Looking at Blake and Mouton’s (1996) Managerial Grid, both the managerial style of Jane and her boss would appear to be something approaching the ‘9.1.’ spectrum, whereby they aim to achieve management efficiency in operations by arranging conditions of work in such a way that human elements interfere to a minimum degree. This may well be an extreme way of looking at their styles of management, but it is not an ideal one considering the situation that they are in. Bernard M. Bass (1990) argues that,
Most relationships between supervisors and their employees are quite different today. Few managers depend mainly on their legitimate power…or on their coercive power…to persuade people to do as they’re told. Rather, managers engage in a transaction with their employees: they explain what is required of them and what compensation they will receive if they fulfil these requirements.
This can be used to argue a case for the desirable side of ‘transactional leadership’. Jane’s style is more ‘Management by exception’ (Chmiel 2000) whereby the leader spots and corrects mistakes. When a follower makes an error, or fails to do something they have agreed to do, the leader applies some form of corrective action such as a reprimand. This is not a very desirable or ideal stance in most relationships. In today’s global financial world, managers have to also demonstrate ‘Transactional leadership’ (Bass 1985) whereby leaders and followers attempt to transform each other by engagement and by appealing to higher levels of morality or values. Transformational managers aim to imbue employees with an awareness of the key issues and priorities of the organisation.
Also, it is obvious that not all people get on with each other and there are many reasons to explain conflict on a personal level, including differences with regards to authoritarianism and sociability, differences in self-esteem and perhaps even gender. Tony Jackson is a problem employee. We don’t know whether his task performance is at a high level which may justify Jane turning a blind eye to some of his behaviour, as long as his job gets done. Contextually however, his performance is poor and Jane must have the skills to be able to deal with such employees who make the working environment difficult – she clearly doesn’t.
- Explain what actions you think should be taken in order to help improve the situation. Give supporting reasons.
In this situation, I feel that action should be taken on three different levels in order to improve the situation:
1. Introduce a collaborative style of management conflict in the branch:
Conflict in any organisation is inevitable and, indeed, is sometimes necessary for a group to be self viable, self critical and creative. Conflict in a negative sense of course can be damaging and to combat this, there needs to be more collaboration in the branch. This would be useful, not just for solving this situation, but would help limit any damage further conflict may cause. Here, all parties to the conflict come face to face with each other and discuss the issues involved. When Jane talked to Tony in a mature and professional way, his performance generally improved immediately after, albeit for a short period of time. The key here is for this style to be formal and regularly implemented. An example of this would be Capital One Bank’s ‘10/10’ idea (Sloman 2003). This involves all employees or ‘associates’ participating in a twenty minute conversation with their manager, with a ten minute input from the manager and a ten minute input from the associate. It is expected that discussions reflect the competencies and that feedback is supported by behavioural examples. The 10/10 idea revolves round a coaching ethos in the Capital bank company, but this can be applied to our situation in the building society. This would enable work teams and their members not only to solve differences, but also to develop on an individual level and thereby adding to the organisation through learning.
Introduce a formal system of development and training
While some of the problems in this situation may be due the culture of the organisation, a lot of the difficulties could well have been avoided had there been a formal method of learning development for managers, for both Mary Rodgers and Jane Taylor. As was previously highlighted, Jane had no formal training for her new position and although she may well have had the necessary skills to do a good job, there was no way for them to be actualised and realised. When Mary suggests that Jane goes on a course, she is not even totally sure what the name of the course is – the development of her staff doesn’t really seem to be a priority. As Gibb (2000) notes regarding training, particularly of mangers;
Organisations need individuals with relevant abilities, skills and experience in order to function well… We have to think about development when pervasive issues such as multiskilling, flexibility and commitment have to be faced for all organisational members, and training for managers is a live issue when attention focuses on the current operational skills or competencies, quite apart from the qualities associated with management development.
What is clear is that more effective training for Jane, and possibly Mary, could result in better ‘soft skills’ which would enable them (Jane in particular) to deal with Tony Jackson more effectively. Such training would not only add value to the organisation in terms of the enhancement of a human resource, but it is surely a necessity for Jane to receive such training in order to help avoid the negative workplace atmosphere that is pervasive at the end of the case study. The competencies needed by Jane in order to perform well in this role, were obviously vastly underestimated by Mary at the beginning. Effective training is therefore crucial.
Mullins, Laurie: Management and Organisational Behaviour (4th edn: Pitman, 1996) p.435
