Learning Activity #2 Theme Two: Leadership style should fit the person, the orga
ID: 361251 • Letter: L
Question
Learning Activity #2
Theme Two: Leadership style should fit the person, the organization, and the job. It should be situational in nature.
You are the Package Distribution Manager for GDD. It has come to your attention that five drivers in your region have serious errors in their delivery report logs. The delivery report is key to controlling package flow and must be accurate. If not, GDD will not be paid by their clients and would quickly lose their business to Fed Ex or UPS. One of the drivers accounts for 60% of the errors. She is a nice person, reliable but occasionally late to work because of conflicts with getting her kids to school on time. She is a single mother. A second driver accounts for 30% of the errors. This driver is new to the company and while his error numbers are high they have declined from last month. The other driver’s errors hover around 10 to 15%.
After taking the quizzes below and using the course readings to delve deeper into your leadership style, answer the following questions using the style that is indicated in the test results.
TEST RESULTS:
Quiz: What's Your Leadership Style? - Steward - Stewards are the rocks of organizations. They’re dependable, loyal and helpful, and they provide a stabilizing and calming force for their employees. They value rules, process and cooperation. They believe that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and they move only as fast as the whole chain will allow. And they take care to help those who struggle. Working for Stewards offers the chance to be part of a well-oiled machine. It offers security, consistency and cohesion. It may not offer great opportunities for individual glory or an adrenaline rush, but it does provide great opportunities for team success. Stewards can often be found in mission-critical areas of the organization and they are often relied-upon by leaders in other divisions. For the appropriate people, it’s a great situation. Famous Stewards include George Washington, Mother Teresa and Ginni Rometty (CEO of IBM).
Your leadership style is Participative - Participative or democratic leadership is a great way to build a happy team and make employees feel great about themselves and what they can give to the company. Good thing you’re so good at it! You probably know just how to motivate truly creative types to achieve their best, while making yourself look good at the same time. The down side is that it can lead to a little bit of (dare we say) inefficiency and delay in action sometimes. So make sure you have a way to keep your team on track and headed for success and go for it!
1.) How will you go about correcting the problem? Will you meet with the workers individually? in a group? What will you say and how will you get the workers to listen?
2.) After your conversation, what would you do if the next set of reports show some improvement in the 60% employee but none in the 10-15% employees? What would you do then?
3.) What leadership style did you use? Was it easy to use the leadership style? Or Hard? Did you find that the leadership style might not really be helpful in your approach to each situation? Do you believe another style might be better in one or the other of the situations? If so which one and why? If not, why not?
Explanation / Answer
Answer 1: To correct the mention problem, I will be talking to all the drivers individually and will try to make them realize what impact that is having on our business and how we can lose our business to competition also if same is not corrected immediately what adverse effects it could have in near future.
Also will cite examples on how competition was effected in the past because of such errors and to ensure immediate improvement in Drivers performance would tell them that repeating such errors will affect their performance reviews and may also have adverse affect on their bonuses.
Answer 2: In case of some improvement of 60% error driver, I will appreciate her and encourage her to bring error to 0%.
For other drivers with errors 10-15% will again have discussion to understand the root cause of errors and also would discuss measures to avoid these errors. Also would again try to motivate them by showing first drivers report on how she has improved also would arrange a brain storming session between drivers to discuss what are the best practices adopted by the first driver which has resulted in improved results. Also would try to understand if these drivers require any support in terms of learning and if that would be the case would arrange for same on utmost priority.
Answer 3: Since Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. I will use transformational leadership style in order to inspire employees from within to get the work done with full accuracy. Instead of pressurizing and penalizing, understanding their issues and sorting it out is of prime importance as that will not only help me gain confidence of my drivers but will also help me gain their trust.
The approach is not easy to use as this approach needs time and same may have delayed result and might have substantial impact on business.
Yes this style might not be the best fit in every situation as a leader we first need to analyze the problem and then decide the approach to resolve same.
Yes, in some cases, we might use styles like autocratic to get the work done forcefully to show the team that all decision making powers are with the leader, sometimes autocratic style seems to be more efficient as leader does not entertain suggestions or initiatives from the team and allows them to take quick decisions.
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