LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS Case Study Solution

job design

An employee can perform its best at the work when s/he is being given the control of the job. A manger develops a job that best suits the abilities of the employee and which is required by the company. An employee or any worker working against its comfort zone will find hardships in performing the task well. A team leader usually specifies the work activities that the group members or an individual has to complete for the day. Therefore, they have the control over the task assignments and job design and they can influence the content of the job. A bad leader will specify a hard task to a weak employer or any subordinate without thinking of its consequences. Specifying right job to the right employee improves and increases the productivity and reduces the errors. The increased number of errors might result in poor quality of output which will negatively affect the company. For instance an employee who is encountering a hard task will make mistakes in the output and because of its mistakes the total output will not have the same quality that is expected by the company’s head. [6]

Coming from the business management background I had no clue of computer software. I had a knowledge of Microsoft office. Knowing about my skills regarding the computer software my supervisor assigned me a task which was completely out of my domain and which was due on the same day.  I had no hint of what I was doing and was in total discomfort. The work was submitted but the quality wasn’t there, I was completed the task on my own which had several mistakes in it. Few days later, I received an email from the company head that the task I submitted to them was of meager quality and most of it was incorrect. This was caused by the bad management as the supervisor had assigned me the task at which I had zero expertise.

managing individual

Different organizations has different types of people that are working for them. Some can be easily managed while other are tough nut and they require special attention to keep performing. A leader who can take his task seriously will have to look for the ones which want attention and proper guidance. Some people are talented but they do not cooperate not they collaborate well with the team and here comes the challenge to identify those individual and work with them or just simply talk to them about their problem or regarding their behavior and attitude. A manager with bad managing and leadership skills might simply the ones who might be difficult to handle. He simply wouldn’t want to interact with them and let them do what they want to do. This creates a total mismanagement when there is an individual who requires special guidance and he is lacking behind as compared to others subordinates. The productivity will go down and he will be of no use to the company and just be a liability to the company. Here, the individual should not be the one to be blamed but rather the supervisor who is not handling him properly. The individual might have the potential to prove his mettle but because he is not being supported quite well, he is just becoming a burden for the firm.

The same problem happened with me in my initial days when I was new to my job and was in a learning phase. I had difficulty to complete the tasks and was getting late from my work because I wasn’t able to complete the work on time. As compared to myself, my other colleagues used to complete their tasks on time with improved quality. At that point of time I needed somebody to guide me motivate to perform better as I knew that I had the skills and will to give me best. The supervisor wasn’t supporting me well and therefore, my task had serious errors. Though after a few months, a new supervisor was assigned to us who seemed to had better managerial and leadership skills. Being new to the company he wanted to give equal attention to each subordinate and I was one of them. I was getting comfortable with him because he was listening to my work related issues eagerly and with more interest, and not only this, he was solving my problems as well. The effect was clearly visible because my monthly performance had improved drastically and there were less errors.

group performance

An able leader guides its team and listens to their problems so that the team members can get comfortable with the leader and can share their work related problems. An employee’s and group performance is based on a friendly team leader. The effectivity increases when they are working under a group leader who understands their problems and is eager to solve them.

On the contrary, there are leader who doesn’t care about its team members’ problems and just want the perfect output. As a result, team performance lags behind as they are being constantly pressurized by the team leader and there is no source of guidance for them. The collective failure causes much problems for the company as the overall output gets unsatisfactory. An ineffective leader can’t come to solutions to the problems and might put the blame of errors on its team members and expects them to come to solution. Furthermore, when the team member comes up with the solution he decides to take the credit for it.

In my working days we were given the task to be completed in groups and a team leader to guide us through all of our work.  We had a team leader who was guiding us better throughout our work as he shared his experience but my other office colleagues in the other group constantly complained that their team leader didn’t want to share much of his knowledge with them and was just giving them a brief support. One of them wished to be part of our group as we were managed better than them, and the results showed exactly what was predicted. Our group came up with the best results but as expected the other group couldn’t achieve the required target as their performance was weak without much guidance.

Delegating

In a corporation, a manger is hired on the basis of delegating skills. Delegation means to divide or transfer the responsibilities to the subordinates. Therefore, at the time of an interview a manager who is about to become a manager or a supervisors will demonstrate his delegation skills. An efficient team leader need to have the following delegating skills:

  • As the communication between the employees and the team leader/manager improves the delegating skills improves and delegation of the tasks becomes easier. Therefore, a team leader should have to communicate better and have to develop a better understanding between him and his workers.
  • The supervisor will have to be aware to manage the time efficiently and push his workers to complete the task on specified time. He might have completed his work but his other members’ tasks are still incomplete which needs to be completed by the specified time. A task which is not performed on time might get rejected by the company’s head which might be risky for his job.
  • A manger before giving responsibilities need to make sure that the worker has the required skills to perform the task. He need to make full assessment of the worker’s ability and only after that should assign him certain tasks. Otherwise if he would assign him the tasks that are not related to his skills, the only guy to put the blame on will be the manager. Not delegating right tasks to right person can have negative impact on company’s performance.

A symbol of an unskillful manager is that he will take the responsibility of completing the task on himself. This will create a mess as he won’t be able to complete the tasks on time as will struggle to give the proper quality. These kind of managers often fear that if they delegate the tasks to their subordinates, the top management will perceive them to be a weak supervisor but in fact the truth the opposite of it. A strong leader manages the task and assigns the task to each individual depending on their capability to do it.

The new manager that was hired by our firm was helpful for its group member but he was not completely at ease when assigning tasks to the members. His assessment regarding people’s skills were weak and therefore, he used to assign the tasks which the team members weren’t able to perform. This resulted in poor work outcomes and after seeing this he decided to difficult tasks by himself. Like this he was hurting his reputation as the tasks he was performing himself weren’t getting completed by the specified time. He was having issues managing all the task and therefore the outcome was poorer. Instead of this he could have assessed each individual’s performance correctly and could have assigned them the tasks according to their skills. By doing this all the tasks could have been managed with greater affectivity and with much more efficiency.

 

RECOMMENDATION

A leader is someone who guides his workers to perform their best and can bring them out of any trouble during the work. Any company which has hired somebody with good managerial and leadership skills will be profitable because he knows how to guide his workers and how to bring the best out of them.

Whereas, a negative leader, someone who doesn’t possess the quality leadership skills to manage his employees will be of no use to the company. When I was working, the manager was not motivating us to perform better but rather kept on abusing us and showed his anger because of which many of us got work stress. Scarcity of motivation resulted in poorer results and less effective output. There were no reward system in the organization except at the initial stage when I was told to improve my work within the initial six months to get a pay raise. After that there was no appreciation from the supervisor because of which my work output graph was on a constant decline. To get the better results out of its employees a company’s manager needs to device reward system strategies. Initial supervisor that we had was not good with the individuals and doesn’t want to help them much because of which our performances were going down with the time. This was soon changed as a new manager was hired by the team and he came to each individual personally to listen to their work related issues. After discussing with him my issues I was getting better results because he was guiding me efficiently. Other than this he lacked one quality that he was not assessing people’s skills properly and was delegating them the task that were completely alien to some people there. Therefore, they were having great difficulty in solving them and many of the tasks assigned were not getting completed by the required time. This led to further disarray when he decided to complete the task on his own and work was getting mismanaged. The task that he took upon himself to complete wasn’t getting completed on time and showed weaker output.

After analyzing the negative leadership traits we have come to the conclusion that a manager or a leader who doesn’t have the leadership skills will be a liability on the company as he won’t be getting the desired results. Moreover, the people working under him won’t be happy with him and will be a cause of working stress. This might result in poorer quality of work and with less affectivity which in turn will be of no use to the company.........

 

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