Leadership in Flux

Scenario (fictional):

Fameit Inc. (FI) is a manufacturing company that produces customized frames using all sorts of materials to create frames for certificates, pictures, paintings, etc., all over the world. There are 100 employees divided between manufacturing and sales representatives, with about 20 staff assigned to managerial/administrative positions in the various departments. About 2 months ago, the head of production, James (in his position for the last 3 years), was in a meeting with his staff when the following conversation occurred:

Production manager James says at the end of a half-hour meeting to review the production schedule results: “Does anyone have anything to add concerning operations today?”

Production employee Maria: “Well, we are having some problems in production because some of our vendor acrylics are changing composition and are not resulting in the best quality of product when they come off the line. Someone needs to speak with our vendor.”

Production manager James: “Anyone else have that problem?” (He waits for 3 seconds for any response and then continues.) “Thanks everyone, I guess that wraps up this meeting. Now back to work!”

After a week, the production manager began to receive reports from the database system that quality control was rejecting some of the final products off the assembly line. In addition, customer complaints and returns now had gotten to the critical point, and executive management had been alerted.

The production manager had a special meeting of his department that same day and admonished the production team, saying:

“It is your responsibility to see that these products pass quality control. If there is a problem, you are to contact me. I hold you all responsible for this lapse in reporting this problem. I will decide shortly who will be working with me to resolve this issue.”

Production employee Maria just looked at her colleagues and said: “But boss, I did bring this up at the last meeting.”

Production manager James responded: “Well, if there was a problem as important as this one, you should have sent a follow-up memo to everyone.” Looking at Maria, he continued, “Someone may be losing their job over this!” Then he adjourned the meeting.

Production employee Maria, speaking to another employee after the meeting: “I absolutely should not lose my job over this; I told him there was a problem. I am going to lodge a complaint with the human resources department right away.”

Checklist: Respond to the following items regarding the scenario and the leadership and communication processes you learned about through your reading and learning activities.

-Analyze the problems at this company as portrayed in the scenario.
-Describe the leadership style demonstrated by the manager:
-Name the leadership style.
-Define the leadership style.
-Explain why you chose this leadership style.
-Explain the aspects of the leadership process that were neglected by the manager.
-Describe the steps in the communication process.
-Describe the steps in the communication process that were not addressed or completed.
-Explain how the communication steps were not completed or addressed.
-Examine and explain how the manager could have used the communication and leadership process to (1) build a better relationship with the employees in his department and (2) make employees more effective on the job.
-Submit your minimum 2- to 3-page expository essay

ANSWER

Leadership in Flux

The production manager is not appropriately communicating with the lower employees. When he found out that there were problems being experienced with some of their suppliers, he should have followed up with Maria and other production employees, or he should have taken Maria’s concern seriously and talked to their acrylic vendors about changing their composition and let them know about their concern about the change affecting the quality of their products. He also seems not to have considered the concern because he thought that Maria’s concern was not with other employees and did not see the need to address it.

The leadership portrayed by James in this scenario is the autocratic leadership style. I choose this leadership style because, from the scenario, one can tell that James is not actively involved with his employees, and he is mostly giving orders and not listening to the concerns of the employees (Al Khajeh, 2018). An autocratic leader believes that they are the smartest person in the room and make all the decisions without considering the team members’ input. The command and control approach is not very effective in the modern world, which might have led to the problems that followed.

Leadership is a process and not a position. A good leader is supposed to inspire things to do the right thing and not force them. The leadership process involves the development of strategy and vision. Leaders should redefine and review their strategy and vision based on the business realities. In this case, the production manager, James, ignored this aspect and did not listen to the employees on the changing acrylic composition (Horila & Siiton, 2020). Instead of addressing the situation and figuring how they were going to adjust to the changing composition, he figured it, and when the products were not up to the customer standards, he blamed his employees.

The steps in the communication process involve the source, encoding, channel receiver, feedback, and context. The production manager ignited all the following steps. He received the message decoded it but refused to give feedback on how they should have handled the problem. He ignored the information that was given to him by one of his employees, which resulted in a negative outcome (Haroon & Malik, 2018). Decoding was completely ignored during the face-to-face meeting with his employees. The production manager did not take the time to understand what the employee was talking about or the supplier who had changed their composition. He also ignored feedback as he did not get back to Maria on the next step.

The production manager in this organization could have communicated better with the employees to create a better relationship. He could have summoned Maria after the meeting and enquired about the vendors who had changed their composition; he could also have asked her how they should go about the changing compositions. Asking for the employees’ opinions makes them feel involved in their work which derives more satisfaction and increases motivation. Instead of threatening the employees that they would lose their jobs, the production manager should have taken responsibility for the part he played in not effectively communicating with his employees and apologized for the role he played (Haroon & Malik, 2018). After doing so, they should have tried to develop a solution to the problem and brainstormed with his employees on the possible solutions. He would have encouraged his employees to be more open with him and created a healthy relationship by doing the above.

References

Al Khajeh, E. H. (2018). Impact of leadership styles on organizational performance. Journal of Human Resources Management Research, 2018, 1-10.

Haroon, H., & Malik, H. D. (2018). The impact of organizational communication on organizational performance. Journal of Research in Social Sciences, 6(2), 140-151.

Horila, T., & Siitonen, M. (2020). A Time to Lead: Changes in Relational Team Leadership Processes over Time. Management Communication Quarterly, 34(4), 558-584.