Management and Leadership Models Essay

As Regional Director for Happy Face Frozen Foods (HFFF), I hold a great responsibility to meet sales projection levels at each of my sales districts. Hitting goal is not just a numbers game- it’s a task of managing people within the culture of the organization. My ultimate goal for District IV and district manager Tony’s performance deficiency is to diagnosis issues and problem areas. Multiple management/leadership models and concepts are needed in order to shift this district to become profitable and successful. PERFORMANCE MODEL Skills, Abilities, Traits Tony appears to have a lack of effort, despite being young, aggressive, talkative, appears to be intelligent, and was a top sales representative. I questioned his work ethic capabilities, but the Myer Briggs Type Indicator says we are polar personality opposites as he is an ISTJ and I am an ENFP. In general, his type explains why his apparent lack of effort is actually  his â€Å"introverted† and â€Å"sensing† personality; Tony self-reflects, works alone, thinks before acting, keeps energy inside, is hard to read, and verbalizes well though out ideas, concern for present and practical matters, likes things to be precise and clear, and wants step-by-step approaches. I had promoted him despite of his tendencies towards coercion and party reputation, which seemed to be a lack of cooperation skills and professionalism. Again, his type explains these traits of Tony’s â€Å"thinking† and â€Å"judging† personality; he finds it easy to be firm-minded and give criticism, brief, concise and impersonal, uses pros and cons lists, doesn’t like surprises, resist or does not notice change, and wants advanced warning. As a top manager his thinking process is great for following rules and procedures, but as a leader of his district he needs to improve all traits involving interaction with people. In order to compliment Tony’s personality traits with my own, I must reduce perceptual errors with a self-understanding of how our opposing traits interact. Tony’s sensing type needs intuitive types at work to see possibilities, deal with complex issues, explain other intuitives, and spark innovation. His thinking type needs intuitive types at work to persuade, smooth feathers, teach and coach, and anticipate reactions. Tony has several of the Kirkpatrick and Locke Leadership Traits to facilitate success, which include drive, self-confidence, cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business, but Tony’s sales team is hesitant to discuss his performance as a manager. A person does not become a leader by virtue of the possession of some combination of traits; therefore, with proper action Tony can transform those traits toward becoming a successful leader. Tony has three factor categories of leadership to accomplish, which include managing skills, vision, and implementation. I can provide Tony with specific guidelines for goals, objectives, and situations so he will have the managing skills for decision-making and problem solving. To improve his vision of the company, I can train him in the importance of the Big Five personality traits to become extraverted, conscientious, open, less neurotic, and agreeable. I can teach Tony how to apply the MBTI types among  his subordinates and myself, so he can properly implement his vision to the team through team building, motivation, and training. His efforts will increase their trust in his abilities and be more likely to give proper feedback in the future. Role Perceptions Inappropriate behavior concerns in Tony’s district arise from sexual harassment complaints, unwanted nicknames, mixture of work and personal relationships, and name calling shows that action for ethical conduct is lacking. Because Tony is involved in some of the unethical action, a quick response is needed at the management and subordinate level. Nielson’s guidelines for changing unethical organizational behaviors are not easy, but start with an intervention strategy implemented by corporate guidelines and myself. Caution should be used as I could be misled on details, and do not want to damage relationships and hurt the organization unnecessarily. The advantage of leading an ethical change increases incremental performance, but must include Tony in the process of establishing ethical rules and procedures in order to implement long-term. Rallying others to agree for the good of the organization takes consensus building through patience and relationship building, and can happen with ability and courage. Tony perceives his abilities for his own â€Å"book of business† as a successful sales person to be a major part of his job requirement. As a superior, my perception of his skills and traits lack the ability to manage his people, and his personal success makes me doubt his capabilities even more as he ignores his job requirements to train and coach his sales team, especially the two brand new employees. Tony needs to understand the importance of socialization practices, and appreciate the problem of transitioning a new employee. To prepare Tony in the training of his team, helpful mechanisms to utilize change are found in the elements of Schein’s organization socialization, which include basic goals, preferred means the goals are to be attained, basic responsibilities of the members, behavior patterns required for effective performance, and a set of rules to maintaining identity and integrity. New entrant should have multiple sources, whether official literature,  examples set by Tony and other employees, direct instruction, rewards and punishment system, and experimenting with new values and behavior. Success of socializing techniques depends on the initial entry of the organization and what Tony does to keep them. He must build commitment and loyalty early in the socialization process by investing time and effort into the new members, and since the two new hires have already been introduced to a laissez-faire style of management, Tony’s efforts need to be well prepared. Establishing socialization is included through training opportunities to Tony to train his sales team, giving Tony a formal role definition and the guidelines to defining his subordinates roles (which he will appreciate as an ISTJ), giving Tony a performance appraisal and future personal goals to improve, and to coach Tony the norms of a successful manager. The Determinant of Person Perception describes Tony’s situation as an ineffective leader based on the perception of his subordinates, which is influenced from the mixture of Tony’s and the subordinate’s characteristics. His ineffective leadership mixed with the subordinates lack of direction has created an Organizational Citizenship Behavior that allows discretionary behaviors based on personal choice within the workforce; several of the current norms that are being utilized and promoted under Tony’s supervision include tardiness, teasing, competitiveness, ignorance of complaints and concerns, inclusion of personal life and work, and individuality. These structureless norms and values are dangerous to the well being of Tony’s district as he does not understand his role as a leader to structure right and wrong norms, pivotal norms and values should be made clear in order to survive. The norms and values that should be implemented include trust, honesty, integrity, empathy, respect, teamwork, separation of life from professional work, and the total changes should keep 60-70% of operations stable in order to keep the organization running smoothly. The Simple Change Process has three phases to implement desired norms and values; the Unfreezing Phase includes immediate action between myself and Tony to establish how he wants the team to operate, create rules and procedures to follow, and to reprimand actions that are breaking current rules. The Moving Phase includes actions  for Tony to model new norms, train and educate the rest of the team, and provide incentives for following the new behaviors. The final process in the Refreezing Phase involves more rewards systems, standardization, and implementation of the new structures. Even if the perception of Tony’s lack of effort is a symptom of his set characteristic traits, I also need to understand as his supervisor the Self-Concept Theory of Motivation. The idea that humans are self-expressive, motivated to maintain and enhance self-esteem and self-worth, self-concepts are composed in part of identities, and this behavior isn’t always related to clear expectations or to immediate or specific goals. Tony is no different and also holds inner motivations that are not easily seen, I need to get to know him better before the districts sales meeting next month to understand his motives and actions. His current performance has demonstrated low results for the higher expectations I demand; if Tony does not have some expectation to work for, meeting my expectations is difficult and is a lose-lose situation. To give Tony direction, we can practice the Goal Theory to link Tony to specific and challenging goals with appropriate feedback for Tony to know ho w much effort to contribute in order to achieve increased task performance, and to understand what expectations to meet. Any theory or concept Tony learns can be applied to relationships with his subordinates, but will be difficult to implement with the current presence of Learned Helplessness. Tony has set such high expectations for performance and punished employees both by disregarding and berating employees publicly; his employees have become passive from repeat failures and will most likely remain passive even after changes are made. Organizationally Induced Helplessness is evident as the attribution to failure leads to behavioral influences, and Tony’s subordinate, Britni, is clearly suffering from substance abuse and practices it in the workplace openly. Because the negative environment has forced employees to shut down mentally, the operation of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is not in effect here as Tony places high expectations, and they are not performing better because of these expectations. The factor missing in order to for the prophecy to work in Tony’s environment is more input from Tony to teach his subordinates to  reach the expectations he sets. To stop influencing negative behavior and start influencing positive attributions, organizational goals need to be easier to obtain and set clearly by Tony, because subordinates who stopped trying have already decided goals are impossible to reach such as the case with Melanie who was forced to structure her sales route by herself. Minimizing OIH can be done through multiple strategies: immunization that sets specific levels of success can begin with the new norms and values that will be set through the Simple Change Process, rewarding those who follow quickly. Attribution Training will direct failure away from internal fault and toward external conditions, and Ego Defense will develop attributes so if Tony continues to berate his employees, they will learn to not let it threaten their self-esteem. Performance Goals Tony punishes Big Ron’s performance for not getting the product out ahead of schedule is an example of Tony’s need for the Goal-Setting Concept, which assigns employees a specific task, quota, performance standard, or deadline. The use of punishment to affect behavior has negative consequences of modifying an employees behavior, such as a short-term effect, resentment of the punisher, negative aftereffects, doesn’t reinforce desired heavier, and creates an atmosphere of fear. Tony may punish too soon because of lack of training on my part, not aware of alternatives, looking for quick solutions, personal gratification, out of frustration, or believe it is the best way to change behavior. The misunderstanding of the product schedule time between Big Ron and Tony is directly attributed to miscommunication and a lack of goals. Big Ron perceives his goals to be only within the processing plant, Tony communicates his goals to be overseeing Big Ron’s operations and delivering the product. A helpful mechanism would for both to work together as a team and manage by objectives from each side. Tony and Big Ron need to use Participative Goal Setting and set specific and difficult goals together to lead to higher performance and relationship building. Merely telling Big Ron to â€Å"do his best† and to be supportive would be sufficient, but the best gain  comes from a set standard. They can also hold Management By Objectives â€Å"assignment† sessions to discuss what each side’s efforts will include. If Big Ron knows why Tony wants the products early, he can then communicate that status knowing Tony really needs that information. If Tony knows why Big Ron can’t get the products out sooner, he can then exert efforts to help Big Ron. When the task is done, a final performance appraisal feedback session will give each side a chance to voice actions that worked, need changing for future projects, and to give constructive feedback for the other person. This will build a climate of trust, and shows an acceptance of goal failure. Based on head quality control engineer Daniella’s visit with the sales force informal leader Bill Gates, is uninvolved with his job at HFFF with multiple side interests. Bill needs to get involved, and since he is in a leadership position can be given roles to support the sales force and himself by taking their performance under his accountability. If workers have a chance to participate in setting goals, they will be more committed to attaining those goals. If larger goals are broken down into short-term goals, workers will receive more frequent feedback about goal accomplishment and, thus, strive harder to meet those goals. A list of good goals similar to what Bill can make could include setting specific short and long term sales goal quotas, to create friendly competitions within the sales team, for individuals to talk to a certain number of clients or make a certain number of presentations, to meet with each sales rep individually to hear progress reports, and many more. The SMARTFIC model is a good checklist to prepare Bill to present Tony a plan of action within the sales force team. To start, Bill rates himself on scale of 1-5 on each goal setting area: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic/rewarded, timely, feedback, integrated/intermediate, and challenging/clear. He can keep or change the specificity or attainability of each goal based on the scale results, and once the goals are presented and approved by Tony, Bill can implement among the team. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards Along with Bill’s goal setting for the sales team, rewarding Bill and team members based on bonuses and commission compensation will motivate the implementation to be successful. Tony could also be motivated to perform better if he was given a bonus for getting positive evaluations, as a demonstrator at a recent training program recently evaluated him negatively. To pinpoint the best reward system for Tony, I can use the Modifying On-The-Job Behavior concept to first identify target behavior, such as his need for procedure. The second step is to perform an Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequence (ABC) functional analysis to identify Tony’s trigger for needing procedure and when he uses this behavior. The third step arranges antecedents by removing obstacles, providing opportunities, appropriately scheduled consequences, such as unexpected events that cannot be controlled or sporadic behavior from others. The fourth and final step evaluates the results to find how to imple ment more procedure-based structure within Tony’s environment and utilize his best behaviors. This analysis also needs to be implemented by Tony onto his employees so they see that he appreciates their well being and can develop trust with him on other issues. Hertzberg’s Motivation Theory says if there is job dissatisfaction, the hygiene factors must be addressed before motivating employees. Tony’s team holds many hygiene factors in their workforce situation, including inappropriate subordinate work and personal relationships initiated by Tony, personal life issues addressed at work with Britni and Bill, poor supervisor relations among everyone, laissez-faire work conditions, and a lack of organization policy. Once they work through the hygiene factors, Tony can then motivate his team by setting goals for achievement, recognizing their achievements and efforts, giving them responsibilities, and chances for growth to contribute to their job satisfaction. The better the team is satisfied, the better job they can all provide. Tony created tension in his district when he hired his college buddies based on their personal relationship, and will have to overcome judgment and the tension by making his sale rep friends work hard to e arn their keep. In order to do so, Tony needs a standardized set of job dimensions and outcomes to give them, as outlined in the Job Characteristics Model. This concept gives core job  dimensions that can include skill variety, task identity, and significance to specify the sales reps various duties ranked by importance, levels of autonomy to make informed and unforced decisions on their own, and proper feedback in the form of evaluations from other subordinates or myself, instead of Tony because of their personal relationship. These dimensions lead to critical psychological states that provide experienced meaningfulness of the sales reps work, responsibility for their own works outcomes, and knowledge of their actual results. The process finally leads to personal and work outcomes that result in high internal work motivation that produces quality work performance and satisfaction, and proves their worth of working with the other subordinates while holding respect for Tony despite his initial favo ritism. Melanie complains that nobody, especially Tony, listens to her concerns, and is frustrated with the competitive and inefficient environment. While she may just be a complainer, Tony can quickly implement One Minute Praising to praise Melanie immediately when she should be appreciated, be specific about her finding an inefficiency in the training programs, share feelings of how her ideas could impact the team, and encourage her to find ways to make training programs more productive. This could help Melanie to not feel so ignored, especially if she is praised for something that is obviously a concern for her. When she begins to be more positive, her negativity will change in front of other employees and they wont ignore her as much. Tony can easily use this on all employees and voice his support for positivity to encourage the concepts use amongst the subordinates. If Melanie continues her complaining and negativity, Tony can use the One Minute Reprimanding to reprimand the complaining immediately, be specific about what she has said, share feelings of how the complaining affects the team, and remind her how good of a person she still is. The concept assists Melanie to realize how her complaining affects her coworkers, and will end the behavior. Tony needs to fix his working relationship with Big Ron quickly in order to address the possible ecoli breakout issue that Big Ron had on the health inspector visit. Not only is the health risk an ethical issue concerning consumers, Big Ron’s action plan to blackmail the inspector is an alarming  example of a lack of internal procedures. To address both of these issues and to prepare for future situations, Tony needs a Contingency Plan to manage risk that could have catastrophic consequences. Contingency Strategies are a result of the contingency plan and are devised for a specific situation where things could go wrong, although they cannot predict future outcomes. Tony’s strategies need to include procedures for situations that can happen within the management office, at the warehouses, and other facilities and need to include the managers at each location for input of specific internal details. These strategies prepare the organization or the person for anything that could happen in future and are back up plans that support the organization when the actual plan fails. For positive reinforcement for the behavior to increase, Tony must apply the strategy AND reward for something desirable or pleasant. The reward need to be individual-based in order to encourage employees to act ethically and receive personal recognition for their actions. Tony’s intricate involvement in Britni’s personal dating life and his friends looking for a good time is an example of negative reinforcement within the workplace. This involvement and his personal relationship with human resource manager, Margaret, are behaviors that need to be eliminated. I need to use the Coaching and Reinforcement Concept to tell Tony what to do to cease his involvement, show him how to change through role-play practice, then let him try to implement within the situations. I’ll observe his performance, and either praise his progress or redirect if it fails. A weakness in Tony’s relationship with his subordinates is a major issue in the balance of work performance. If the subordinates do not respond to Tony and he makes no initiative to manage his people, the district is at risk of failing and ruining sales figures. To create a trusting and open work environment, the PRICE System from Putting the One Minute Manager to Work says to pinpoint the performance area of interest, such as the subordinate/management relationship, then record and measure the current performance level on a graph. We must involve everyone to agree on  performance goals and strategies for coaching and evaluation, with extravert personalities on the team in charge of coaching, observing performance, and reporting to Tony to manage consequences. Tony and the team must then evaluate, track performance progress, and determine future strategies. The results of successful implementation of this system will strengthen the relationships between Tony and his subordin ates and eliminate the â€Å"fear† that is prevalent throughout the organization. Human resource specialist, Mary Ann, is enthusiastic about work-family balance and schedules of reinforcement concepts, but Daniella tuned her out during a recent visit. If employees and reporting superiors dismiss constructive ideas, the company may miss out on great progress opportunities and the employees who value change. The Reinforcement Appropriate Behaviors concept encourages hard working employees; if workers receive immediate reinforcement for their hard work, they will work harder than if their reinforcement is delayed. Frequent reinforcement of positive behavior and infrequent reinforcement of negative behavior results in higher performance. Workers will work harder if their reinforcements for work are somewhat random in either a variable interval or ratio. Mary Ann’s interest in Performance Model theories can be rewarded in the future based on this concept through praise and the responsibility to help host internal training sessions if we specifically provide her the proper way to relate them to her workforce. Her success could lead to creating reward programs and working with Tony to think of reward opportunities. Kerr’s Common Management Reward Follies says we hope for long-term growth, teamwork, challenging objectives, restructuring, and commitment to total quality, but we often reward quarterly earnings, individual effort, making the numbers, adding staff, and less than quality. Relatedly, Tony is reluctant to take charge of the sales team, but from afar demands higher levels of productivity. Tony is seeking simple quantifiable standards to measure but some aspects are highly visible and most aren’t, so a lacking view of performance factors and results doesn’t help break out of old ways of thinking. Since current rewards systems hardly exist, Tony must explore what types of behavior are currently being rewarded to positively reinforce  desired behavior. Equity Model The disturbing story of a possible kickback program involving sales manager, Jeff Daniels, and his stress related behavior is symptoms of the Equity Theory and Justice: The Concept of Fairness says Jeff must believe his is being treated fairly or his motivation will wane. Employees must evaluate their inputs in relation to their outcomes as compared to the inputs and outcomes of others to determine fairness, and inputs of employees on the job include enthusiasm, knowledge, innovation, and skills, while outputs include salary, satisfaction, recognition, and training opportunities. If the outputs of Jeff’s efforts are not equal to his inputs, he will find a way to make that mental equation balanced. If balancing to him means receiving under-the-table funds and lashing out on others as a consequence of a work-stress overload, then his promotion to International Protocol Specialist will only reward his unethical behavior and actions. Although the action of Mary Ann and Nelson arriving late to meeting with Danielle seems minor, this action sends the message that other business etiquettes are not important and will not represent the company at its best. The Reinforcement and Rewards concept says part of Tony’s job is to direct the behaviors of employees by providing appropriate rewards to reinforce the desired behaviors that lead to organizational effectiveness and success. Reinforcement stimuli Tony could incorporate for not only tardiness, but other common courtesies, include attendance awards and office-wide recognition, employee of the month awards with reasons attached to the award, and spontaneous cash awards for sighted acts of kindness. Effort-Reward Probability Although the ultimate Performance goals are nowhere near to be reached, there are good opportunities to reward good effort. The Effort-Reward Probability concept produces effort and follows Vroom in that abilities and traits can also multiply to determine performance. Examples have been provided with other models, but Steve Stricker aka â€Å"Mr. Insensitivity† deserves credit for his enthusiasm and attempt to correct a bad situation in the most efficient way possible. While his handling of the situation was not  the most desired, he still holds my respect enough to want him to supervise Tony’s district. The more good efforts we can multiply with good rewards, the better the performance the organization will gain. Satisfaction and V = Valence The majority of Tony’s workforce chooses to remain silent about most incidents that happen at work because the consequences of speaking up are higher. The Valence outcome of the Expectancy Theory model needs to be changed the most for this team as their value of rewards based on their needs and goals are low. The current valence level that I provide Tony, and Tony provides his subordinates can be rated a â€Å"0† as indifferent to the outcome of rewards, which is very much my fault for not encouraging a reward system to my own subordinate and setting the right example. I can start from my own practices to implement a rewards system specifically for Tony, and various programs for him to relay down to his team. COMMUNICATIONS Tony needs to improve his communication with subordinates in order to convey and receive information, gain acceptance for his ideas, maintain relationships with coworkers, establish trust, keep people involved in a project, to produce action or change. The change should include the climate of the workplace, as it is defensive, in the sense of the amount of control and superiority that is exerted from Tony’s competitive nature. In order to create a supportive climate, while allowing a friendlier competitive environment, Tony needs to encourage equality among the team and to practice empathy. He will also appear more reasonable if he learns to admit when he doesn’t know an answer, admits when he is wrong, and asks for help. When Tony ignores his employee’s requests for help and suggestions, his unrelated and tangential responses levels of listening serve as punishment to his employees for speaking. To display listening in the workplace, Tony must stop talking, show he wants to listen, empathize, go easy with arguments and criticisms, and again stop talking. He will encourage future interactions when he develops their trust. To practice the three elements of trust, Tony needs to show an inclination towards charity through  benevolence, practice integrity through a consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty of one’s actions and the ability to lead his team. To develop trust, he must demonstrate concern for others well-being and needs, be willing to see other peoples point of view, correspond between his words and deeds, and not be afraid to show emotion. When Tony received negative feedback from the recent training program, he most likely felt embarrassed and defensive. Tony needs effective feedback, he will not listen to the training program if we assume he should know what to do, evaluative, late, negative only, and punishing in the face of others at the program. In order for him to learn, it needs to be descriptive, specific, timely, and positive with the negative, and he needs to listen, check, clarify, and ask the feedback of others. There will be situations in the future similar to the miscommunication with Big Ron that will frustrate Tony, but he needs to make himself clear even if he is upset by managing from the HEART to convey his message to others: to be heard and understood, if disagreed with to not be made wrong, to be acknowledged for good, to look for right intentions, and to be told the truth with compassion. If he can correctly convey this message throughout a disagreement, relationships will be saved and solutions can be found. Tony should also remember to listen; two ears, one tongue, DM’s who don’t listen have less information for making sound decisions. Gibbs describes communication as a people process. The more supportive a climate is, the less defensive a person has read into distortion and can respond productively. A supportive climates in Tony’s relation with Big Ron can include descriptions of updates at the facility, problem orientation to seek mutual solutions to get products out early, with no hidden agenda from fear of reprimand, empathy for each other’s position, equality in interaction, and provisionalism of always seeking new information outside of personal knowledge. LEADERSHIP Traits Approach My perceptual distortion of Tony’s capabilities can be further discussed through Leadership Traits, which can describe Tony’s drive, personalized leadership motivation to be in charge, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business. These are great leadership traits to have, but he needs to apply them in order to be an effective manager. The fatal flaws of leaders who derail, which also apply to Tony’s traits, include insensitivity of others, aloof and arrogant, overly ambitious and managing, and inability to adapt to situations. Fortunately Tony’s fatal flaws can be improved with the Emotional Intelligence at Work concept, which highlights Tony finding self-awareness through assessing his current position, self-regulation to determine whether he seems trustworthy, holds integrity, and is openness to change). Tony does hold motivation for a strong drive to achieve, but can improve on optimism organizational commitment in management. Empathy is his biggest weakness and can improve on expertise in building and retaining talent and being sensitive to others, and his efforts to build social skills in his effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness, and expertise in building and leading teams will ultimately change his workforce to trust his judgment and commit to the organization. Another trait-based approach for improving skills is the Three-Skill Approach, which suggests Tony’s effective administration to depend on three basic personal skills: technical knowledge about work and specialization, human ability to work with people, and conceptual ability to work with ideas and concepts. Tony’s knowledge of the company is very strong as he was a top sales rep and can work with set concepts that use step-by-step approaches. When Tony improves his ability to work with ideas and people, he will increase the effectiveness of his leadership. Power Approach Tony has an element of fear within his relationship with subordinates, and Big Ron was treated so meanly because of a miscommunication. The Power Approach explains good sources of power are legitimate and reward, but bad sources of power that Tony is guilty of include coercive and charismatic. According to Yukl and Taber, Tony identifies as an authority power and  effective leaders are expert and referent. Subordinates will comply with his orders, but do not accept his goals, although he is in position to get possible commitment, and just as easily to get possible resistance. Tony can enhance his authority power by making polite requests, not demands, requests made in clear and simple language, checking to make sure subordinate understand and giving reason for the request if necessary, and following up to verify they have complied. Overall to appear more personable and less powerful, Tony needs compassion. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, top power tools that Tony’s subordinates will respond to are patience, gentleness, teachableness, acceptance, kindness, openness, consistency, and integrity, which all are in line with compassion. Situational Leadership Model Situational Leadership says it’s not so much what you are, as what you do. I find many things to change of Tony’s relations with his subordinates, when my own leading of his development is lacking, and my leadership style should combine directive and supportive behaviors. I can institute directive behavior by clearly telling Tony what, how, where, and when to do something, then closely supervising their performance. I can increase supportive behavior by engaging in two-way communication on a more frequent basis, listening to his concerns, providing support and encouragement, facilitating the interaction, and involving him strongly in decision-making. I need to give Tony more Directing as a manager and leader, even through he only needed Delegating as a salesman. Tony, in turn, needs to apply the same concept of Directing to many of his new salesman and Coaching for the rest of the employees. Understanding the effectiveness of situational leadership and communicating thi s understanding with Tony will enhance our relationships at all levels, and reduce the perception of Tony lacking training duties. Effective leaders are those who can recognize what employees need and then adapt their own style to meet those needs. Path Goal Theory Tony is lacking in leadership behaviors according to the Path Goal Theory in  helping subordinates to shape their tasks. The idea is to define goals, clarify path, remove obstacles, and provide support, and Tony is achievement oriented based on the leadership behaviors as he challenges subordinates to perform work at the highest level possible, a high standard of excellence. To help subordinates meet Tony’s standards, he needs to provide guidance of how to obtain excellence. Leaders Member Exchange Theory Tony should form an individualized working relationship with each of his subordinates, and the exchanges in content and process should be dyadic with unique characteristics. High quality leader-member exchanges produced less employee turnover, and exchanges can be in-group or out-group. Tony has created a tight in-group from hiring his college friends as salesmen, but still doesn’t hold the qualities of a true in-group that has mutual trust, respect, liking, and reciprocal influence. Out-groups are based on job a description, which is the relationship Tony holds with his team, and even I hold with him as a superior. Tony is in Phase 1 Stranger, the phase in leadership making that is directed toward self-interest rather than toward the good of the group; roles with the team are scripted, influences are one way from Tony to subordinates, exchanges are low quality, and interests are for self. Transformational Leadership and The Leadership Challenge Tony’s aggressive leadership style is unwanted by many of his subordinates, the Leadership Challenge can help him implement carry out significant changes, which include to challenge the process, inspire a shared vision and enlisting others, enable others to act to foster collaboration and strengthen others, model the way and set the example and encourage the heart by recognizing individual contribution and celebrate accomplishments. Tony is currently a Laissez-Faire Leadership style, hands-off, let-things-ride approach that gives little effort to help followers satisfy their needs. Out of the four I’s he is most lacking â€Å"individualized consideration† to provide a supportive climate, listen carefully, and act as coaches. If Tony adopts any of the transactional leadership factors to perform a better job, the Contingent Reward to obtain agreements from followers on what must be done and what the payoffs will be. Servant Leadership One of the biggest struggles Tony will have is in following Servant Leadership by putting followers first, supporting personal development, honesty, treating fairly, share power, and enabling others. The antecedent conditions are strong as the culture, leader attributes, and follower receptivity to wanting a leader. The core of the process is weakest in conceptualizing the organization, emotional healing in sensitivity to others, putting followers first, helping followers grow, behaving ethically, empowering, and creating community value. The outcomes cannot happen until the core of the process is successful, but include follower growth and performance, organizational performance, and societal impact. Tony can improve with training in empathy, compassion, and listening. Once his team sees his efforts to be a better person, they will respect his position better. CONFLICT Conflict will always be part of an organization, whether to be avoided as described by the traditional view or necessary for a group to perform effectively as described by the interactionist view. Because Tony and I will be making many changes to the organization and our personalities differ so much, we should practice integrative bargaining through goals by expanding the pie so both parties are satisfied, motivation with win-win solutions, focus by showing interest, interests being congruent, information sharing being high, and the duration of the relationship being long term. Tony has been a Shark in terms of conflict: he is forceful towards his subordinates to achieve his goals at all costs, and overpowers others to win conflicts. He needs to become more of a Fox, and be more concerned with goals and the relationship, willing to give up something for the common good, and resolve conflict by finding middle ground. To use the Problem Solving Approach to Conflict Resolution between Tony and I’s interactions, we must identify the problem, set a goal or objective, generate and evaluate solutions, and create an action plan. Because Tony most likely does not want to deal with the personal relationship issues within the organization, especially since he is directly  involved, the Hill’s Model for Team Leadership is an easy tool to aid leadership problem solving and to clarify its complex nature. My leadership decision is to take action for the task needs of the group and intervene for the internal task force. My next action will managing the conflicts of interest, external alliances of corporate human resources, and to receive the desired outcome of team satisfactory for future development. PERCEPTION In my expectations from hiring I did not take into account the function of Tony’s personality and the management environment he would work in, especially since his MBTI traits are ISTJ and I am ENFP. The Halo Effect is in full swing on my part as I held a cognitive bias in the judgment of Tony’s character, which influenced my overall impression of him. Tony’s perception is also flawed in using projection as a defensive mechanism to place his own actions on other people, such as the late shipment of product onto Big Ron, and the failing sales numbers onto his salesmen. He has used projection to improve his own self-image and have a reason for failures. When Tony teases Chris, he sends a very strong message to his subordinates, as it is in verbal form, a face-to-face channel, toward immediate subordinates, it’s a high channel richness that is allowing multiple cues from Tony’s words, and tone of voice which strengthens the message of his unintended te asing. When Melanie complains about the long training classes, she is dealing with Primacy Effects, as the listener is more likely to start off paying attention then drift off when the subject gets boring or the listener is internally processing data. Our company does not want ineffective training sessions, therefore if we want information to stand out in a person’s mind we must use it at the beginning of a conversation or a written list and not let it get lost in the middle. Repeating messages consecutively several times through messages after the training sessions will embed it in their minds. When Tony ignores Melanie’s complaints, he believes in Theory Y but leaves her be. He lacks empathy for this situation, a perceptual error that can be reduced with conscious empathizing for her feelings. When Tony is given backhanded compliments for helping Britni get dates, she has received an area of self-consciousness of her ability to date. To reduce perceptual errors in this situation, self-acceptance involves self-understanding, a realistic, albeit subjective, awareness of her strengths and weaknesses, she can then feel about herself that she is of â€Å"unique worth†. When Tony misunderstood Big Ron, he became defensive from constructive criticism, and sometimes when actions or motives for the action are questioned, it is best to just explain. Interpersonal attributions happen when the causes of the events involve two or more individuals, and it is likely that one will always want to present oneself in the most positive light in interpersonal attributions, which is what Tony did. Tony creates perceptual defense in being angry instead of remaining neutral. Tony should communicate his needs and practice better listening skills so the miscommunication doesn’t happen again. TEAM PERFORMANCE: Meeting in Orlando Before the team meeting, I want to spend quality time with Tony and let him know what my concerns are and the pros and cons to the issues. I want to hear his side and be able to work together on some misconceptions since we are in direct rank and contact with each other. I need to keep him on my team if he is going to follow any changes I want to make. At the team meeting I plan to merely observe the group in their natural state, then as I am included, congratulate the team on aspects of the meeting that went well and motivate them based on those positives. Topics of improving performance, ethics, and setting goals, and making plans for future collaboration. Nothing can be completely fixed within this one meeting, but is a start for positive change. The golf game is where I will begin to gather more details of the group’s dysfunctions and look for contradictions in what Tony and other members have relayed to me. The biggest aspect of team functioning I want to discuss with the golfing group a and improve are relational of the ethical concerns and team dynamics. Any process I decide will involve teams of people, so I will be able to rally subordinates to work with Tony and I through this  rapport-building game. Already, I see the reasons for team failures to occur from degrading employees, inequities in reward system, an aggressive leadership style, a weak team leadership, and a fear of the leader. I expect particular behaviors from the Role Nomination Form to be lacking which include task-oriented behavior like initiating activity, seeking/giving information and opinions, elaborating, testing workability, and group-oriented behavior such as encouraging, expressing group feelings, harmonizing, gate-keeping, and setting standards, and what may occur from these lacking behaviors which include anti-group behavior such as resistance, recognition seekers, dominators, and avoiders. Janis says groupthink happens when members of decision-making groups become motivated to avoid being too harsh in their judgments of the leaders or their colleagues ideas. Some Groupthink symptoms are present in this situation, including members who have doubts or differing points of view seek to avoid deviating from what appears to be group consensus by keeping silent about misgivings and even minimizing to themselves the importance of their doubts, and there’s an illusion of unanimity- if someone doesn’t speak, it’s assumed they are in full accord. Tony could be leading his subordinates in groupthink by constantly voicing his beliefs and reprimanding anyone who opposes or wants to report higher than him. Victims avoid deviating, and keep silent about their misgivings and even minimize to themselves the importance of their doubts. To fix this issue, the leader should assign he role of critical evaluator to each member to air objections and doubt, adopt impartial stances in the beginning, monitoring group size by splitting up into smaller teams, then coming back together with results, and appointing a devil’s advocate to always look at the other side of things. Effective teams have adequate resources, effective leadership, climate of trust, a performance evaluation, and reward system that reflect team contributions. The team effectiveness model for this group needs leadership structure and a climate of trust, a composition of allocating roles and finding abilities of members, and a process that has specific goals and  common purposes. Overall, every model and concept discussed for this situation has a solution that can be used to address problems when I attend the monthly directors meeting with Tony. The most important aspect of all these concepts is being able to apply them within myself in my relationship with Tony, as he is my partner to making his district profitable. Open communication, trust, and mutual problem solving with his team should help me land the international assignment and leave Tony skilled and ready to continue great performance after I am gone.