Determining Your Perfect Position Paper Introduction To all employees, our company is going to be going though a major expanding and restructuring process. This restructuring is going to bring about changes with positions held within the company. One of the major changes will be Christine Alward will be taking a position as Department Manager of the Customer Service Department. Christine Alward has a lot of strengths to bring to the table that will help our company grow. Christine also has a great leadership style that will be a great asset to the Customer Service Department.
Leadership Style Christine’s leadership style is focused on customer service along with employee satisfaction. Christine is very relationship oriented and believes in participative leadership which involves group supervision (Robbins & Judge, 2007, p. 54 ). Participative leadership involves having participation from the group in decision making which will help improve communication and promote cooperation from the entire group (Robbins & Judge, 2007, p. 54). Christine will help improve our customer base along with helping to improve employee moral.
One of the first objectives will be to sit down with each employee to find out what their goals are along with letting them know what the company objectives are for all employees. The department will run as a team working together to come up with new ideas on how to improve customer service and customer satisfaction for the company. Christine trusts that employees will make up for her defaults. Christine is not very task orientated so it will be up to the team to keep everyone on task in order to meet our objectives. Christine will give you the flexibility that is needed in order to get the tasks at hand done.
Christine will be there for all of the employees if they have any concerns they need to address. The intentions are to keep moral high by giving each other praise and having fun while we work. In order for all the employees to understand Christine’s leadership approach and how it will affect the company we will need to go over different leadership theories. Leadership Theories There are six contingency theories of leadership, path goal theory, situational leadership theory, leader substitute’s theory, multiple-linkage model and LPC (least preferred coworker) (Yuki, 2006, p. 15). There are similarities and minor differences between each contingency theory. LPC Contingency Model LPC Contingency Model id s model of how a situation moderates the relationship between how effective leaders are and how traits are measured through a least preferred coworker score (Yuki, 2006, p. 215). The LPC Contingency Model works well for the leader when relations with employees are good; when the situation is good the leader has more of a position of power and the task is highly structured. (Yuki, 2006, p. 216).
When leaders and employees have a good relationship, employees are more likely to comply with leader requests and directions instead of just ignoring or subverting them (Yuki, 2006, p. 216). When the leader has a higher position of power it is easier to influence employees, also when the task is structured it is easier for the leader to monitor the employee’s performance (Yuki, 2006, p. 216). It is harder for the leader when they have poor relationships with their employees and when the tasks are unstructured and the position of power is low (Yuki, 2006, p. 216).
Path-Goal Theory was developed in order to explain how the behavior of a leader can influence the satisfaction and performance of employees (Yuki, 2006, p. 218). The difference between path-goal theory and the LPC model is that path-goal theory increased the personal payoffs for employees by making the path easier by clarifying tasks, reducing roadblocks, and increasing the opportunities for personal satisfaction (Yuki, 2006, p. 218). Leaders that use the path-goal theory approach use a motivation theory called expectancy theory. This theory is used to explain how a leader can influence the employee’s satisfaction and effort (Yuki, 2006, p. 18). Expectancy theory is a choice in which the employee decides how much effort to devote to their job at any given point (Yuki, 2006, p. 218). Employees believe that valued outcomes can be attained by making a serious effort and that the effect of a leader’s behavior is to modify these perceptions and beliefs (Yuki, 2006, p. 219) Path-Goal Leadership Path-goal leadership has four different leader behaviors supportive leadership, directive leadership, participative leadership and achievement-oriented leadership (Yuki, 2006, p. 219).
Supportive leadership is giving consideration to the needs of employees by displaying concern for their well being, along with creating a friendly environment to work in. Directive leadership is letting employees know what is expected to do, giving guidance, asking employees to follow the rules and procedures and scheduling the work (Yuki, 2006, p 219). Participative leadership is talking with employees to get their opinions and suggestions and achievement-oriented leadership involves setting goals, seeking performance improvements, rewarding excellence in performance, and showing confidence the employees can obtain high standards.
Directive leadership affects employees in many different ways, such as effort can be increased by finding larger rewards and them contingent on employee performance (Yuki, 2006, p. 222) Situational Leadership Theory Situational Leadership Theory refers to the difference in employees, if you have a high maturity employee they will have the ability and confidence to do a task, but if there is a low maturity employee they will lack the self-confidence to do the task (Yuki, 2006, p. 223).
Situational leadership states that the level of employee maturity determines how the leader’s behavior will be in relation to the employee. When there is an employee who is immature in relation to their task the leader should use task-oriented behavior along with following up with the employee to see how they are progressing (Yuki, 2006, p. 224). As the maturity level of the employee increases the leader can decrease the amount of task-oriented behavior and provide more relations-oriented behavior (Yuki, 2006, p. 24). When the employee is very mature then that employee should not need as much direction or monitoring (Yuki, 2006, p 224). Leadership Substitutes Theory Leadership substitute’s theory consists of substitutes and neutralizers for supportive and instrumental leadership (Yuki, 2006, p. 225). Supportive leadership is similar to consideration and instrumental leadership, and various attributes of the employees, the task and the company may serve as substitutes or neutralizers for leader behavior (Yuki, 2006, p. 225).
Subordinate characteristics require little direction when these employees have extensive prior experience or training because they already have the skills and knowledge of how to do their job (Yuki, 2006, p. 226). Employees who are internally motivated by their values and ethics don’t need to be encouraged by the leader to do more high quality work (Yuki, 2006, p. 226). There are task characteristics which when a leader gives an employee a repetitive task. Employees are able to quickly learn the skills without have extensive training or direction from the leader (Yuki, 2006, p. 26). The task can provide automatic feedback to the employee for example when a person makes commission on their job. When employees receive automatic feedback then the employee doesn’t require that much feedback from the leader (Yuki, 2006, p. 226). Compare and Contract Theories When looking at all the contingency theories of effective leadership, we can see that most of these theories are based on the employees trusting the leader, along with the leader giving the employee the space they need to do their job.
Some of these theories do talk about the leader having more of a watch on the employees when it comes to task and the maturity of the employee as in the situational theory. Leaders can set down with employees to set goals in order to find where the employee is more likely to excel in their employee positions. Conclusion Christine will be a great asset to this company for her leadership style because she knows how to work with employees in order to motivate them in to excelling with every task they will have.
Christine will reward employees that need that recognition along with setting high goals for employees that are more mature than other on the team everyone will work as a team in order for this company to excel in the Customer Service Department. Christine brings this to the table with the experience she has in Contingency Theories of the Effective Leadership. References: Robbins, S. P. , & Judge, T. A. (2007). Organizational Behvior (12th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education. Yuki, G. (2006). Leadership in Organizations (6th ed. ). Uper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
