Essay on decision-making and Leadership

Applying the Hersly-Blanchard Model

It is clear that Kevin made the mistake of ignoring his employees' degree of maturity. According to the model, the leader should change his or her task deployment and relationship dependent on the maturity level of the staff. The more maturity the supervisor perceives in the staff, the more leeway he or she should grant them. High degrees of maturity, for example, will enable the leader to use a delegating approach, allowing employees to handle task decisions. In Kevin's situation, he went right to delegating style without first assessing maturity. The best play would have been to deploy the 'Selling Style'. He should have convinced them of the merits of the new standards and the reason he wanted them to handle their vacation arrangements. The method would have worked better with the maturity level exhibited.

The Vroom-Jago Model

The Vroom-Jago model dictates that a leader should make a decision by weighing several aspects of the decision. For instance, one should consider whether the decision is time critical. He or she should then consider aspects like how critical the decision is, the team's commitment and the reception that any decision will receive once made. In Kevin's case, the decision is moderately critical to productivity. The standards act as a benchmark and the incentives should be reflective of the new reality so that the company can make savings. The decision is not very time critical. The firm is still in the process of resetting the standards while the vacations are sometime away. The employees are indeed committed to both decisions because they affect their financial and social lives. It is also apparent that they have resigned themselves to accepting whatever decision Kevin makes. In this situation, Kevin should go back to his authoritative style.

Kevin's Leadership Style Before the Incident

Before this particular incident, Kevin was an authoritative leader and his relationship with the employees was distant. He had gotten in the habit of making decisions and telling the employees so that they could implement it. He did indeed ask for their suggestions regarding the vacations. However, even then, he was the final authority on the matter. The employees knew the process for the decision-making and they were apparently at peace with it. Regarding the standards, there was no real input from the employees. The relationship was one where the boss gave orders and the employees followed them.

Developing a Collaborative Relationship

In the present dispensation, Kevin is trying to develop a collaborative relationship with the employees. It is a relationship where the boss and those under him share ideas and try and make decisions together. It calls for closer cooperation and for the barriers between the boss and employees to be lowered. However, as the results show, Kevin had jumped the gun. He wanted to move the relationship from one level to another without doing any due diligence or groundwork. The result is that the relationship reset has largely failed and Kevin will have to think about another approach.

Suggestions for Kevin

The first suggestion is that Kevin should work harder on team building for his employees. It is clear that while they might be professionals in their own right, they have not gelled into a team that can make joint decisions. The one decision they made was easy and straightforward. It was obvious that they would make the decision that left them all financially better off. Team building efforts should be continuous and conscious. Only when there is a sense of unity can Kevin trust the employees with their decision making. He should outsource the team-building if he cannot do it himself.

If that is not a viable option, he should go back to the system he was using before. For one, it seemed to be working. Productivity was as high as it should be and the employees seemed happy. They were aware of the standards and how the vacation stalemates were broken. It does appear that they are professional in the sense that they do their part in accomplishing the firm's goals. It is said that one should not try and fix something that is not broken. It would serve Kevin well to listen to that adage and stay on the path.

Insights to be Gotten

There are two main insights to be gotten from the story. The first is that one cannot just change his or her leadership and decision-making style without any groundwork. Employees get used to their boss and the way he does things. They become comfortable with the system and they adjust to it. Once they adapt to one style, one has to work hard to get them to pivot to another. Kevin expected them to perform the shift on a dime and that did not happen. It is clear that a change in leadership style should be deliberate, thought-through and actively driven.

It is also apparent that bosses might misconstrue employee opinions with problems that do not exist. To Kevin, the employees probably resented the fact that he made decisions for them. That thinking must have factored into his decision to try the new mode of operation. It shows that bosses can be out of touch with their employees and think that they care about things that they do not. The employees had accepted that it was the job of the boss to make decisions regarding vacations. It was apparently not a concern that they took to heart.

The Virtual Team Process

My virtual team process is quite simple. The first step is to get all the members to know each other. They should be aware of basics like names, academic and professional achievements, hobbies and the like. It is information that immediately gives the members something to talk about. The next step is to run the first meetings very deliberately. It is a fallacy that people will just click if you let them. The initial process should be carefully controlled by the boss and evaluations made as often as possible. The formative and normative stages are the most sensitive.

From that point, it will depend on the evaluation that the leader makes. However, regardless of it, there has to be some level of professional help with the team building. It would be helpful if the team building could be done outside the workplace. Something to always consider is that team building is a continuous exercise. Relationships within the team will ebb and flow and the leader has to be aware of them and manage them. The leader should always maintain control and ensure there is one center of power. Losing control or focus can and usually does invalidate any work done in team building.

References

Daft, R. (2014) The leadership experience. New York, NY: Cengage.