Discuss about the Cognitive Approach to Emotion Management.
Firstly, there seems to be lack of communication between Susan and her subordinates. Susan merely tells her assistant managers who directly report to her what she expects of them. She does not take enough steps to find out what the employees under her leadership want. Susan should have helped employees set goals for themselves and then supported them as given in the path goal theory of leadership (Path Goal Theory 2017).
Secondly Susan does not ask many questions from her seniors regarding the work given to her. She does not offer any suggestions to her seniors regarding the job she is entrusted with. There is transactional leadership by her seniors and Susan also has adopted that style as a leader herself (Liu, Liu and Zeng 2011).
Thirdly, Susan seems to lack patience. She should have asked Ben why so much time was being taken in preparing for the trade show, the marketing campaign. She herself should have
talked to Johnson also and faced their emotional outbursts. Then she should have managed their emotions to solve the conflict. She seemed reluctant to communicate (Effective Communication And Leadership 2017).
Fourthly, Susan did not understand that work is to be done by her subordinates. If they are not happy, the work would suffer. Her leadership style does not show concern for subordinates, what they want out of work as shown in the leadership grid. She is more of a transactional leader (Odumeru and Ogbonna 2013).
Fifthly, Susan did not realize that there was a need for change and she should have changed her approach to dealing with her employees. She is not a transformational leader (Transformational Leadership 2017). She did not change her attitude to win over unsatisfied employees. She did not support the initiatives of Ben and other employees.
Susan’s attitude towards her assistant managers is biased. She has a group of assistant managers as her favourites. Susan talks to them more about how work is to be done and how they can be involved in getting things done. These assistant managers are part of the ingroup as given in the leader member exchange theory. Then there is part of the assistant managers who Susan does not trust so much and is not comfortable talking to. These managers are consulted less by her regarding work. they are part of the outgroup. The inner group of assistant managers feel that they are more cared for in the company. They are more satisfied with the company as a result they also make more efforts to do good work. They are more motivated employees. on the other hand the outgroup feels that the leader is prejudiced. All the good assignments go to the ingroup. They also seem to be more likely to get a promotion. This causes lot of resentment among members of the outgroup.
Susan also does not communicate much with the other team members outside the group of her assistant managers (Effective Communication And Leadership 2017). She is neglecting the other team members. There is hardly any leader member exchange when it comes to talking to members like Johnson and Ben. Susan does not talk to Johnson when she should have faced the person and tried to get first hand information from him. She is busy mostly with her assistant managers and asks them to talk to group members. So all other members in a way belong to the outgroup who are cared for less by Susan.
If Susan had developed more communication with the other team members, she would have known better what are the problems being faced by the staff. She would have known about the aspirations of her staff, what they wanted to achieve in life through their employment. Susan was not following the path goal theory in its entirety (Northhouse 2016). The basic idea behind this leadership concept is that A leader who follows the path goal theory interacts and sits with her or his juniors and communicates more with them (Path Goal Theory 2017). Susan should have taken more interest in the development of her employees. A leader’s job is not only to give directions to her employees but also see how they react to her directions. There is need for a leader to find out if her proposals regarding work are taken well by the followers or not.. Susan should have helped the team members to evolve (The Blake Mouton Managerial Grid 2017). She should have mentored personally some of the team members who were showing outstanding capabilities and work. She should have taken more interest in Ben’s work and groomed him as a greater leader that the person could have developed into. There should have been communication by Ben that anybody with more ideas about work could come forward and talk to her (Eisenbeiß and Boerner 2013).
Different leaders sometimes behave differently in a situation (Northhouse 2016). Susan faced different kind of situations in her company as a leader. She had a team member Johnson Fellows who used to take interest in work initially but later became disinterested in work. Susan instead of directly talking to Johnson asked her assistant managers to look into the problems of Johnson and other discontented staff.
Susan was known to take things hands on but in this case maybe she was unsettled by the reaction of Johnson (Thiel, Griffith, and Connelly 2015). She failed to address friction and discontent among the staff directly. She had a golden opportunity to prove her mettle as a leader. There was a need from her to manage the emotions of staff like Johnson (Little, Gooty and Williams 2016). Susan would have realized that if the emotions of staff went out of control there could be complete lack of discipline in the organization and work would have come to a halt. She could have managed their emotions by directly talking to them and facing any outbursts from them herself. Before meeting Johnson, Susan should have inquired from her assistant managers what feedback they could give regarding the problems of the discontented staff.
Susan could have applied two approaches to manage the emotions of the staff. One of them would be behavioural approach that involves the leader understanding that people in the group have genuine problems. They have felt ignored and maybe harassed by the transactional style of leadership by Susan. In this case Susan would have realized that she should have been more caring for the feelings of the staff and there could have been more participative type of management from her. In this case Susan would show some empathy when she meets angry staff (Thiel, Griffith and Connelly 2015). In this case, Susan would have done an analysis of the grievances of the staff and found that some of them were genuine and anger of the staff was justified. Susan would try to calm down the nerves of the people by talking to them in a softer tone and not trying to show that as she was the boss, she knew everything and could treat the staff as she wishes (Little, Gooty and Williams 2016). Susan in this case would involve the staff in finding and creating solutions for them. This strategy of interpersonal emotion management would make Susan more popular with the staff as they would feel they have been given more respect and involvement in the entire process.
Another strategy that Susan could have relied on is the Cognitive approach in which Susan would have come to the conclusion that the members of staff were to be blamed to a certain extent for the trouble and Susan would make them see reason and change themselves as she met them face to face (Cognitive Approach To Emotion Management 2017). This approach would show that the leader is strong and would not go out of the way to please the staff. The leader would make the staff change even at the cost of receding popularity as staff are also to be disciplined.
Susan could have applied a mixed approach in managing the emotions of her staff which can also be called situational modification. She could have been strict or shown more empathy towards the employees after considering how they were responding to her suggestions (Guarana and Hernandez 2015). If the employees themselves start producing fruitful suggestions which can help the organization, the leader can be more receptive and cooperative towards them even if they had not behaved properly in the past. Even if a person is rude in the beginning but later mellows down, the leader should be soft towards the person when the individual becomes calm. The change in emotions of the team members should elicit a favourable response from the leader who need not be curt all the time but mix it with a softer tone of voice
There were ample opportunities for Susan to bring change and transformation in the company. When Johnson Fellows became furious at the management, Susan should have read the tell tale signs. She should have tried to build bridges with such dissatisfied employees by talking to them. A process of building of communication network within the group should have been started by her (Anderson and Sun 2015). She should have become a transformational leader. A transformational leader both uses authority and persuasion to get things done by group members. Instead Susan was spending less time with group members and was following a transactional style of leadership where old methods of doing work were being followed. The group members were just being told what to do and rewarded if work was done. No suggestions regarding work were asked from them by the leader.
There should have been mentoring of Johnson by Susan who should have taken him in confidence. When employees are encouraged to talk among themselves, many dissatisfactions go away. The employees become more supportive to management. This is how change is introduced in an organization (Voet 2014). The support of employees is taken by the management.
Employees like Ben who took the initiative in developing a marketing campaign for the electronic products of the company, needed to be encouraged by Susan. People like Ben can become future leaders of the company.
Lines of communication should have been established among employees and informal communication helps to bring out new ideas (Sarros., Cooper and Santora 2011). An environment conducive to innovative ideas could have been provided with the efforts of Susan who could have brought transformation (Wright and Pandey 2011).
Susan should have helped leaders like Ben to develop more social capital. This means that Ben should have been encouraged to interact with other members in the group and talk to them about his ideas regarding work (Liu, Liu and Zeng 2011). There should have been more conversations among group members and many new leaders would have emerged. Susan could herself be part of some such conversations (Effective Communication And Leadership 2017). But one drawback of encouraging such networking among the employees is that they would develop their own ideas and would like to carry them forward rather than carry out the suggestions and commands given by the transformational leader (Transformational Leadership 2017). But this should not deter the transformational leader from helping the group members discuss new ideas for change. Some ideas by the group members could lead to transformations within the company that can help it to make more profits.
It becomes clear from the facts given in the case that Susan is not an authentic leader who wins the trust of its subordinates through fair dealings and open communication (10 Authentic Leadership Characteristics 2017). An authentic leader establishes certain rules according to which the subordinates are treated by the leader through his or her consistent dealings with the juniors (10 Authentic Leadership Characteristics 2017). But it becomes clear that Susan had certain juniors who were favoured by her in job allocation. No doubt the other employees felt cheated by her. Susan had developed an ingroup and outgroup of assistant managers and she had separate rules of engagement for them. For outgroup she was more of a transactional leader (Obiwuru et al. 2011).
Many employees felt that they were not being cared for by their superior and their performance at work was all that mattered to the management. Susan failed to develop a proper work culture in her group (Agote, Aramburu and Lines 2016). There were more than eighty employees who directly reported to her. The number of such direct reports seems to be too high. Susan should have trained her assistant managers to interact more with the other employees to find about their feelings about work. Susan should have put in place a proper system of reward and performance among the employees. She failed to establish clear and transparent system for her interaction with the other employees (Laschinger and Fida 2014). She should have approached and met more junior employees in weekly meeting held by her and given them some work to do. Then she should have evaluated that work. This would have made her more popular with the employees.
Susan was an authentic leader to the extent that she did interact with Ben and became aware of the ideas that Ben had regarding a new marketing campaign for selling the product of the company. In this case there was some fruitful leader member exchange. Susan agreed to the development of more ideas for selling the product of the company through the advertisements produced by Ben. So there was mutual commitment between Ben and Susan regarding the development of a new campaign. There was a level of sincerity in Susan’s attitude towards Ben. In this case Susan acted as an authentic leader, who cared to an extent about the feelings of subordinate (Qian, Lin and Chen 2012). Susan should help Ben to a certain extent as an authentic leader but should not allow Ben to take advantage of her. Ben has to complete the new advertising campaign on time. Ben should take this work seriously. If he is not responsible towards this work, Susan can take away the project from her and ask somebody else to do it. An authentic leader can be strict towards the individual’s subordinates.
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