Report on Case Josh Martin

<Leadership Styles>

Assignment 2

MGMT20124 - People, Work & Organisations

<Term 1, 2012>

Prepared and Submitted by

<Pushpinder, Singh>

<S0215705>

Tutor: <Dr. Dorris>

Due Date: <24/April/2012>

Date Submitted: <24/April/2012>

Executive summary

In this report we discuss all the mentioned questions of case study. Like; what type of leadership

styles used by Josh Martin and Tom Saunders, Resolution of the conflicts arises due to these two

styles, qualities of effective leader and solution to Josh’s problem. Then discussion tells Josh has

participative leadership style and Tom has Autocratic style. Reason of their conflict is the lack of

communication between two leaders. There are main properties of leaders which are very

important for effective leaders are: integrity, enthusiasm, Calmness, Toughness, Focus,

Cooperation, etc. To solve Josh’s problem, he needs to explain all the conflicts to Saunders, due to

which not only Josh also all employees are stressed. And then try to sort all these problems. At the

end of this report some recommendations are their which helps to decrease this conflict of

organisation, these suggestions are:

a. Tom should change his leadership style.

b. Josh should communicate all his conflicts with his boss.

c. Company needs to replace Saunders with other transformational and transactional leader

d. Agency should not fully depend on one single person

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: ................................................................................................................... 4

BACKGROUND:..............................................................................................................................4AIM:...........................................................................................................................................4

DISCUSSION: .......................................................................................................................... 4

DIFFERENT LEADERSHIP STYLES:..............................................................................................4CONFLICTING LEADERSHIP STYLES:..........................................................................................5EFFECTIVE LEADER:.................................................................................................................5WAY OUT FROM CURRENT SITUATION:......................................................................................6

CONCLUSIONS: ..................................................................................................................... 6

RECOMMENDATIONS .......................................................................................................... 6

References 8

Assignment 2 Page 4 of 8__________________________________________________________________________________

Introduction:

Background:Case “Josh Martin” discusses two different styles of the leadership. According to the given case there are two managers Josh Martin and Tom Saunders with different leadership styles. McShane et al. (2010) Josh is working in non profit organisation from last 20 years. He starts his career just after his graduation in economics, at the position of director of a government-funded project. And now due to his hard work he is promoted to deputy agency administrator. His reporting is directly to Tom Saunders. Tom’s leadership style is who always want complete control over the employees, and he never take suggestions from others. But Josh is totally different from Tom, he always give chance to his employees to give suggestion, so that they work more comfortably.

Due to this Josh rewarded handsomely for his role in non-profit organisation. In return of this he is available on call 24 hrs a day. Even he is mandatory to attend strategy meeting every Sunday.

Martin tolerates Saunders’s abnormal behaviour from long time, but this conflict increase in few months. Two months ago, due to flu martin was on sick leave. In his absence, Saunders makes an issue of missing of small piece of tile from cafeteria. Even he screamed on employees. He blames on Martin that Martin doesn’t care anything about the organisation only he is the person who get the things done. A month after this incident Martin prepose appraisals of two employees who get excellent from their supervisor. Martin expects 2% increase which motivates employees for more hard work and this 2% would not put any burden on company budgets. But Saunders rejected this proposal. Sunders finished the meeting by saying “I am the leader of the company, and I am responsible to mange this company effectively.”

After this meeting Martin thinks to resign from this company. He starts to find a job in some public sectors. Even he knows due to economical instability it is very hard to get same financial benefits. He is uncertain on his option. Even his wife is also working in some printing company as a technical position. But he still need same package to manage his present expense. In particular, this report discusses all the appropriate alternatives which help Martin to get out from this situation.

Aim: Main purpose of this report is to discuss the mentioned questions of case study. In particularly this report focuses on the different styles of leadership, solution of the problems created by conflicting leadership styles, Effective leadership style and help Martin to get out from his problem.

Discussion:

Different leadership styles:

In this case, there are two leaders first is Josh Martin who follows participative leadership style and second is Tom Saunders who follows autocratic leadership style.

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<s0215705, Pushpinder Singh> <MGMT20124, Term 1, 2012>


(Nwabueze, 2011) Autocratic leaders are also known as Authoritarian leaders. Autocratic leaders are a leader who has control over all the workers and subordinates. He always gets credit of the success of the project and blames to other for any kind of failure. In making relationships and trust with employees these leaders are weakest. They are more task oriented leaders. Autocratic leadership is applied to situations when there is less time for decision. According to (Hernandez, 2011) Autocratic style is not effective for long run.

(Cherry, 2010) Participative leaders are also known as democratic leadership style. Participative leaders always encourage their group members to participate in decision-making; they always listen their problems and motivate them by providing rewards. Productivity of participative leaders is less than autocratic leaders.

Leadership traits: (Nwabueze, 2011) and (Hernandez, 2011) Leadership traits mean properties of the leaders. There are main properties of leaders which are very important for effective leaders are: integrity, enthusiasm, Calmness, Toughness, Focus, Cooperation, etc.

Conflicting leadership styles:

As a result on conflicting leadership styles, conflict within the organisation is obvious. Conflicting views are resulting to increase tensions between colleagues, as in the case conflict between Martin and Saunders. Most organisations share some degree of conflict within the workplace. “Conflict is normal and inevitable; it’s a natural by-product of collective life" (Bolman & Deal 2008 p206). It is how this conflict is managed. Poorly managed conflict can lead to infighting but well handled conflict can stimulate innovation and creativity. Currently the existing conflict mentioned in the case study is being poorly managed and as a result, a number of micro problems have occurred. It seems that the desired performances not communicated by Tom Saunders; causing conflicts with Martin’s perceptions. Tae-Yeol et al (2009) demonstrated that employees are high in emotional competence, use of certain behaviours in the workplace that allow them to gather better information, or make better decisions about their activities, that result in better integration with subordinates and better performance on the job as demonstrated by Martin towards his employees. But Saunders has poor emotional competence due to which he shows more task effectiveness and a lack of social integration.

Resolution of conflict is the proper communication of rules and procedures so that every worker follows these rules and gives standard output. (Bolman & Deal 2008) The structure of an organisation could be described as how labour is divided in order to efficiently turn inputs into outputs. It focuses on formal designs such as organisational charts with rules and procedures. So, In this case effective communication is also required from Saunders side to achieve standard results.

Effective Leader:

As discussed above (Nwabueze, 2011) and (Hernandez, 2011), Leadership traits mean properties of the leaders. There are main properties of leaders which are very important for effective leaders are: integrity, enthusiasm, Calmness, Toughness, Focus, Cooperation, etc. These are few main characteristics of effective leaders. (Nwabueze, 2011) leadership

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doesn’t mean use of their subordinates; it is the delegation of work with proper division between the employees. Most important characteristics of effective leaders are attention toward the most important work. “Leaders must have the interpersonal skill of involving other people” (Nwabueze, 2011). As in case, Martin is also involved with his employees and looks after their problems and helps them and gives rewards to desired employees. So, in this case Josh is more effective leader than Saunders. Saunders is less effective because he always ignores employees’ requirements and forces them to do more work without any rewards. As (Nwabueze, 2011) mentioned in his article, such kind of leadership styles creates frustration in employees, low commitment toward works, more conflicts and more personal and company loss.

Way out from current situation:

As mentioned in case, Josh is very stressed by current environment of the company. Due to which he wants to leave the job and search for another good opportunities. But due to Tom’s links with other companies CEO and economic instability josh doesn’t achieve or maintain his current financial position. So, for him it is very difficult to come out from this position. If I am in same situation, then firstly I contact to Saunders and explain all the conflicts to him, due to which not only me also all employees are stressed. And then try to sort all these problems. It is obvious that not only Martin who is affected by this conflict of two leaders, Saunders also stress by Martin’s sick leave and he put all his frustration on missing piece of tile. If still there is no solution of the conflicts. Then I inform Tom about my search of alternatives, and tell him that I am not able to work under this stressful environment. By this informative talk Josh will leave this company and Tom with good terms and try to find good opportunities with his blessing. So that, Tom will not create any problem in his job search.

Conclusions:At last this report concludes that two different leaders of the company have their different leadership styles. As one has dictatorship style and other have democratic style. Due to these two opposite styles there are some conflicts arises in the organisation. These conflicts are resolved only with the help of proper communication between both the parties. This report also discusses the qualities of the effective leaders. In particularly this report provides the solution to Martin for his problem generate from conflicts. So in summary, solution of this case is that conflict between two leaders is very critical which may effects the productivity of the organisation. So to resolve this conflict both the parties need proper communication between them. If due to some reason conflict doesn’t resolve then Martin will leave his position without any difficulties.

Recommendations1. Tom should change his leadership style, and try to listen his subordinates and stop

blaming others for small things. If he has any problem he needs to discuss with Josh so that they run their business with proper pace and reduce their conflicts.

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2. Josh should communicate all his conflicts with his boss, so that Tom will help him to give proper solution, and if those solutions are not satisfied then he will search new job without any interference of Tom.

3. If Tom is not ready to change his behaviour then company needs to replace him with other transformational and transactional leader. Due to which conflict of company reduce and employee get their rewards according to their performance.

4. Agency should not fully depend on one single person (Josh). So that his absence doesn’t effects on operations. Therefore company needs to appoint one more person equivalent to Josh so that he handles all his responsibilities in his absence and reduce Josh’s job stress.

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References1. Bolman, l & Deal, T 2008, Reframing Organizations, 4th Edition, Jossey- Bass.

2. Cherry, K 2010, ‘Lewin's Leadership Styles’, Journal of Social Psychology, Vol 10, pp. 48-53

3. Hernandez, M, Eberly, M, Avolio, B & Johnson, M 2011,’ The loci and mechanisms of leadership: Exploring a more comprehensive view of leadership theory', In Leadership Quarterly Yearly Review, Vol 22, no. 6, pp. 1165-1185

4. Nwabueze, U 2011,’ Implementing TQM in healthcare: The critical leadership traits’, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Vol. 22 Issue 3, p331-343.

5. Tae-Yeo, K, Cable, D, Sang-Pyo, K & Jie, W 2009,’ Emotional competence and work performance: The mediating effect of pro activity and the moderating effect of job autonomy’, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Vol. 30, No. 7, pp983-1000, (online in Wiley Inter Science)

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Documents

Report on Case Josh Martin