Free Custom «The Traditional Authoritarian Leadership» Essay Paper

In the contemporary world of business, the traditional authoritarian leadership, where a leader’s wisdom, truth, and decision making are unchallenged, stirs decent among the rest of the staff.  Organizations, as well as the problems that they face, are so complex to be handled by a single person, or a small group of managers. Although leadership remains an influential factor to the success of a business, the operations of a business organization rely on multiple variables interacting in a complex fashion. The current business models, therefore, calls on the leaders to involve others in a manner that results in creating a bigger leadership team. Today’s style of leadership needs to be straightforward, and as such, leaders with a strategic view need to assume three key responsibilities that helps in formulating an enlarged leadership team. These responsibilities include: facilitating team empowerment; building commitment; and taking responsibility for the organization’s vision, its alignment, and deployment. Assuming such responsibilities facilitates the management of the complex business environment of today (Pinto et al, 1993).

 

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Background

The Buick Bar & Grill is a 200-seat capacity restaurant that includes a nightclub and a cock-tail bar which are equipped with state of art facilities. It had been designed in a manner that provided comfortable and exiting working conditions with the aim of ensuring productivity, which would in effect facilitate rapid expansion. The management sought enthusiastic, motivated, and goal oriented individuals, some of whom were to become future leaders. Despite the initial progress, the resignation of three members of the kitchen staff marked the beginning of the current crisis (Pinto et al, 1993). These members were all qualified chefs, and claimed that the management was treating them unfairly. Nevertheless, Reed scorned their action arguing that they made his selection of peak performers easier.

Problems were heightened following the promotion of three staff members. Discontent arose, and this heightened tension between the three leaders and the rest of the group. The staff found it difficult to obey the new leaders’ commands, leading to a rise in heated arguments. Ostracizing the three leaders lowered the performance of the teams. Despite the leaders’ hard work, complaints continued, and, eventually, the manager opted to sack ten staff members, having identified them as troublemakers. This action, coupled with further threats of dismissal, made staff morale to plummet. Further resentment led to more resignations and firings, causing the increased rate of change in the workforce to lower the quality of work.

Clearly, the leadership of Buick Bar & Grill portrays inconsistency in behavior. While the manager is at times too friendly and generous, he becomes strict and mean, especially when dealing with disgruntled employees. This makes the employees view his decision making style as reactive as well as impulsive, leading to mal-treatment of some of them. The procedures of addressing recruitment, performance problems, and staff discipline are unclear, and this scenario leads to inadequacy in guidance, especially while performing complex tasks. These problems can be addressed through the implementation of situational, behavioral, and participative theories. While situational theories calls on leaders to make the best choices based on the prevailing situations, participative ones requires them to consider the input of the group members while making decisions. Behavioral theories emphasizes that people become leaders through observation and teaching (Sundstrom et al, 1990). As such, this evaluation will be measuring employees’ job satisfaction and the kind of support that the management accord the staff members.

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Methods of Intervention

During the intervention process, a research needs to be conducted with the intention of determining how the current leadership and teams impact on the enterprise’s productivity. Moreover, the study needs to reveal the pros and cons of rewarding individual team members for an achievement that has been facilitated by the entire team. In order to meet these exploratory goals, the views of team members and their leaders need to be sought. Specifically, the respondents in any focus group should be randomly chosen before being asked to participate in an in-depth interview where well designed questionnaire need to be prepared in a manner that meets the research objectives. The data gathered should then be computed and interpreted so as to derive comprehensive results.

An inclusion criterion needs to be established to act as a guide during the sampling of the participants. For the respondents to qualify for the sample selection, they need to be employees or staff of the Buick Bar & Grill restaurant. Moreover, they should be in a team. These qualifications need to be imposed so as to ensure that the interviewees understand the nature of questionnaires being used during the interview. This would make the items under survey easy for them to respond to; a scenario which would have increase the credibility of the results. Small groups of individuals need to be picked such that the participants have important characteristics in common such as job position, department, and job title, as this would reduce variation in the data collected in the interviews. The participants need to be of various ages, gender, and marital status. Since the participants would come from varying backgrounds, ethical values need to be adhered to, for example, there should be no disclosure of sensitive information about an individual.  Such standards would promote trust, collaborative effort, accountability, fairness, and mutual respect.

Instruments

Survey questionnaires should be used as the basic data gathering tools in the study. The questionnaires need to be subdivided into two basic sections: the profile section and the surveying proper. The profile should include the social-demographic attributes of the interviewees including interviewee’s name and phone number, the meeting place, gender, age, number of years an individual has been working in the company, job position, date, and department. The survey proper should query the team members’ perception on the effectiveness of teamwork, its reliability and usability as a motivating tool, especially when individual team members are rewarded for the success of the team. The questions need to be open so that the participants can give a wide range of responses.

The open questions will allow the study to establish the qualitative approach and gather data that can be used in the constant comparative method. To secure the validity of this study, at least five respondents in each focus group need to be interviewed. The respondents and their answers should then be used as part of the main study process as well as in testing purposes. After the delivery of all the answers, the respondents should then be requested to make more suggestions and such that all the necessary corrections can be made in order to improve the validity of the study. The survey proper should be revised based on the suggestions that the respondents gives. This would help in excluding the irrelevant questions as well as changing the vague and difficult terminologies that may have deterred the respondents.

Data Processing and Analysis

Using the responses provided in the questionnaires, reverse directed hypothesis need to be used. This involves marking the key points in the data corrected using serialized codes. The codes are then grouped into concepts in an attempt to make the data more workable. From the concepts, categories, which will lay the ground for coming up with a theory, are devised. If need arises, and because such data cannot be analyzed through the use scales as with the case of statistical data, coding should be repeated so as to develop concepts for eventual formulation of categories. Theory development should then proceed after satisfactory result had been attained.

Evaluation of the Intervention

The observations should that motivation is an inner feeling that can only be facilitated through teamwork, because close association between employees acts as inspiration to work. According to the observations, the interconnectivity between desire, want, and need should be apparent. It should be clear that when needs are understood by team members, they effectively frame their motivational programs accordingly. It should also be clear that teamwork is a continuous effort, which caters for the employees’ unlimited needs. Moreover, teamwork was must be seen as vital tool to both the individual and the business enterprise (Uhl-Bein & Graen, 1992). The research should demonstrate that working together helps an employee to attain his personal goals in the field of his/her specialty. This helps in an individual’s self development as he leaps the benefits that come when a person becomes a member of a dynamic team. To the advantage of the business, the research should indicate that when employees are more motivated, they make a more empowered team. Following the research, it should be apparent that, during the transition periods, teams help employees in adapting more easily, since they feel more enthusiastic and optimistic that they can deliver regardless of the changes.

Although teams facilitate dynamism at a workplace, the management must be effective bringing talents together to ensure their exhaustive utilization.  For effectiveness, managers follow a set of guidelines in order to ascertain advancement. These guidelines include clear communication of goals, defining responsibilities, encouraging relationships, empowerment, and provision of feedback, rewarding, organizing regular meetings, and discouraging undocumented ways of issuing reports (Pinto et al, 1993). In addition to the guidelines, leaders must adopt ethical standards which are agreeable to the society in which the business enterprise has been established. When this is the case, everyone in the organization adopts a code of behavior that ensures unity and strength of the human resource. This happens because, in most cases, leaders acts as emotional guides to the rest of the employees, where the junior staff looks up to the director when it comes to setting goals which are central to the company. Unclear goals cause disagreements as employees attempt to define objectives which they believe would suit them as individuals. This ends up hurting the team effort, and indeed, the enterprise as a whole. Consequently, it is important to clearly define goals as they help in unifying the employees with full knowledge of where the business is headed.

Initially, the Buick Bar & Grill had been operating at its optimal efficiency because everyone understood his/her responsibility. Responsibilities had been distinctly described before being assigned to the employees, whether individually or as a group. Their clear description reduced uncertainty, and every issue that arose was addressed quickly, and without discontent. The management should ascertain proper relationships amongst the employees without stressing anyone with overwhelming responsibilities. The encouragement of these relationships should be fostered through awarding of allowances, such as group lunches and outings. It has been established that such associations are transferred back to the office, a situation which enhances productivity in an unprecedented fashion.

Teams should be formulated in a fashion that empowers individual stakeholders with the capacity to make minor decisions regarding their areas of operation (Levine & Tyson, 1990). This empowerment enables them to tackle challenges and complete their tasks in time with little monitoring, and this can probably be the reason why the staff of Buick Bar & Grill resented having to be directed with their former teammates. Additionally, empowerment also instills trust among all players which helps them to make suitable decisions without prejudice. Effectiveness in teamwork is advanced through positive feedback. This means that the members should cultivate regular and honest communication between themselves as well as with the manager, so that everyone can readily align his views with the company’s objectives (Janis, 1972). Honesty in communication instills security, which makes an individual to work together in a willful manner for the good of the team as well as the company as a whole.

Discussion and Conclusion

Teamwork at an organization is beneficial for various reasons. It is a motivating drive which helps in: stabilizing a work force, putting human resource into action, building friendly relationships, improving employees’ efficiency, and helping to meet the organizational goals (Cotton, 1993). Motivated employees remain loyal to the organization as they feel that they participate in its management. This royalty results in stability, which is extremely influential in maintaining the strong reputation of an organization. Motivation enables the organization to utilize its human resource optimally, as it helps to build the employees willingness to work. It helps to fill the gap between the willingness and ability of an employee which leads to increased productivity and reduced cost of operation (Sundstrom et al, 1990). A motivated employee is a goal-oriented and works purposefully. For a team to have a sense of purpose, the management encourages simultaneous co-operation and co-ordination. Organizations that introduce incentive plans maximize employees’ satisfaction, which in effect improves the production (Bedeian, 1993). These plans include alternative work programs among other non monitory incentives, and their aim is to motivate their human resource. The efficiency and skills of an employee is mutually advantageous, as it benefits both the employer and the employee him/herself. Two qualities make the organization has a strong public image, and prolong the duration that an employee remains in the organization. The long service enables an employee to sharpen their practical skills.

When management rewards everyone in a team, everyone feels appreciated, and this reduces discontent. This helps in building the team spirit as well as in renewing enthusiasm amongst employees. Arranged meetings make the employees realize that the management support for them is secure. Moreover, it is during these instances that the manager gets to know his employees better, and this reduces the latent hostility between him/her and the subordinates (Adler, 1991). The main advantage of this reduced hostility is that everyone feels free to air his/her views at a meeting. Addressing everyone’s views at a meeting helps in reducing instances when an employ may attempt to discount the discourses that have been addressed as such a scenario would demoralize colleagues and harm the team environment. The management of the Buick Bar & Grill should appreciate that building teams entails the creation of a healthy, encouraging, and competitive work environment where employees feel appreciated and know that their competition is not against each other. Recognizing this heightens comfort and compels everyone to work towards the realization of the common goal (Adam, 1991). This is because, despite the fact that a better pay is among the biggest motivators at the workplace, enhanced social environment profoundly affects the employees’ job satisfaction. This is the reason why the employees who remain in an organization for long are those that have their social life balancing effectively with the work they do (Landy & Conte, 2010). For this reason every organization need to encourage teamwork among its employees, and reduce the unhealthy completion among the team members.