Overcoming Company Conflicts
Instructor Guidance
Week 5 at last! How sweet it is…but we have some things to cover yet, so let’s get started. In this final week we learn more about Leadership and Group Cooperation and Conflict. To begin with, Leadership is tough to define, exactly. We speak in terms of leadership style, or type, rather than an exact definition of what it is. Three primary styles are recognized in most literature on this subject. These are the Autocratic, the Democratic and the Laissez-Faire.
The Autocratic style is marked by issuing clear directives, maintaining on-task behavior, monitoring productivity and maintaining one-way communication flow and influence. This is more of the do as I say style and is assumed to include constant monitoring and correction, where needed, to make sure the project or task gets completed correctly and on time. The downside of this style is that as soon as the monitoring stops, so does the expected behavior. This style works well in emergency situations, for example.
The Democratic style uses the same basic ideas of directing, maintaining on-task behavior and monitoring productivity, but communication and influence flows both ways so that those performing he tasks have some input and therefore, some buy-in to the task. This seems to work well where the leader has gotten the followers to adopt the task as their own and allows them to use their creative talents in the performance of the task at hand. Laissez-Faire just assumes individuals will perform he task assigned and leaves the followers to complete the task on their own…not such a productive method unless there are specific personality types involved in the task who are self-motivated.
So are leaders born with certain traits that make them a leader, or is this a learned behavior. Well, there are a lot of theories on this subject, but nothing we can hang our hat on as precisely definitive. The best we can do is define specific traits or situations where specific traits work best. For example, charismatic leaders are well liked usually, and have a vision they are able to sell to others. Situational leadership, on the other hand, relates to specific issues, like a military operation, where one person is calling all the shots and everyone does as they are told.
So how does one become a leader you ask? Well, you can be appointed, as in being promoted to a manager position, or you can become a leader by virtue of the expertise you have in an area, regardless of who is the “appointed” leader. We sometimes call this the informal leader. Most of us have seen this in practice. In most organizations there are key “go to” individuals who everyone looks to for guidance in certain situations.
Leaders use various types of influence to achieve results. Some have reward power, some have coercive power, referent power, legitimate power or expert power. We already talked about the coercive, the legitimate and the expert power above. The reward power refers to being able to reward good performance in some manner, like with a raise or a promotion or a pat on the back. Referent power refers to someone who is looked up to, like the president, for example. Either way it has been determined that to be successful, groups do need a leader.
Groups accomplish their tasks through a combination of cooperation, conflict and competition. Cooperation is actually the toughest to achieve, surprisingly. Many individuals react well to competition, as long as they know the rules, but excessive competition can lead to deviant behavior, such as sabotage. Conflict, on the other hand, can have both positive and negative results. If conflict is managed it can actually have positive results, such as when two employees disagree about how to perform a task and after they each perform it, they realize one way is better than the other…or, alternatively, that the different methods have the same end result with the same input resources. Negative conflict can tear an organization apart, such as when two employees are constantly bickering and then others begin to choose sides. These types of conflicts need to be managed quickly.
The best approach overall seems to be to take a problem solving approach to whatever the issue is and try to obtain input that will work toward a solution. A reward system, perhaps even just in the form of recognition for a job well done, can go a long way toward maintaining civility among the participants and keep the group working together well into the future.
The deliverables this week are:
Read Chapters 9 & 10: Group Behaviors in Organizations
Complete the Discussion Questions (By Thursday) on Leadership and on Conflict Resolution.
Complete the Final Paper Assignment by Monday. Pay particular attention to the Grading Rubric which you can access by selecting the assignment tab under Week 5 and then clicking on the Grading Rubric link you will find at the bottom of the assignment. As a reminder, the 8 page length is for the content of the paper. The cover page and reference page are in addition to that.
