leadership case studies

1) The advice was basically correct. There are a couple of issues hampered the team that relate to leadership. First, there is only so much Porter can do as a minor league manager with respect to the talent on the field, but he must recognize that talent has a leadership dynamic to it. He needs to ensure that there are strong leaders in the locker room who are among the players expected to be there for the entire season – the ability to maintain leadership in the room even when the on-field leaders move onwards is important. Losing talent does not have to mean losing leadership.

As for himself, it is clear that the laissez-faire leadership style was ineffective. That style of leadership works best when the people on the team are already strong leaders, and clearly the call-ups eroded the leadership group on the team. So Darrell needed to fill that gap. There are a number of different conflict management styles that leaders can employ. Porter needs to respect the fact that there are significant cultural differences between players on a baseball team, but that within the context of these differences everybody has the objective of one day making the majors, and that conflict should not be interpersonal in nature. He should have either taken a mediator approach, or taken a harder approach and dictated the terms to the young players, but either way he needed to become more involved in the dispute resolution, understood the nature of the disputes, and taken action to refocus the attention of the players (Llopis, 2014).

2) The department needs fresh leadership, as it has been beset by high turnover. Most people are low-skilled, and are likely to respect seniority – and that is the normal union cultural leadership. Furthermore, there is evidence to suggest that people respect leaders who know how to do their own jobs (Llopis, 2013). In a tough work environment, having a leader who has been in the trenches is symbolically important – Callahan is one of them. Even if Novak is highly-competent, his lack of seniority and college education make him stand out. For the same reasons he is an appealing choice for management, he will have trouble with the workers if it is perceived that he has wrongly displaced Callahan in this wrong. I would choose Callahan – we need this department working better than it was in the past, and to bridge the gulf between management and this team that existed under Malone.

3) Non-verbal communication has many pitfalls, even within a culture much less when dealing with other cultures. One example is physical space – some cultures access if you get too close to someone, whereas other cultures would find this incredibly hostile. Eye contact is another. In some cultures, eye contact is essential; in others it is threatening. The reverse is true as well, in some cultures not making eye contact is normal, but in others a sign of great disrespect. A third example is with hand gestures. These do not always mean the same thing in different languages, like the Richard Nixon A-OK thing in Brazil. There are also paralanguage indicators, like the tone or volume of speech, which can connote different things to people of different cultures. Someone from an Asian culture and Mediterranean culture are likely to misunderstand each other's emotions on the issue of speech volume.

4) The first thing is that people probably will not trust this person. Most assume that a leader is not going to instantly change as though they had an epiphany. An epiphany had at a retreat might not be sticky back at the office where familiar surroundings breed familiar responses to situations. There's going to be that one person, however, who tests out this new philosophy. If Ms. Schmidt doesn't change, it is likely that many employees will actually not be that surprised. But for those who believed her when she made that announcement, the response will be strongly negative, and likely increase turnover intention, as that would reduce the trust that people had in her. Even people who didn't believe she would change would see their trust degraded, though they maybe had a lower trust level to begin with, which is often the case when people are viewed as self-serving autocrats.


References

Llopis, G. (2014) 4 ways leaders effectively manage employee conflict. Forbes .Retrieved November 4, 2017 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2014/11/28/4-ways-leaders-effectively-manage-employee-conflict/2/#12f02a9c68e7

Llopis, G. (2013) 5 ways leaders earn respect from their employees. Forbes. Retrieved November 4, 2017 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2013/07/22/5-ways-leaders-earn-respect-from-their-employees/#48d4ced51bb5

Mistra, S. (2017) Non-verbal communication in different cultures. Businesstopia. Retrieved November 4, 2017 from https://www.businesstopia.net/communication/non-verbal-communication-different-cultures