the workers and the leader since they will have greater sense of accomplishment. This is due to the fact that the team working will enable them to accomplish what they could not achieve individually (Daft & Lane, 2009).
3.2 Difference between working as a team leader and as a team member
There is significant different between working in the team as a leader and working as a team member. The main role of a team member is to take collective responsibility through working with the other team members to achieve the set goals or to complete the assigned task (Werner & DeSimone, 2009). A team member is expected to be committed and enthusiastic, while sharing the assigned responsibility with the other team members. For instance, the members of the customer service team are expected to share the responsibility of providing the assigned customer service tasks without any of them failing to do so. A team member has the responsibility to ensure that the assigned task is completed within the set time and has the desired quality. In the organization described in the case study, the members of the customer service team are expected to serve the customers without delay. Further, a team member is expected to display his or her professional skills while working. He/she is expected to apply the relevant knowledge and skills while undertaking the assigned tasks (Werner & DeSimone, 2009). For instance, a member of the customer service team in the case study is expected to display the relevant customer service knowledge and skills when dealing with the customers.
The roles of a team member are different from the roles of a team member. The team leader has the responsibility of developing the strategy to be followed by the team members when undertaking the assigned tasks. For instance, the team leader in the customer service department in the organization described in the case study has a responsibility of designing the strategy to be followed by the customer service personnel in order to achieve a 15 percent improvement in the quality of customer service (Werner & DeSimone, 2009). The team leader also plays the role of mediating the conflicts that emerge between the team members. For instance, the team leader of a customer service department should listen to the conflicting parties and assist them in finding a solution to the conflict (Werner & DeSimone, 2009). Further, a team leader has a duty to examine whether the team members are carrying out the assigned tasks as agreed. Also, the team leader has the responsibility of providing training to the team members who are unable to carry out their effectively. The team leader also creates reports about the team’s progress and submits it to the management (Werner & DeSimone, 2009). In addition, the team leader listens to the team members and acts as a link between them and the management. He/she gives directions and instructions to the team members on how tasks are to be undertaken (Werner & DeSimone, 2009). In short, the roles of a team leader are different from the roles of a team member.
3.3 Reviewing the effectiveness of the team in achieving the set goal
There are several steps through which a team leader in the customer service department can review the effectiveness of the customer service personnel in achieving the targeted goal of 15 percent improvement in the quality of customer service. The first step is the assessment of the customer service personnel to determine whether they have the required knowledge and skills needed for a customer-service job (Holman et al., 2005). The second step is to establish a strategy that would allow the customers to give feedback regarding the quality of services they receive. The team leader should also asses the current levels of customer satisfaction. Also, the team leader should asses the level of satisfaction of the customer service personnel and their readiness to adopt the new strategy that is meant to improve the quality of customer service. The team leader should provide the customer service personnel with a mission statement and a statement of the objective to be met, and then gauge their responses towards them. Further, the team leader should design an improvement plan with the set goal and the responsibilities of each customer service personnel. After distributing them to the team members, the team leader should gauge their level of awareness of the responsibilities (Holman et al., 2005). The team leader should establish a strategy of measuring and monitoring the progress of the customer-service workers as the provide services to the customers. As well, the team leader should set improvement targets to be achieved within specific time intervals and then asses whether the workers achieve them within specific time intervals. The team leader should also develop employee performance evaluation form in which to record the daily performances of the workers.
References
Daft, R. L & Lane, P. (2009), Management. New York, NY: Cengage Learning
Holman, D., Wall, T. D., Clegg, C. W., Sparrow, P. & Howard, A. (2005). The Essentials of the
New Workplace: A Guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working Practices. New York NY: John Wiley & Sons
Mumford, A., Gold, J., & Thorpe, R. (2012). Gower handbook of leadership and management
development. Burlington: Gower Publishing, Ltd.
Pride, W., Hughes, R., & Kapoor, J. (2009). Business. Natorp Boulevard: Cengage Learning.
Werner,J. M. & DeSimone, R. L. (2009), Human resources development. New York, NY:
Cengage Learning
