‘Chuck Mackinnon’s Leadership Effectiveness Who’s Problems’ Essay Example

‘Chuck Mackinnon’s Leadership Effectiveness Who’s Problems’ Essay This explanation shows that there are many problems with his management style which has led to unsatisfied work performances. The objective of this report is to provide an analysis and evaluation of the case study focusing on Chuck leadership effectiveness. The case study analysis shows that Chuck had failed to recognize or control emotions of his staffs and did not succeed to build effective teamwork and could not eliminate conflict within team. Theories include motivation, emotional intelligence (EI), team and conflict theory as well as leadership theories were applied within this case study. The report evaluates that Chuck leadership style is ineffective and inefficient as he lacks sufficient managerial and leadership skills. In addition, this report also provides possible recommendations for Chuck on how to be an effective leader. The recommendations are based on theories which were used to evaluate managerial skills and leadership skills. After taking all aspects into consideration, it is recommended that Chuck as an managing director might apply concept of expectancy and MBO theories by using rewards or goal setting methods to motivate his subordinates. In addition, Chuck should improve his emotion intelligence, in particular on empathy and handling relationship aspects. Furthermore, in the case of building effective team and coping with conflict, Chuck could be aware of step of building high performance team as well as select the most suitable strategy to cope with conflict. Views and applications of effective leadership approach in order to improve leadership skills are strongly recommended for most organizations. Introduction The purpose of this report is to analyze the case â€Å"Chuck Mackinnon’s Leadership Effectiveness: Whose problems†. We will write a custom essay sample on ‘Chuck Mackinnon’s Leadership Effectiveness Who’s Problems’ specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on ‘Chuck Mackinnon’s Leadership Effectiveness Who’s Problems’ specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on ‘Chuck Mackinnon’s Leadership Effectiveness Who’s Problems’ specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer The concepts of managerial theories are used to support analysis. After analyzing the case study, the possible solutions are provided to direct on how Chuck should do to cope with his particular problems. This report focus on what the main issues occurred from a perspective of leadership, Chuck’s perspective. Chuck Mackinnon’s position and behavior is analyzed in order to define the problems. According to the case, it seems Chuck had the serious challenge in managing people. The main issues came from Chuck’s new position as Managing Director, Financial Institutions, with MBC in New York. Chuck suggested that the traditional business strategy was out of date and a new strategy should be provided. After Chuck proposed the new strategy, issues occurred such as no enough support from top to down, resistance changes from some employees and conflicts between Chuck and his subordinates. Inappropriate behavior such as drinking problems, poor English communication skills still exist which affect the productivity of the organization. Therefore, the objectives of this report are using five managerial theories: Emotional Intelligence EI), Motivation, Team, Leadership and Conflict theories to analyze Chuck’s leadership effectiveness and apply those theories into issues to solve problems. Case Study Analysis Based on Managerial Theories Motivation Theory Motivation is the process of inspiring and sustaining goal-directed behavior (Nelson Quick 2006). According to Katsva Condrey (2005), organization will achieve higher performance ratio depend on the level of effort from e mployees. Employee will provide greater effort if they are highly motivated. The main purpose of motivation in organization is to encourage employee to achieve its goals with high level of performance. Generally, there are many motivation theories which attempt to explain more understandable human behaviors and suggest managerial practice for improving motivation (Katsva Condrey, 2005). The motivation theory can be classified into three main concepts which are internal, process and external theories (Nelson Quick, 2006). Firstly, the Internal Theories are focusing on internal needs to energize individual behaviors. Internal Theories attempt to define how processes and structures in workforce can be designed to satisfy those needs. Examples of Internal Theories are Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory, McClelland’s Need Theory and Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory. Secondly, the Process Theories are mainly focus on the interaction between individual and environment (Nelson Quick, 2006). On the other hand, the External theories are central concern on environmental elements as well as using consequences of behaviors as the common factors in order to understand and explain human behavior in workplace. The Expectancy Theory, Goal-Setting Theory and Management By Objective (MBO) methods are some examples of process and external theories. Expectancy theory of motivation is highlight on people belief on performance process. This theory relies on people belief in relationship between the effort, performance and reward as a motivator. For example, it might consider that putting high effort can affect on high performance and high performance which would lead to reward. However, motivators should take into consideration that different individuals have different expectations on reward, such as promotion, good wages, challenge work, help in personal problems, fair discipline, respect and feel as part of business. Similarity, Gold-setting theory is using priorities, purpose and goals as significant sources to motivate people. It is often used for reducing stress and conflict at the workplace (Nelson Quick, 2006; Katsva Condrey, 2005). In addition, MBO concept is a part of goal-setting theory which focuses on employees and managers interaction and negotiation in goal-setting process. The major benefit from MBO program is to eliminate individual, behavior, attitude, gender and also culture differences. These differences are significant causes of barrier in motivation process (Nelson Quick, 2006; Katsva Condrey, 2005). Issues According to Case study, Chuck failed to motivate his subordinates who lazy for work and do not support his new strategy. There are two main issues in case that illustrates Chuck improper or ineffective motivation styles. He is poor in self- motivation and poor in motivate subordinates to perform proper work attitude. For example, Chuck failed to motivate Glenn (Associate) to provide higher effort on his work although Chuck knew his only need was to be promoted as a director. Furthermore, Chuck seems to overlook in order to motivate Dale, one of his directors, in improving his performance which Chuck let him slide on his work without any encouragement. Similar to Deitr’s case, another associate, Chuck does not provide sufficient attention in motivating Deitr to increase his work performance. The case study states that Chuck notices Deitr has spotty work performance, but he does not attempt to motivate him either offer rewards or promotion. What is worse, Chuck seems to use wrong strategy to motivate Deitr when improving his English skills by overlook in nationality respect issues. In addition, Chuck failed to motivate his boss, Eldon and Margaret to fully accept his new strategy. As conflicts between Chuck and his suborinates goes on, Margaret’s attitude toward Chuck changes as there is an increasing doubt by Margaret on Chuck’s management skills and motivation power. As a result, it leads to higher difficulties in implementing new strategy because of lacking professional support. Emotional Intelligence (EI) Theory Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to manage and use self-emotion to deal with people in different situations appropriately and effectively. With high EI, people can read and understand feelings and emotions of others including detect the nuance of emotional reactions. In addition, EI can apply knowledge to persuade others through emotional regulation and control (Nguyen, 1999). For organization, EI can be considered as a critical component that can affect the performance of employees. Emotions should be managed properly because the competencies of leaders can be negative affected if they can not control their emotions when making decisions or motivate others which might affect employee effectiveness (Salovey and Mayer, 1990). Negative emotions cause the interpersonal conflict in the workplace and can result in the actions that break organization’s norms and threaten team members. According to Goleman’s hyper-popular EI model (1998), there are five domains in the Emotional Intelligence. †¢ Self-Awareness Observing yourself and recognizing and understanding your emotions and their effects. Knowing what your strengths and restrictions are. Realizing what abilities and skills you have. †¢ Self-Regulation Managing your feelings by hiding negative emotions and find out what the causes of feelings are. Try to discover the method to handle fears, anxieties, anger and sadness. †¢ Self-Motivation Knowing what your desired goal is and use your emotions to drive yourself into action in order to achieve the goal. †¢ Empathy Sensitivity what other’s feelings and their perspectives are, read and understand the dynamics of relationships and valuing the differences in how people feel about things. †¢ Social Skills Inducing or convincing others through communication, collaboration, building relationship and conflict management. Issues Chuck can manage his self-emotions properly which did not affect his works. But his lack of empathy and social skills can be seen as the cause of issues as he did not recognize and understand emotions of others and had poor relationships with some of his subordinates. Proposing the new strategy is an important and delicate event. However, there was no support from his boss, Eldon Frost and some employees. Lack of empathy was a cause that made Chuck had conflicts with some employees. For example, Neil Forsyth was in his mid-50s. It is possible that most old people prefer to work in the traditional way and afraid of change because it is more difficult for them to change work styles than young people. This is a reason why Neil did not support the new strategy. However, Chuck did not recognize and understand Neil’s situations which might cause Neil’s performance to fall. Lack of social skills was another cause of conflicts between Chuck and his subordinates. Good relationships will lead to trust and employees can work more effectively (Prati et al, 2003). Chuck had poor relationships with some employees and he did not attempt to build up good relationships with them. He only assign work and watch their performance. Therefore, relationships’ building was omitted and some subordinates did not support Chuck’s new strategy. Team Theory A team is a group generally selected like a working group, but often with sharply defined roles, either cooperative or collaborative. (Marxists Organization, 2006) There are four types of teams: Problem-solving team, Self-managed team, cross-functional team and virtual team. Self-managed work teams, which is groups of 10 to 15 people who take on responsibilities of their former supervisors, is most common in the organization. Chuck’s team is a self-managed work team. There are many factors lead to an effective team. Firstly, size of the team is an important factor to achieve effectiveness. Small team is more effective, but the team size should be large enough to comprise people who can perform the job, as well as those who can manage the product (Mackin, 1994). Belbin (1981) states the six people team was found to be a more stable and enduring group and a large numbers of their experiments were therefore conducted in teams of this size. Secondly, team member selection is another important factor for team building. Mackin’s (1994) team Member Selection Theory described that there are three main steps: 1. Orienting new members. One way to orient new members is to have them interview three of four people on the team for the particular information. 2. Using member substitutions. A substitute is a person who sit in for a team member when he or she could not attend to team meeting or he or she cannot continue the team work, the team leader should use member substitution. 3. Removing a member form team. If find one member can not make any contribution to team or make adversely effect to team, team leader can remove the member. Belbin (1981) also mentioned that teams should choose intelligent people in order to build up an effective team. Furthermore, according to Hess (1987), there are eight criteria to build high performance team: 1. Participative leadership which create interdependency through empowering, and serving others 2. Shared responsibility which establish an environment in which all team members feel as responsible as the manager to apply for performance of the work unit 3. Aligned on purpose that is to build common purpose about why the team exists and what function it has. . High communication-creating a trust and open, honest communication 5. Future focused that is to see change as an opportunity for growth 6. Focused on task that is keeping meetings focused on results 7. Creative talents-applying individual talents and creativity 8. Rapid response that is identifying and acting on opportunities Issues In Case, Chuck known that team is important and tried to turn his disparate and geographica lly dispersed group into a team and he thought maybe skill-enhancing courses might helpful to apply this. He enrolled the entire group in courses to improve organizational and sale skills and try to build camaraderie and team spirit. However, Chuck still fails to build the team. According to Mackin (1994), there are three main causes of team failure. 1. It lacks visible support and commitment form top management. in the case Eldon-Senior Vice President-was driven by the concept of keeping everyone happy, he does not accept the new policy and does not support to team building; 2. The team has too many members and lacks the strong structure necessary to deal with a large team. Chuck tries to change all group members to a team, however, as Mackin (1994) illustrates the small team is more efficient than bigger one; 3. The team has experienced poor leadership within and /or outside the team. There has been resistance from first-line supervisors. Chuck has no sufficient experience of building up or managing a team Conflict Theory Conflicts are the effect of group living and if, it has no well organized it could be destructive the success of the team. However, according to the existing studies of conflict revealed that conflicts are useful, especially for the decision making (Jehn, 1995, 1997). Other studies showed that types of conflicts are able to be effected to the team result in the several ways (Lovelace, Shapiro, and Weingart, 2001). People attempt to advance the conflict to be more useful, when the perception of conflict is defined in the term of tasks rather than the relationships. For instance, the discussion between the positions in the contrasting way is useful. Furthermore, the existing research showed that the conflicts might be not separated between affirmative and unprofitable result (De Dreu and Weingart, 2003). Conflict management approaches According to the conflict types, the decision makers or managers should emphasis on the goals, understanding the performance of the people confronting with conflicts to see whether the conflicts are seem to be from personal relationship or from the tasks itself (Lovelace et al. , 2001). Deutsch (1980) stated that the suitable way to cope with the conflict is the cooperation. In the organization, people who confront with conflict and effort to achieve their goals by using their own’ experiences, meanwhile, others also move in order to attain their goals. The co-operation would be helped them to reach their goal without the conflict. The cooperative approaches provide the convertible achievement and solve the conflict problem through the conflict management. On the other hand, the competitive approaches is seem to be not related to the achievement of the conflict management goals due to the users who stuck in the competition, would oppress their success with the other’s. Issue Conflict occurs within Chuck’s team. For instance, some of his group members were not agreed his new strategy for improving team performance which made the conflict between chuck and his subordinate. Consequently, Neil Forsyth (Director in the Montreal) he believed that his performance was felling down due to the personalities conflict between him and chuck. On the other hand, the conflicting between both of Chuck bosses (Eldon and Margaret) might be the cause of problem which might not support the chuck team reach to the goal. Leadership Theory Krause (1997) defined leadership as the willingness to understanding and chart a course, a control power for job accomplishment by using skills and abilities of other people. Northouse (1997) further mentioned that Leadership is a way to improve how they present themselves to others. There is a wide variety theoretical approach to understand how leadership works. Northouse (1997) emphasizes that leadership involves influences which concerning about how leader affects others. Leadership occurs in groups where it takes place and leadership attention to goals where leader directs a group of members towards job accomplishments. According to Northouse (1997), there are many different approaches to leadership, such as Trait Approach, Style Approach, Situational Approach, Psychodynamic Approach, Trait Approach: Base on Northouse’s analysis, Trait Approach mainly focuses on the leaders which concern with their own traits and who has these traits. There are five major traits that summarized by Northouse: Intelligent, Self-Confidence, Determination, Integrity and Sociability. Table in Appendix C contains a variety of studies about leadership traits and chara cteristics. †¢ Style Approach/Behavior Approach: This approach focuses on behaviors of leaders which shift attention on leader’s characteristic to leader’s actions. The Ohio State Studies, The Michigan Studies and the studies by Blake and Mouton are the main representative of this approach (Northouse, 1997). Ohio State University states there are two types of behaviors: initiating structure and consideration. Both of them are distinct and independent. Michigna studies further found out two types of behaviors, employee orientation and production orientation. In addition, Blake and Mouton introduced a â€Å"Managerial (leadership) Grid† model which joining concern for production and people into one grid (Northouse, 1997). Situational Approach: Hersey and Blanchard (1969) developed the theory that different situations demand different kinds of leadership (Northouse, 1997). Leader need to evaluate employee to see how competent and committed employee can perform based on the assumption that employee’s skill and motivation changes all the time. This emphasizes the match between the leader’s style and specific situational variables (Northouse, 1997). †¢ Contingency Approach: Base on Fiedler’s model, contingency theory tires to match leaders to a suitable situation. There are three factors for situations: leader-member relations, task structure and position power (Northouse, 1997). Leader- member relations is important for enhance leadership. This factor refer to the degree of confidence, loyalty and attraction that follower feel about their leader and the group atmosphere. Task structure refers to the degree which the job assignment are processed and how it is structured and completed. If the task structure is clear it provides higher ability for leader to control and influence. Position power refers to the amount of control or authority that the leader decides to reward or punish followers. There are many different approaches to leadership. Hatakeyama (1985) suggests that there is an increasing need for effective management skills in today’s corporation. There are two aspects of managing, the occupational aspect and human aspect. Occupational aspect of managing is the basis of the maintenance and structural innovation, but human aspects mainly focus on people, a good leader or manager is who can win the trust of their people, motivate their staffs and the ability to educate and create pleasant working environment for employees. In addition, Eales-White (2003) defines effective leadership as the ability of the leader to display integrity in decision-making, confident enough to make mistakes, admit mistake and learn from mistakes, direct with coaching and delegate authority as well as responsibility. Especially one recommendation that pointed out by Harvard Business Review (2003) pointed out that quiet leaders often look for ways to buy time, this provide careful execution allow turbulent waters to clam. Issues According to case study, Chuck seemed to be as a problem in his leadership skill which is extremely vital for driven the team to achieve the goal. According to Fiedler’s model under Contingency’s theory, situation should tight closer to leader and analysis leader’s effectiveness (Northouse, 1997). Different situations lead to different decisions. An effective leader should evaluate the situation and apply integrity, confidences to reach satisfy decisions. Chuck lack of compatible leadership skills where there are conflicts within his team that he could not resolve. Some members of Chuck’s team have serious drinking problems and constantly absent to work and poor performance for the team tasks. Furthermore, there is no sufficient support from Chuck’s subordinates and boss to implement new strategy. This indicates a clear failure of Chuck’s leadership skills. After careful analysis for the cases and the evaluation of various theories, there is a serious need for Chuck to improve his own leadership skills in order to lead his team towards organizational goals. The following sections emphasis each perspectives and provides possible solution and recommendations for Chuck on how to be an effective leader. Recommendations Possible Solutions According to the case study analysis, it illustrates that Chuck can be classified ineffective leader because of lack in motivation staffs, low EI, fail to build high performance team as well as cannot eliminate the conflict. Therefore, this report recommends the possible solutions how to improve leadership and managerial skills. How to motivate staffs/employees? †¢ Expectancy Theory According to Bono Judge (2003), employees will be more motivated, more satisfied and perform better when there is a specific goal or desirable rewards. This can apply expectancy theory of motivation. For this case, Chuck should motivate Glenn, Dale and Deitr based on Expectancy Theory. Glenn desired to get promotion. Chuck might set the possibility reward for him as getting promoted if he can show much effort on his work as well as improving his performance during time period. Dale and Deitr seem to have relatively lower motivation at work. This might due to his long-standing position. However, they also have problem with uncertain quality of work. In this case, Chuck might reward them by appreciation on high quality work as well as promote them if they have stability high performance work. Goal-Setting Theory Management By Objective (MBO) Theory Goal-setting theory and MBO method are the significant approach in motivation theory (Meyer, Becker Vandenberghe, 2004). In case of having different attitude at work, Goal-Setting Theory and MBO method can be applied in order to motivate both top management (Eldon) and Chuck’s colleagues (Patrick and Neil). Problems for lacking agreement and interpersonal conflict between top management would be reduced after apply goal-setting and MBO method in workplace (Nelson Quick 2006). In addition, Ramlall (2004) states that employees will be influenced on strategy which designed to reach organization mission. Therefore, chuck will get an opportunity to explain his new strategy and its benefits to the team. Chuck should obtain other members’ opinion and suggestions and provide possible improvement for his new strategy. By increasing employee involvement, disagreement and conflicts might be reduced or possibly removed. How Chuck can improve his EI to be emotionally intelligent leader? According to Goleman, Boyatzis and Mckee (2002), Emotional Intelligence is a critical component of leadership effectiveness. Even though Chuck thought that the traditional strategy had to be replaced with the new strategy but changing immediately was not a suitable way. Before changing, Chuck should prevent the conflict that can occur with his employees by recognizing their emotions and perspectives. Building relationships with them should be done as well in order to build up trust. †¢ Showing his empathy toward the subordinates Before proposing the new strategy, Chuck should recognize the emotions and perspectives of his subordinates first. Chuck must give the opportunities for all employees to express their feelings and their perspectives about the new strategy and try to motivate them appropriately. Such as in Neil case, Chuck realized that Neil was not ready to work with the new strategy because he was afraid of changes. Chuck should provide more involvement in tasks of the new strategy in order to encourage Neil. This can reduce Neil’s disagreement and resistance and also show the respect to him. †¢ Building and handling relationships with the subordinates Building and handling relationships with subordinates are important for Chuck to enhance trust and support. With trust, it is easier to motivate and influence the employees to work with the new strategy. Friendly face-to-face meetings should be provided to build good relationships with them. In Patrick case, due to Patrick was demoted and his position was replaced by Chuck. It seems that the relationship between Chuck and Patrick is quite bad at the beginning. Chuck must consider that Patrick was a person who proposed the traditional strategy. Building good relationship with Patrick should begin with asking and discussion about the new strategy. This can show the respect to Patrick and it can lead to the good relationship. Using social skills effectively can reduce disagreements and also increase the team performance. How to design build up an effective team? †¢ Design set up a good team Firstly, In order to design a team, Chuck should know the following questions: What is the objectives this team? What features should the individual members of the task team possess? What should the composition of the task team be? What norms do you think the task team should adopt? What is the better size of the team? †¢ Building good team skills Secondly, Chuck should use Hess’s (1987) eight criteria to build team skill and application of the following teambuilding chart: †¢ Select the right team member that fits the organization In the case, Chuck can select appropriate team members to perform different tasks. Use Mackin’s (1994) Team Member Selection Theory to remove unsuitable member. For example, Neil Forsyth who is reluctant to change and have big conflict with Chuck, if there is no other better solution to change Neil’s attitude towards his tasks which Neil might continue damage the team performance, he should be removed from team list. Deitr Poehlmann who is weak in communication and spotty work performance might not suitable to build the high performance team. Although Patrick have drink problem, Chunk should maintain him as a team as he has greater ability in cash management business. As Eldon said, Patrick was great at everything he did. However, there still has conflict between Patrick and Chuck. Patrick did not satisfy that Chuck did not respect the traditional cash management business sufficiently. Using Hess’s (1987) concept where it stated that communicate more and building trust among members can assist to build high performance team. In addition, Chuck should also apply Belbin’s (1981) Team Selection Method by selecting intelligent and experiential high performer as his team member. Such as high achiever Salmon, Morris, Russell and Wilson that already exist in his team, who are highly beneficial to the company. How to reduce conflict between team members? †¢ Apply â€Å"The Bohm-Isaacs Model of Dialog† In order to deal with the conflict, Chuck should use the â€Å"The Bohm-Isaacs Model of Dialog† the get through the conflict. This model provides the strategies to improving the listening, finding the conclusion and differences, and also creating the system of thinking through the group member confronting with conflict. The example of the model (the divergence and dynamics of the conversational path) The Bohm-Isaacs Model of Dialog As it can be seen from the Model above, there are two ways to solve conflict during conversations. If conflict can be reduce, then use skillful conversation analysis, otherwise, has to use â€Å"discussion control† strategy to solve and later debate the problem in order to reach agreement. By using this methodology the conflict might be reduced. And the situation between Chuck and his team members should be better. How to achieve effective leadership? Rupert Eales-White (2003) summaries views of effective leaders as: 1. awareness and self-belief of leadership role 2. focus on – listen, support, provide feedback and coach 3. integrity in decision making 4. share information 5. confident to make mistakes and learn from mistakes 6. direct with coaching 7. delegate authority as well as responsibility As it can be seen from the case, Chuck should apply above criteria in order to be an effective leader. Rupert Eales-White (2003) provides suggestions on how to be an effective leader to build an effective team. Rupert stated that a team leader should: †¢ Trust and believe team-members †¢ Identify the key strengths to do the job and select the person match the company needs †¢ Should have regular meetings to increase communication and staff support †¢ Set up the goal for the team and possible steps to achieve tasks †¢ Develop vision and values and behaviors for employees which will lead to success for the team †¢ Promote feedback Remember the role as a leader According to this case, it is very important for Chuck to develop vision, values and behaviors for his team members to develop the concept on how to success. For example, Chuck can ask all the team members to list all aspects of working in groups that they have dislike and the reasons. Chuck should develop the collective view and causes by discussing with his team members in order to agree on a vision statement, values and behaviors that might improve the team effectives and overcome problems. As it can be seen for the case that, most of the conflicts are arise from the emotions and inappropriate behaviors of the team members. Chuck as a managing director should focus on how to motivate unproductive staff, provide support and improve communication with subordinates in order to build up an effective team and develop his leadership skills. Conclusion Chuck MacKinnon recruited as the Managing Director in Merchant Bank of Canada who facing various problems when starting his positions. Chuck tried to implement a new strategy to increase efficiency but could not obtain sufficient support from his boss and subordinates. This report emphasis that there are various problems occurred within the organization which reflects that Chuck is lack of leadership skills on how to lead his team members to improve performance and achieve organizational goals. Chuck failed to motivate his subordinates and failed to improve his team members’ emotional intelligence to avoid conflicts. This report further analysis various related theories and apply to the case situation, such as effective team building theories, emotional intelligence theories, leadership theories and conflict theories. The report suggested that in order to be an effective leader, he should apply those theories into practices in order to obtain sufficient support from his boss and subordinates for his new strategy. Such as by applying Expectancy Theory and taking employee’s own expectation into account to motivate his subordinates. In addition, Chuck should also apply leadership theories in order to improve his own leadership skills. References A Harvard business review paperback. 2003, Harvard Business Review on leading in turbulent times, Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation, United States of America. Bono, J. E. Judge, T. A. 2003, Self-concordance at work: Toward un