Managing And Organizational Behaviour: Transformational And Charismatic Leadership

Work groups and teams

Discuss about the Managing And Organizational Behaviour: Transformational And Charismatic Leadership.

In any organization, there are work groups and teams. Further, in organizations managers are expected to get specific tasks done by different teams. While a manager is occupied primarily by planning, organizing and executing activities that lead to the production of goods, a leader is concerned more with inspiring, motivating and providing a vision to those under him (Stewart, 2010). Managers are expected to use their powers prudently and not engage in unnecessary politics in the organization. This report critically analyses the workgroups and teams, management and leadership, power and politics, and finally, conflict and negotiation.  

In organizations group and teams are different. A group means that two or more than two people communicate with each other for share information to make decisions within the area of responsibility. And, the team refers that the joint efforts of all the people to achieve a particular task in the organization. It refers a small group of people in the organization with its particular area of skills who are work for a specific task. For example, a team of web designers in software company to make the website good. There are some differences in the work groups and teams in the organizations are explained below (Courtright et al., 2011).

Category of the job: In most of the organizations today work group is define that the number of people who do highly specialize job with minimal training and few efforts. It can be the ten or more than ten people have a similar job description and work individually for end results. In teams, employees have a different set of skills that fit into the particular task to meet organizational goals.

Reward system: Generally in organizations employees are rewarded individually on the basis of work performance, position, and nature of the job. In team-based organization employees are rewarded on the basis of team performance and their skill requires to achieve team performance goals (Griffin, 2012).

Benefits of teams to organizations

Due to the global and competitive environment in organizations, the different types of teams can achieve give important benefits that are explained below.

Cross functional team: The same hierarchy level of employees working for different areas in the organization. The advantage of this team to the organization is that it enhances the creativity and problem-solving skills due to team composition. Employees of cross-functional teams come with a different experience, knowledge and skills. Large and small-medium size organizations have used cross-functional teams. In cross-functional teams work is done in the particular area of functionality. There are few disadvantages of this team, like the chances of increase conflicts among team members due to the diversity of experience, skills and knowledge and sometimes  affects the relationship of the team members due to ego and self-respect issues.

Benefits of teams to organizations

Effective Teams: One of the writers said that the organizations are best and systematic is when there is a member of one group is associated with two groups. In one group he/she should be the boss and in another group he/she should be the subordinate of the group. This concept helps the organization to get their work is done better. Effective teams help team members to work more efficiently together rather than individually (Bratton, 2015).

High-performance team: It is same as an effective team above but there are some exceptional factors that distinct the team that is strong commitments to each other in the team towards group values and goals. It facilitates fast learning due to good interpersonal relationships of the employees. So these are the basic qualities of the team.

Important Issue in managing teams

Quality management and teams: Nowadays in organizations the issue of quality management has increased. To improve the quality of the process, management encourages employees to share their views and ideas so that they act on their ideas and suggestions. For e.g. one of the famous refrigeration company made cross-functional teams to deal with the quality issues. All the people are self-responsible according to their functionality .like one employee takes care of production function another deal with supplier issues etc. that improves communication at all levels and increase the productivity of the company (Ford and Hodgkinson, 2012).

Leadership and management are the important aspects of any organization. Managers need to manage the complexity of work, increase competition, change in technology and rising demands of consumers etc. These all are the challenges need to face by the manager in the organization and overcome by different methods. Leadership is an art of influencing people or groups towards the completion of their organizational goals (Fairholm, 2011).

There are some economic benefits to the organizations to follow good leadership and management.

1) Leadership style: It is very important part plays in an organization to develop stronger and more trustful relations with employee’s .Effective leadership styles help organizations to improve relations between team members and achieve more productivity that leads to success. Different types of Goleman leadership styles followed in most of the organizations like Autocratic, democratic, commanding, visionary, pacesetting and coaching styles. It can be seen that democratic leadership style is more popular in organizations in to ensure growth and long-term success (Green and Esther, 2015).

Figure 1: Management style in organizations (Source: Green and Esther, 2015)

From the above-given figure, it shows that the management mostly follows the two styles in organizations i.e democratic and autocratic style. In democratic style leadership, the decision is taken on the basis of suggestions of all the employees collectively rather than manager individually. The benefit of this style is to employees has much freedom to express their views, that increase creativity, productivity and efficiency of employees. Similarly, Autocratic leadership refers that the all the authority under the boss hands and employees or workers have to perform the task without changing any of his/her instructions. This style has some of the disadvantages like it decrease in motivation in employees that affects the productivity of the work in organizations. And employees are not participative in taking decisions so they are like only machines. It means that their capabilities and efficiencies have diminished by the time. Most of the organizations like factories and cloth manufacturing unit’s,management follow the autocratic style of leadership (Vaccaro et al., 2012)

Important issue in managing teams

2) Improved Business performance: Organizations hires high qualified managers that lead to the more innovations in organizations that result in introducing of new strategies which improve the quality of products and services of business that affects the performance of the organization. Most of the organizations invested in leadership and management development programs to achieve its operational objectives. The latest survey reveals that the high-performance organizations consider three factors i.e. top management is committed to leadership and management development, HR policies that support to management and leadership development such as performance management, leadership career planning etc. and balance between the organizational strategies and HR strategies. So these important factors are responsible for organizational performance (Skillsforcare, 2016).

Consequences of poor leadership and management:

Most of the organizations revenue is affected due to poor leadership and management and it ultimately leads to business failure. There are two important consequences below are:

a) Costs: It has been find that the recent survey of organizations in the UK that the lack of performance of managers impacts the costing of £19 billion yearly in weekly working hours. As per the study of 2000 workers, it has been revealed that the three fourth of the workers wastes their two hours in a working week due to inefficient managers (BIS, 2012). Failure of ineffective management and leadership policy costs heavily to organizations.

b) Survival: In a recent survey of the management of company directors in the UK reveals that the 56 percent of organizational failures due to incompetence and mismanagement of the company (BIS, 2012). No business can survive if it is poorly managed. The good employees lay off due to poor management and leadership.

In any organization certain operations are done to achieve the enterprise goals. To get things done in an organization, the employees in the hierarchy are given certain powers. There have to be certain individuals in charge who control people and resources in the enterprise. Power is the ability to get things done through others (King and Lawley, 2016). The powers that the managers enjoy in an organization are of different types. An employee might yield formal power which could be coercive power. In other words the employee can threaten to demote, lay off or keep out of important projects the junior employees who do not perform well or break the rules of the company. Further the manager has the authority to reward employees who do good work. This gives the manager the ability to make the subordinates behave as the individual wants. The position that a person occupies in the hierarchy of the organization gives the person what is called the legitimate power.

Management and leadership

But the manager should know how to use the power given to the individual in a wise manner. Managers in modern organizations are also expected to have leadership qualities. The role of a leader also involves inspiring and motivating employees. They are also expected to be innovative (Avolio and Yammarino, 2013). A leader would not make excessive use of power to get things done but would try to influence the behavior of subordinates by setting up a personal example before them. Further the leader would use the method of reasoning by using facts and data to convince juniors. The leader would try to be friendly with the team members and win their trust and support (Stewart 2010) . The individual would also try to get the support of the senior management and use this to influence the mindset of subordinates.

A manager should make a judicious mix of use of the individual’s authority or power and the ability to influence others through the above discussed techniques. The manager in an organization also enjoys what is called personal power. This kind of power can be expert power or referent power (Yourarticlelibrary.com, 2016). If the manager has developed some expertise in an area of work of the organization, this gives the person to make others follow the individual’s advice and directions. Moreover, a manager would have referent power if the person is able to win the trust and respect of those under the individual by behaving in a particular way. 

In any organization, power is distributed among senior employees so that they can use it to get the organizational tasks done (King and Lawley, 2016). But sometimes there are people in the enterprise who want to gain as much power as they can so that they can use it to achieve their personal goals and interests rather than concentrate on getting the organization’s work done. This kind of organizational politics has many adverse effects for the organization. There are people who are hungry for power. They get corrupted by power. These people want undue attention and appreciation of their seniors. They show manipulative behavior. They do not care that their pursuit of power affects other employees adversely. If there is excessive politics in an organization it could lead to dissent among other employees (Gadot and Talmud, 2010). Such politics would lead to decreased job satisfaction, increased stress, lower performance and also higher employee turnover in an organization.

Consequences of poor leadership and management

If there is greater politics in an organization, it would also lead to formation of more interest groups within the enterprise. This would lead to obstacles in the path of smooth functioning of the organization. More differences would be created among the employees and the organizational culture would get contaminated (Muondo and Perkins, 2013).

There are leaders who use power to bring change that leads to growth of the organization. They use their power to reward those who have worked hard for the organization. Such people know how to use power responsibly. They realize that power has come to them after years of hard work. They use it to put their plans for organizational development into action rather than pursue selfish personal goals.

The modern organizations have become bigger and employ thousands of people. Individuals from different backgrounds and places come to work in an enterprise. They come from different families with distinct cultures and have been educated in different educational institutions. All these factors play an important role in shaping their personalities. Their personal interests and aspirations would also differ in certain cases. When these people work in an organization it is natural that they have diverse opinions and perceptions on certain work related issues. This leads to a situation of disagreement among them leading to stress and tension. The situation can become violent in certain extreme cases. This is known as a conflict (French et al., 2011).

Mostly the conflict between employees in an organization is harmful as it leads to waste of energy and time of the employees. The work of the organization in certain cases would come to a halt in the department or section where there are arguments and discord among the employees. Conflict leads to bitterness among employees who are expected to work as a team and coordinate with one another for the achievement of enterprise goals.

But there is also a positive side to organizational conflict. It brings to the notice of the management the problems the employees were facing but which did not come to the surface. These problems were adversely affecting the organizational work but management was not aware of them. Moreover as a conflict erupted the employees expressed their inner feelings about a work issue. This also helped them to release their tensions. Now the management has an opportunity to resolve the conflict and find a solution to the underlying problem hurting the organization.

In an organization there are different formal or informal groups. There can be conflict between them over the sharing of organizational resources (Muondo and Perkins, 2013). For example the production department wants more funds for research and development of new products. On the other hand the marketing department also demands more funds to be spent on advertising the company’s products. The organization has limited resources. The officials in each of the two departments would try to convince the management that their needs are more important for the organization. The two departments are competing for funds. In this process they might try to create an impression that their department is more efficient and the other department has been wasting resources. This creates animosity and a situation of conflict among the two departments. In any organization production and marketing department need to coordinate and cooperate with one another (Smallbusiness.chron.com, 2016). This situation of conflict would harm the organization’s interests.

One of the most important methods for resolving a conflict is negotiation among the conflicting groups (French et al., 2011). These negotiations can commence at the initiative of one of the two parties in conflict or due to the role of a third party. In order to resolve the conflict through negotiation, the parties to the conflict should try to understand the interests of each of them in the concerned issue. There is need for communication among the parties. There could be a situation where one of the groups is more powerful and influential and is not willing to make the first move. In such a case the other party should take the initiative and contact the other group. There is the need for both the groups to control their tempers and be patient. There could be a situation where one of the groups might resort to pressure tactics.

There are better chances of a negotiation leading to a mutually acceptable solution if both the parties try to use their skills to find different possible alternative solutions to the problem (French et al. , 2011). This would create better chance for finding a course of action that would create a win win situation for both parties. This would also help to normalize the relations between the two groups later. In certain cases a third party mediator who enjoys the trust and confidence of all the groups could be asked to help find a solution. Moreover certain past cases of similar conflicts and their resolution could be referred to find a mutually agreeable solution.

Conclusion

In any large business organization, there are many teams of employees. Each team is formed to get some work done. If all teams perform well; the organizational goals are met. Team leaders are appointed to guide and support the members of the teams. Most organizations encourage participative leadership nowadays where the employees have some freedom to express their views on how things are being done in the organization. If too much power is concentrated in the hands of a few people it can also corrupt them. There is need for accountability along with power. A business organization should carry out its operations professionally without too much politics.

References

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