The Role Of Teamwork And Leadership: A Reflective Report On Facebook And Fake News

Diversity Management in Teams

Discuss about the Leadership in Ethical Facebook Posting.

Team work and leadership play important role in achievement of goals in business organizations. The educational institutes in order to instill team work among students often indulge them into projects simulating real life situations. These practices promote leadership and team work skills among the participants which help them in their professional life as well. The paper is a reflective report where five students from three different cultures, Asia, China and New Zealand were grouped. They were entrusted with a simulated project where they would be advising Facebook on managing the issue of fake news which surface on its pages. The paper would light on diverse leadership and team work concepts like diversity management, leadership, cohesion and social loafing.

I can reflect upon and point out to the key aspects of leadership learned from the group activity in which I participated:

The group in which I participated, consisted of 5 members from three different nationalities namely, Asian, Chinese and Kiwi. This meant that my team mates and I come from different cultural backgrounds. We also had disparity of communication, ownership, understanding and beliefs among ourselves. This disparity in the first place created barriers between us in communicating and working in a cohesive manner. However, I discovered that diversity can also be used to enforce innovation in a team.

I learnt that communication plays a significant role in ensuring strong leadership and diversity management in teams. Eginli and Narin (2017) stresses that continuous communication between team members leads to better understanding of each other’s perceptions stemming from diverse culture. Trax, Brunow and Suedekum (2015) supports this view and mention that diversity management and positive acceptance of team members pave way for innovative ideas. I can point out that though initially we faced difficulties in communicating with each other, however, later as we started understanding each other, it promoted to increase in cohesion among ourselves. This was contrary to what Taylor and Kachanoff (2015) mentioned that diversity leads to dispute among group members. I learnt from this experience that strong communication among group members encourage innovation in idea generation which helps in better formation of strategies. This was evident from the good performance which our team put up. Rossberger and Krause(2015) point out that strong communication among the team members and better understanding of each other’s perceptions pave way for participative leadership. I have learnt that participative leadership encourages more active participation and in turn encourages innovative thinking and idea generation. This was evident from our exchange of documents and ideas on social media.

The Importance of Communication in Teamwork and Leadership

In this particular chapter I will be explaining and analyzing the phenomenon of social loafing. Social loafing is said to be the time when the team members loose the interest and motivation to work hard and earn accolades or face the different challenges. The efforts of the team are not clear to each other and thus the performance cannot be judged together as a team. The particular incident happens when the leader of the team who has the responsibility of the whole team does not highlight or recognize an individual contribution. This leads to a tendency of slackness and the team member might even get dejected as he will have the feeling that his contribution does not stand on solid grounds for the team. Social loafing happens at the time when people in the team do not know each other well enough. However the tendency stops at the time when the people tend to grow close bonds between them and work together as a team by the passage of time. In social media also the team of members who controls the website or the web based application must work in tandem to achieve high level of growth. There are a number of reasons that have been identified by me for social loafing in Face book and other forms of social media workplaces. This includes;

1. The output of the individual cannot be evaluated on an individual basis
2. The task is perceived to be low and meaningfulness as well
3. The personal involvement of the individual in the particular task is considered to be very low
4. The comparison or contrast against the standards set forth in a particular group is not possible to evaluate.
5. There are individuals who believes their opponent to be weak which turns out to be totally a false thinking
6. There are people whose contribution to the team goes without any recognition because of their isolation from the rest of the group

Participative leadership

I have learnt from the team work that the participative leadership theory will be the best theory that can be used in the following scenario to achieve great results. The participative leadership theory is a particular managerial style that takes lessons or inputs from all the employees’ ort the team members of a company and takes advantage of the different kinds of information that are available regarding any issues in the organization or any decisions that needs to be taken by the leader (Taylor &Kachanoff, 2015). The main reason for selecting participative theory is its immense advantages which separates it from the other kinds of the leadership theories and makes it one of the best in business. The advantages of the participative theories can be best used by the management of Face book. This includes;

1. Acceptance- I can point out that the management of Face book has to formulate the policies and guidelines which on the other hand have to be accepted by the staffs and the employees of the organization. The acceptance of the policies by the employees will help in bringing down the resistance of the employees to the different programs and also helps to speed up the organizational procedure of the company and turns the business operations of the company much smoother in nature (Eginli &Narin, 2017).
2. Morale- The employees who would be made leaders or given extraordinary powers to control the employees will be personally liable for the success of the organization. I have learnt that this makes it easy for the organization to make them proud of their achievements and also makes them feel motivated enough to perform at their best levels. The employees will also feel motivated once they see the team leaders to be super active and motivated. Thus I can reflect that this will help in the growth of the organizational performance of the organization (Brunow & Suedekum, 2015).
3. Employee retention- Retention of the employees is one of the most critical tasks that requires great amount of skill from the part of the HR management of Face book. Following the participative style of leadership helps the HR management to gain significant success in the retention of the employees (Rossberger and Krause, 2015). I can point out that the following leadership style provides adequate chance to the employees of the organization to be part of the development process and also provide necessary inputs for any development. This makes the employees feel special and reduces the chance of leaving the organization easily.
4. Creativity and innovation- I have learnt that the encouragement of the employees of the organization on different issues and programs of the organization helps the employees to stay motivated and dedicated towards their work and also the organization. The fact that they can be involved in the involved in the decision making process is a great source of recognition for them. Therefore Participative leadership is the correct form of leadership in this case (Taylor &Kachanoff, 2015).

The survival of the online community is totally dependent on the power of sharing member’s knowledge. The intentions of sharing knowledge are based on group cohesions. Thus social loafing forms a key obstacle to the development of the social media in the internet and also acts as a key obstacle to the community development.  I can point out that online communication seems to take a back stage in the presence of the particular characteristic or feature in the management of the mentioned social media application.  I can also reflect that the study shows that social loafing is a significant negative predictor of the users’ group cohesion. The study also highlights that perceived risk factors and social bonds are important elements of social loafing. Anonymity, offline activities, knowledge quality, and media richness all have strong effects on social ties and perceived risk in the online community (Rossberger and Krause, 2015).

The following phenomenon according to my reflection is one of the main characteristic features of the groups of the business organizations. This is supposed to be very important from the behaviourist point of view.  In contrast to loafing cohesiveness means the degree or the amount of closeness shared between the members of the team. The different positive outcomes of cohesiveness are:

1. More participation from the employees
2. Increase in the confidence of the organization
3. Much more success
4. More communication

I have learnt that negativity among the employees occurs due to poor communication, ineffective policies, unhealthy competition and workplace intolerance. Such activities must be banned or regulated to increase the operational smoothness of the organization (Eginli &Narin, 2017).

Conclusion:

I can conclude that the report has highlighted the different problems and issues that exist in the team management policies of Face book. The following report has highlighted the importance of communication and employee bonding to achieve success in the online marketing area.

References

Eginli, A. T., &Narin, A. (2017). Managing Diversity in International Companies: A Case Study for Diversity Management of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Communication and Digital Media, 301.

Díaz-Chao, Á.,Miralbell-Izard, O., & Torrent-Sellens, J. (2016). Information and communication technologies, innovation, and firm productivity in small and medium-sized travel agencies: new evidence from Spain. Journal of Travel Research, 55(7), 862-873.

Trax, M., Brunow, S., &Suedekum, J. (2015). Cultural diversity and plant-level productivity. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 53, 85-96.

Taylor, D. M., &Kachanoff, F. J. (2015). Managing cultural diversity without a clearly defined cultural identity: The ultimate challenge. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 21(4), 546.

Rossberger, R.J. and Krause, D.E., 2015. Participative and team-oriented leadership styles, countries’ education level, and national innovation: the mediating role of economic factors and national cultural practices. Cross-Cultural Research, 49(1), pp.20-56.