Management: Examine Your Organization and Leadership

The organization that this student works for does honor trust and fosters open communication by using a number of programs such as mandatory biweekly supervision meetings between program managers and Direct Care Workers (DCW)/employees, strengthen the open door policy, whereby DCWs can walk in to any supervisor and discuss their issues of concern, and the readily available cellphones, internets and intranet networks are available for DCWs to communicate their daily activities and issues of their concern faster without dissertation of the third party’s involvement. The new CEO understands that trust and open communications comes from the organization’s ability to tap on its employees’ interpersonal abilities which will make a difference interacting one another by improving the over-all communication skills (Newson, 2010).

Teamwork, power and authority are defined in numerous ways within the organization. At the organization there is leadership power that comes through management because employees feel more powerful when leadership is strong; and when employees are trusted to become leaders of their actions through self-determination and empowerment (Kouzes & Posner 2007). The good example of self-determination and empowerment is the team work effort that comes from the Leadership Committee on identifying common goals for common purposes. This is the spirit that Kouzes & Posner (2007), described as “the more trusted people feel, the better they innovate” (p. 225).

The goals that people share in common at the organization such as training and development, accountability, diversity in programs, communication, incentive through staff recognition, resources and technology and safe working environment. Motivations that this student has endorsed as part of the organization’s Leadership Committee are such as the use of the sanctuary program to foster more open communication, use the reward systems like the Star-Award, a paid Shopping-Day-Off for DCW as a staff-recognition day, a person of the week to publish in the organization’s news booklet and a person of the month to be published in all weekly news booklets plush a month of a secured parking space/lot. These are the incentives to reach the shared common goals that the Leadership Committee has agreed upon because leadership believes that motivated employees are strategically significant spurring innovation and competitiveness (Kumar, 2011).

This student describes the culture of organizational leadership from top down as democratic. For as little as 6 months, the newly elected CEO of the organization has brought about a new culture. The CEO did not impose on-set changes upon arrival as many thought of. Instead, the CEO took months to study the organizational culture and mainly the Union contracts and then gradually reorganized and set-forth necessary changes. This is in accordance with Kouzes and Posner (2007), when they stated that “the work of the leaders is change and all change requires is that the leaders actively seek ways to make things better, to grow, innovate, and improve” (p.71.).

What makes the CEO’s culture change as a democratic leadership system is the newly randomly picked Leadership Committee that this student is part of and the magnitude of involvement as well as passion to change for good this committee has shown. The CEO understands well that employees have good performance when those of leadership entrust them to take charge of change, meaning that they are able to participate in making decisions of their daily activities (Kouzes & Posner 2007).

This student is recommending the Leadership Committee to meet every month to evaluate if the agreed common goals were met or not and what changes or improvement need to be done and then agree upon new set of common goals. This Leadership Committee needs to become an organizational development team that can influence corporate culture change. This will allow the organization to sustain the path of growth through fostering collaboration and strengthen employees; the goal is to eliminate the status quo (Kouzes & Posner 2007).

Trust is the key concept to collaboration, teamwork, empowerment, open communication and so on that incentivizes corporate culture spurs organizational growth. Leaders who understand the importance of interpersonal skills they manage trust by using their peoples skills because these skills helps them to interact with others and build the required trust level that makes cooperation becomes the norm (Newson, 2010). When someone says that without trust, “my clients’ lives could very well be on the line” is like amplifying the significance of trust at workplace dramatically. For example, there is a study found that individuals who take trust-building actions tend to have a chance of becoming exemplary, innovative, and great leaders who can lead well and get the extraordinary things done at the same time (Kouzes & Posner 2007).  

When developing the contrast of military and civilian organization one can say that “in the new world the communication is less organized and the trust is difficult to earn. Or don’t believe there is a lack of communication intent, but the organizational structure and methodology is not contusive to good communication”. It is astounding to lean such a contrast and you have done a very good job to draw readers in and lead them to the conclusion that your comparisons made. This student agree with your conclusion that the problem of the civilian organization is not lack of communication as many may have concluded; may be it is miscommunication or fragmented communication that purposefully disorganized  by the organizational design and culture. This conclusion is aligned with what Newson (2010), articulated as communication and interpersonal Skills, in a form of verbal and none-verbal, are frequently used by leaders to interconnect with employees aiming to achieve the organizational goals and overall-mission. 

Successful leaders understand that they have to build a framework of trust by giving up their autonomous total control over everything and give their employees some control over what they do so that they can become innovative and productive. The trust from leaders to employees empowers them to take an extra mile in all they do and open-up vital communication lines that sustains collaboration among all organizational members, which is the key information system management asset for constructive decision making process (Kouzes & Posner 2007).  

In this day and age, it is also questionable to have a successful organization without a framework of collaborative team(s), constructive open communication that is built on trust, strategy of aiming organizational goals toward production, and of course having good and strong leadership.

One has to understand that leaders are aspired by followers, members and employees. Thus, successful leaders strengthen the people they lead by delegating some powers to them and ultimately hold them accountable demanding certain responsibilities to be met (Kouzes & Posner 2007).  This is to say that leaders have mandates, responsibilities and obligations to the organizations and society at large.  Also, leaders through communication of the mission and goals of their organizations share a position of these responsibilities and obligations to each and every member, follower and employee within organization.

According to a study by Brown, Yoshioka & Munoz (2004), indicate that organizations mainly use salary and benefits to change employees’ attitudes and satisfactions.  The study furthered that organizations’ salary and benefits are linked to the relationship between compensation satisfaction and retention ratio of the employees.

Furthermore, communication is influenced by interpersonal skills and philosophies which develop a style of communication that pays attention to how team-players interact with one another; thus, it effects working environment, employees’ motivation, production and ultimately customer satisfactions (Newson, 2010). It is imperative for a leader to capitalize on communication because all the skills and talent leader has will need to be translated and communicated. Leader has to articulate an effective way to link such talent and skill from the leadership to the line-employee at the assembly. Often what leadership desire or intend to communicate to the line employee goes through top management, line manager and then the line-employee.  In the process the message gets distorted or miscommunicated. That’s why the modern leaders are effectively using the Town-Hall meetings to communicate directly to the employees. This mode of retail-communication gives employees a sense of the direction. It also tends to amplify the employee’s positive attitudes and boost the overall morale. Empowered, informed and positive employees tend to become independent, innovative and productive, because knowledge is power.

Yes, there will be mandatory refresh of the Leadership Committee members this student talked about above. It is random, as initial membership is, and it will depend with its production level and the goals achieved, also it is in the discretion of the CEO. Mind you that the CEO is the chairperson leading this leadership committee and charge person who is driving it to deliver the Organizational Development as necessary change for growth.  The CEO here is concerned and competent of allowing the organizational leadership and overall image fit well with constituency because the CEO comprehends sees and can shape situations in new ways (Morgan, 1998). 

It is with no denial that the organization’s line of work, will be very bad if there is any employee interacting negatively with clients/consumers because it tends to have systematic repercussions to the entire program, if not the organization. The programs within the organization must work as one team, collectively advocating for the clients’ best interest, because ethically and objectively these are the organizational goals as well. Licensed, certified and professional employees are ethically obliged to meet these demands by the governing institutions, which also are required to meet such organizational goals. Therefore, the CEO formed this leadership committee with the understanding that change is the challenge for any organization; and a thriving organization will need to embrace change while renewing, reinventing, reorganizing and transforming itself to cope with all necessary changes depending with competitive markets aiming to satisfy customers (Brown, 2011). 

Last but not least, it is true that the term “open-communication” can be ambiguous because it can be passive as both negative and positive. However, positive communication can open the doors for both organizational and individual successes. It is with great assumption that the organization’s CEO launched the “Leadership Committee” and “Open-Door Policy” to positively change the organization’s image and trajectory. Therefore, as leaders, the CEO understands well the importance of positive communication that is aligned to the organizational goals, vision and objectives. Like many successful leaders, the CEO, is striving to offer his/her employees with support, choices, freedom, education, confidence, autonomy and ultimately make them accountable, empowered and responsible productive employee (Kouzes & Posner 2007).  

Reference

Brown, D.  (2011). An experiential approach to organization development, 8^th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Brown, W., Yoshioka, C. F., & Munoz, P. (2004). Organizational mission as a core dimension in employee retention. Journal of park & recreation administration, 22(2), 28-43.

Kouzes, J.M. & Posner, B. Z. (2007).  The leadership challenge (4^th ed.). Hoboken, NJ:  John Wiley and Sons.

Kumar, S. (2011). Motivating employees: An exploratory study on knowledge workers. South Asian journal of management, 18(3), 26-47.

Morgan, G., (1998).  Images of organization:  The executive edition.  San Francisco, CA:  Berrett-Koehler publishers.  ISBN:  1-576750388.

Newson, P. (2010). Good communication at work can open the gateway to better relationships. Nursing & Residential Care, 12(8), 366-369.

 
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