Analysis of Leadership

Leadership-scenario analysis
The case study on which this analysis will predominantly be founded is on the management of a teenage prison. Medway Secure Training Center (MSTC) was managed by G4S at the time of the expose of the mistreatment that the teenage offenders held therein. The undercover footage that was captured over a number of days within the center by an individual who posed as a trainee depicts gross cases of teenage physical and psychological torture as had never been seen before in the outside world. The video footage depicts the G4S staff charged with taking care of the teenage offenders mishandling the teenagers unnecessarily even with no or little provocation. The training session captured in the video clearly gives the guidelines on how the teenagers who might turn rogue should be retrained without use of excessive force. The training gives a detailed and professional way of handling the teenagers in a manner that is safe for both the officers and the teenagers. The things an officer can do and those he has to completely avoid. However, the scenario changes when the officers get to the holding areas where they work. The rules do not tend to matter in any way and the use of excessive force seems to be the order of the operations therein.
Of greatest concern and noteworthy is the physical harm that the officers inflict on the teenagers without caring if they would result into permanent injuries or not. The officers are seen to unnecessarily want to restrain the teenagers even in situations where the use of physical force was not necessary at all. Worse still, one team leader is seen to intentionally inflict pain on an already injured finger of a youth as a means of torture and control. The officers are seen to psychologically torture the teenagers through verbal abuses and scare tactics like punching the wall to intimidate the youth. The officers are also seen not to be worried about the ills they perpetuate within the institution. As a matter of fact, they are seen to conjure lies in several instances and even go ahead to record those lies as the detail in the reports. The officers are seen to confess that they care more for the report that would make them retain the contract to operate the center than the conditions of the teenagers who are supposed to be rehabilitated. They write reports that are in line with the favorable requirements to maintain the funding. The teenagers are left in their rooms after the harsh interaction with the officers mentally and physically exhausted, angry and with sentiments of revenge.
In line with administration and leadership, the happenings within the center as discussed above are seen not to be a one off event, but ingrained into the organizational culture and each person seems to be comfortable with the trend. The duty operations manager is in charge of the center but there seem to be little indicating that he actually takes charge of the activities. It is either he had grown complacent of the ills happens without his attention. The team leaders display violent trends and inconsiderate attacks on the teenagers, yet the team members, like the undercover G4S, need to learn from them. The new custody officers are nurtured into the trend and they are told what to write in the daily report and not to truthfully report the incidents as they happened. This is an organizational culture that raised anger and fury of the nation when it was aired by the BBC (Hammond R., 2017).
In a rejoinder, the Medway improvement board recognized the challenges that were aired by the video footage and also agreed that the activities of the custody officers were wrong, a fact that saw several of them suspended. There were also various loopholes that this board came into agreement about and sought ways through which to improve them. Before they came up with their recommendations and report, they significantly engaged many stakeholders, including past and present teenagers in the center.
Situational analysis
The central concern of this analysis henceforth will be to look at the role of leadership and how good leadership would help in shaping the future of the MSTC. Of particular interest herein, is the transformational leadership and the role of effective communication in the achievement of the transformational leadership agenda within a setting like the MSTC where there are different categories of recipients of communication like the teenagers and the duty officers as well as the team leaders.
Transformational leadership
This is one of the most renowned leadership approaches within the corporate world and one that has gained wide acceptance across the globe. Its main approach is an empowering perspective that mainly banks on motivation and the resulting commitment by the members of a given team under the leader. Basically, leadership as opposed to management is concerned with fostering change. The effective leader is a change agent while a manager is concerned with the preservation of the status quo. Eldership is also seen as a collective or group process and hence cannot be left to an individual to undertake. This is one thing that MSTC needed urgently, so that the staff members and the officers may take ownership of the process and become responsible for the outcome of the entire rehabilitation process under a capable leader. Leadership should be concerned with fostering change, it needs to be value based and should be a team process. This is what essentially defines what transformational leadership is according to Astin A. & Astin H., (2001).
A transformative leader is focused on developing a vision that appeals to the values and ideals of the followers and communicating the same to them. This could have been the missing ingredient in MSTC since the officers never seemed to know or follow the primary vision of the management which is to transform the lives of the young offenders entrusted into their hands and make it better for the future. Instead, they broke their spirits even further.
Under a transformative leader, he will aim at creating a sense of loyalty, trust and fairness among the people he is leading. The MSTC urgently needs these values to be inculcated among the officers and among the teenagers serving their time. The officers need to trust each other and make the teenagers trust them too. They need to trust their team leaders and the officer in charge of the center, at the same time they need to be trustworthy. The transformative leader would have the aim of reforming the attitude of the people working under him and in effect increase the performance or the output of the team. The MSTC officers needed to badly transform their attitude towards their work and towards the teenagers in order to help change their lives for a better future. Here, the transformational leader who would take over MSTC would be on a continued quality improvement model individual.
There are characteristics that a transformational leader has as follows; he must have significant influence and in this manner act as a role model who practices whet he believes in and what he teaches others and expects from others. He should also be one who has inspirational motivation in that he encourages and motivates others. To do this, he should be one who can articulate the shared organizational vision I a manner that the employees can find meaning and also commit to working together towards achieving the organizational values. The transformational leader also has individualized consideration in that he is able to gibe person-centered care and can personalize the interactions he has with the employees as he encourages and appreciates the efforts of each individual towards the performance of the organization. He is a person who has intellectual stimulation in that he fosters creativity and innovation among the employees trough giving them challenges and elimination of barriers for the employees towards engaging in quality improvement activities. When MSTC gets a leader with these above characteristics, then it is certain that the vices that are experienced within the center will be effectively dealt with as the leader will help the employees buy into his ideals and vision and in effect implement them towards making the center change the already compromised name.
In the case study herein, the transformational leadership will be essential in ensuring the management and the running of the center is totally turned around and given a new meaning. The employees must be made to continually understand the vision of the team leader and the requisite changes that need to be made. The teenagers in the holding cells need also to know that there are changes that are being made and the need to have faith and hope for the future. The outside world would also need to effectively understand what changes have been made and the continued improvement that were being implemented. These transformational leadership with the accompanying changes will hence require and effective communication system set up. Effective communication, according to Australian Institute of Business (2017) has six major functions; it builds and maintains relationships, facilitates innovation, builds and effective team, helps manage employees, contributes towards the growth of the company, ensures transparency. These are key areas that MSTC urgently needed in order to salvage the name.
The center has many employees and has a large number of young offenders who reside therein. It also has many visitors coming into the facility each week. The manager hence cannot be physically present and available to each team of concerned personnel all the time. This then calls for establishment of an effective communication system that will form an effective virtual team. This then calls for setting of some norms that will help the MSTC team under the transformational leader be effective in their communication as well as in executing their duties and responsibilities. These are generally referred to as the behavior norms and are divided into the communication norms and task norms. Group norms are defined as the acceptable levels or manners of behavior that the team can display within the center. There are things that the team will classify as acceptable and those that are unacceptable to the group members. These norms are created to maintain the order and expedite the achievement of the targeted goals of the group as it minimizes interferences and disruptions of the daily operations of the center as has been in the past.
Communication norms
These can be referred to as the necessary guidelines that help the MSTC team to effectively talk to each other and pass the information from one person to another. These norms are as bellow;
Effective listening: there is need for each team member to be able to listen to what the other person is trying to communicate to the group through whichever means the team is using. This way, all the team members will feel part of the whole and consequently give their full participation rather than resorting to be docile members. This will also enable the teenagers in the center understand the officers and the officers also understand the teenagers hence ensuring a cohesive center at the end of it all.
Frequent communication within the team: it is important that the team communicates with each other in a very regular basis, right from the transformational leader to the teenagers in the holding cells. Communicaid (2017) indicates that there should be a synchronization of the communication among the team members at least once a week in order to ensure that there is a smooth running of the assigned tasks. This is one aspect that will help the transformational leader who is focused on changing the center make known his vision and constantly remind the employees about the importance of having this vision succeed.
Decentralization of communication: this is the ability of the team to dissipate information to each member accordingly and in good time. There should be an established norm where each member is briefed of the progress of the assignment at hand as well as the progress of each member with their individually agreed portions. This decentralized information will enable the team to move ahead as a unit without one member being left behind. There is need to have communication systems set up within the center like the speakers in different sections in order to make communication easier between the officers and other officers and also with the offenders.
External communication: this is yet another norm that is central in ensuring that there is harmonious and constructive team execution of set up vision by the transformational leader. There will arise several instances where the community at large needs to know some piece of information that is essential, or may need to be consulted about issues that can help in effective running of the center, hence the external communication will be of significance.
Clarity in communication: there should be communication of information among the team members from the transformational leader in a manner that is usable to the targeted members, and this should be in a way that there can be no misinterpretation since the team members could be from varying cultural backgrounds.
In the transformational leadership of the new leader who will be steering the center, there are norms that are directly connected to the tasks that are assigned to the teams with the aim of ensuring a complete turnaround of the center.
Duty allocation: there is need to allocate each individual a part, but it is very important that each team member knows the duties and responsibilities of the other member. This way, there is sure to be equitable distribution of responsibilities and that all the duties assigned to the team shall be taken care of without leaving out a section by mistake, nor burden one member with excessive duties. This will also increase accountability since each person will have individual report on the duties assigned as opposed to the traditional setting where we see the new trainee officer being told what to write.
Constructive feedback: there is need to ensure that the progress of each individual is visible to each member of the team with an aim of ensuring that the center is headed towards the right direction. This regular feedback on the task will enable the team members to supervise each other and help one another in case they are seen to be digressing from the path of the task, hence saving the team time wastage.
Shared accountability: this is yet another norm that will work towards ensuring that the task at hand is effectively executed. Through this norm, the team members will ensure that they put any information that they have and they feel is essential in the task completion at the disposal of the team members. This is essentially what transformational leadership is all about and the MSTC needs shared accountability where the pain of the teenager affects the officers and in effect helping change the image and the services of the center.
Team repository: to achieve the transformational leadership vision, there is need to have a team repository where all the relevant information can be deposited for the team access and utility. This will discourage the secrecy of information as is the case within the institution with deep secrecy surrounding the operations of the officers and external persons only having aces to the written reports, which according to the undercover video are often doctored to fit the angle of the officers.
Privacy of information: in order for there to be good coordination among the team members that will result in transformational ideals that the new leader will have in mind, there is need to keep the information in the team repository confidential and only the team members should have access to the information and even so, they must use it only for the benefit of the running of the center effectively, having in mind the welfare of the teenagers. The current situation is such that the confidential information is actually used to make fun and jokes at the teenagers, a fact that dehumanizes them and demoralizes them deeply.
In general, the MSTC has a good ideology behind it, that of helping transform the lives of young men to be of greater use to the society at large, but the center itself needs transformation in a radical manner that would make it relevant again particularly after the expose that was made by the video. This means there are significant steps that need to be taken to actualize these changes. There is need to have a transformational leader who will implement the vision of the center without bias and help bring each team player on board towards changing the center. There will also be need to have an effective and efficient communication system that will see into it that the transformational vision is well understood and shared among the relevant players who will help change the center.
References
Astin A. & Astin H., (2001). Principles of Transformative Leadership. Retrieved September 30, 2017 from http://www.pmc.edu/Websites/pmc/Images/Principles%20of%20Transformative%20Leadership.pdf
Australian Institute of Business (2017). 6 Reasons Why Effective Communication Should Be a Focus in Your Business. Retrieved September 30, 2017 from http://www.aib.edu.au/blog/communication/6-reasons-effective-communication-focus-business/
Communicaid (2017). Regular Communication with Customers is Key to Success. Retrieved September 30, 2017 from https://www.communicaid.com/communication-skills/blog/communication-skills-2/regular-communication-with-customers-is-key-to-success/
Hammond R., (2017). Teenage Prison-Undercover Prison Documentary 2017. Retrieved September 30, 2017 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HQuJpiUOGw