• Autocratic leadership
The leader aims for personal control. He or she is clearly separated from the group, who must obey orders. Virtually all decisions are made by the leader, who releases only a minimum of information to subordinates. Communications are ‘top-down’, with little chance for feedback. Working methods are strictly specified and little allowance is made for individual preferences. Praise and promotion are difficult to anticipate or understand; the leader’s motives remain unknown.
• Democratic leadership
The leader involves the group in decision making and aims to work by consent. Argument and discussion are normal and, although the leader makes final decisions, members of the group are all able to contribute freely to debate. Formal communications have open pathways, with a variety of routes both ‘down’ and ‘up’ the hierarchy. Subordinates decide their own methods of work, often checking output and quality themselves. Individual needs are actively considered and the distribution of rewards is according to clear criteria.
• Laissez-faire leadership
Laissez-faire means literally ‘leave to do’. The leader is present and may make known some broad objectives, but otherwise he or she has a very limited role. The group members are allowed to make their own decisions and follow their own individual wishes. Communications are very varied in pattern, liable to conflict and largely informal. Powerful informal groups may develop with their own widely differing ‘norms’. Rewards will be unpredictable.
These are rigid descriptions of the main styles of leadership. There are many other styles that have been studied but the above three are the most appropriate. After my visit to your company, I believe that managers should adopt a more democratic approach in their leadership. This will allow for employees to participate where they may not have in the past. I have suggested multidisciplinary project teams which should be comprised of staff from all the different departments. This particular scheme should be run on a laissez-faire approach to make staff realize this is a chance for them to be creative and innovative as possible without immediate judgment by their managers. In the day to day running of the company, a mix of different leadership styles must be used as different scenarios will require a different type of leader. The effectiveness of the various leadership styles depends on the situation in terms of the task and the people involved.
Measuring team performance
Labour turn over
This is a measure of the rate at which employees are leaving an organization. A moderate staff turnover rate is desirable as it brings new employees into the organization and opens promotion prospects. But a high labour turnover would be unwanted. This may be caused by low morale, an economic upturn creating many other job opportunities. This situation would cause difficulties in building teamwork with an ever changing team, reductions in productivity as new staff acclimatize and an increase in costs through recruiting and training replacement staff frequently.
Absenteeism
Absenteeism is a good indicator as it measures the rate of deliberate workforce absence as a proportion of the employee total. Pay systems linked to attendance, job enrichment, better human relations, better working conditions may help solve problems with absenteeism.
Productivity is a measurement of the efficiency with which a firm turns production input into output. The most common measure is labour productivity, i.e. output per employee. This has a direct effect on labour costs per unit. The higher the productivity, the lower the labour cost per unit.
Managing conflicts
Conflicts should always at best be avoided but realistically kept to a minimum. Conflicts particularly in team work can be caused by individuals not being clear about their specific role within the team. An individual may have to perform a role outside of the workplace which may conflict with their role in the workplace. With a number of employees maybe having to raise a family at the same time as their working life, conflicts are bound to occur. If your organization were to offer things like flexitime, job share and nursery facilities, then role conflicts may be kept to a minimum.
An increasing amount of employees are highly motivated and wish to fulfill their potential. Employees may feel that this is not happening and will become dissatisfied and finally leave that organization. Promotion, delegation and regular appraisal are methods that can resolve the said problem. The opposite of this is role overload where expectations are too high. Stress and exhaustion are two likely outcomes of this. Encouraging the employee to delegate, providing assistance and the redesign of the job are solutions to role overload.
Development plan and training
A development plan is a clear development action plan for an individual which incorporates a wide se of development opportunities. This is done to improve the performance of an individual in their existing job and to develop skills for future career moves. After an analysis of the current position, goals have been set and an action plan drawn; training is next and vital step.
The current level of an employee’s competence should be known by managers and may be known through human resources skill audits, appraisal records and pre-training testing of skills, knowledge and aptitudes. Training is the provision of work related education either on-the-job or off-the-job.
On-the-job training
On-the-job training is instruction at the place of work on how the job should be carried out. It may be a matter of observing how an experienced employee carries out the task, or being talked through the job by a supervisor. This type of training does have its advantages of there being real workplace pressures, it’s a real workplace environment and it is interactive learning. However, it’s not actually proper training and the trainer is likely not to be an experienced trainer.
Off-the-job training
Off the job training includes all forms of training apart from that at the immediate workplace. It may be conducted internally, for example in a conference room, or externally, at a college. Employees can attend college through day release or block release. The training is likely to be focused on skills, attitudes and theories that relate to work.
Mentoring is an option as it is an experienced and trusted advisor to a new recruit. This is a good idea as it ensures that all recruits have a senior figure they can turn to for advice. The mentor will keep any comments or complaints confidential and could therefore be a more effective advisor than the recruit’s boss.
Performance appraisal
Performance appraisal: regular, individual interviews with employees to assess their performance in the job, to set targets for improvements and to discuss the means for reaching those targets. It helps to discover and clarify training needs. It ensures that the abilities and energies of individuals are being used effectively. A performance appraisal can be used to motivate employees as it would remind employees about why they wanted the job in the first place. Poor performance can be identified and pointed out to the employee along with any skill shortages. This can provide a source of communication between the manager and employee and can be a chance to clarify any uncertainty about the job. But, an employee will usually be on the defensive and may believe that criticism will lead to the loss of promotion or financial reward. Interviewers are not trained and not always given time to prepare.
Assessment:
Self assessment- where individuals decide whether they are having difficulty or not with some required behavior and this can then be the basis of discussion.
Peer assessment- not usually done formally unless in examining how effective the team is, but a great deal of informal measurement is done.
Observation- this can be both formal and informal. It has the advantage that the assessor actually sees the behavior to be judged. It has high credibility, but it’s very time-consuming. Not everything worth doing is observable.
‘Learning organization’
This is the firm’s desire for continuous improvement. Ones learning should be more than initial training, but as a part of their work all the time. One should be able to learn new skills, like new technology and increase their level of competence, in terms of being able to do more jobs. Changes such as the role of managers to become facilitators instead of controllers, encouraging experiments and risk taking so that new possibilities emerge. A lot of organizations have a different culture and may be against change. They may feel their identity and security threatened by change and attempt to resist or slow down to impact. Deskilling, where a previously valued skill is no longer required. Fear of the unknown, like, new technology. Some major organizations are now consciously developing a learning culture that thrives on change. This means a high level of motivation, initiative and experimentation among staff, where mistakes are treated as valuable opportunities to learn. A learning culture depends on people feeling secure. This means mutual support within teams and within defined limits, real acceptance when mistakes are made. To cope with change is not enough, it needs to be embraced and even celebrated.
Total quality management (TQM) is part of this learning culture and is an attempt to establish a culture of quality affecting the attitudes and actions of every employee. This is usually attempted by trying to get every work group to think of those they work for as customers, even if they are fellow employees. This is all done through the use of quality circles, emphasis on after sales service, getting things right first time through high quality and low cost.
This report will hopefully provide answers to questions which one may have posed. It is aimed at providing recommendations and guidance on how this organization should view and treat individuals in and out of teams.
