Ineffective Communicators in an Organizational Setting, Capstone Project Example

Leadership Problem

The leadership does not communicate with the employees during assigned projects. The upper management determines the times, dates, deadlines and tools needed to complete projects. The leadership needs to get back to the basics learning different management techniques and enter some type of management training program. Leadership is leadership. Without question leaders need to practice and use different leader tools and techniques from their kit bag depending on the environment, task, personnel, context and the local politics on the ground – this is situational leadership or leadership in context. The company has a responsibility to ensure the leadership receives the fundamental training to succeed. However, the manager is accountable for the management style they choose. But at its core – leadership is leadership – the fundamentals are universal (Longo & Doty, 2012). In addition, the leadership team as whole does not collaborate or include anyone below the manager level in the decision making process. Many times the company chooses projects that do not benefit the company. The management is not informed because they rarely ask the team members about the program of the project. The leadership is often causes some type of conflict because they are not open to suggestions or feedback. The leadership is not available when we encounter questions or issues that require the management to sign-off on the solution. Many times they are absent from their offices for long periods. The leadership does not pass on important policies and procedure changes made by the company. The projects often take longer than the chosen deadlines because the leadership never provides the expectations, which hinder the entire team from being effective. The managers must be communication experts to be effective leaders with the employees. Communication effectiveness has also been broadly linked with leadership effectiveness and this is reflected in some conceptual overlap across measures of leadership behavior and communication style in the leadership literature (Neufeld, Wan, & Zeng, 2010).

Employee turnover

The leader that is unethical and does not communicate well with employees will increase the employee turnover rate. The employee turnover is the method of replacing one employee with a new employee. A turnover rate is the percentage of employees that the company has to replace with a certain period. This employee turnover rate is a major problem to many companies simply because the employee turnover will affect the bottom line. According to the 1995 Unscheduled Absence Survey of 327 employers, conducted by Chicago based Commerce Clearing House, average annual use of paid sick days ranged from just less than four to almost seven days; costs ranged from $212 to $668 per employee (Markowitz & Eckberg, 1996).

This is normally true for lesser paying jobs, which commonly have the worst turnover rates. The company loses when a staff member departs the company either as a consequence of his or her choice or as a direct result of leadership’s lack of communication and unethical behavior. The company ends up spending working hours providing various administrative duties, which include interviewing, exit interviews, severance, and additional payments made to the employee. There are other tasks involved with replacing the staff such as marketing the open position, using a recruiter or other services to locate prospective employment prospects at a cost. In addition, to the new cost of training the employee replacement cost are staggering. The cost of absenteeism in the United States is in the range of $40 billion dollars a year (Gaudine & Saks, 2001).

The leaders that are very poor communicators eventually leave the company, but not before a large portion of the staff have left the company. The company’s profits and morale will drop drastically. The organization must look at the employee turnover rate as a red flag. The company will lose money on training, salary, and benefits when the employee leaves the company voluntarily. The employee replacement costs can be as high as four times the employee’s annual salary. The lost on annual revenues are not realized until the company is in the red. That is why the top Fortune 500 companies spend thousands of dollars upfront on choosing the right type of management team. The leadership has complete control over the organizational climate.

Increased absenteeism

One of the signs that management is not communicating with employees is a rise in employee absenteeism. Most companies expected employees to absent because of a family member illness or an emergency. The company should be alarmed when the absenteeism rate is above 3 to 4 percent. What is less known is that the price is much higher than generally thought. This is after lost productivity, administration and other operating expenses tied to absent workers are factored in – impacting over a third of all payroll costs (Detar, 2009).The companies lost in productivity will negatively impact the future profits. In addition to lost work hours and extra expenses of sick, the company will have to replace the habitual absent employee at an expensive cost. There are different reasons for employee’s absenteeism rate such as authoritarian managers or stress on the job and home. The untrained manager does not have the skills to motivate employees. Most managers that do not communicate using the authoritarian styles that causing severe stress. If the reason for employee absenteeism can be traced to a specific manager, the company can provide management training showing the manager different types of management styles.

Poor customer service

If the organizations leadership has poor communication skills, it will have an effect on workers and external customers. We believe effective communication is a mandatory tool successful manager’s need. With a clear vision and purpose, goals can be established that provide the road map to be used when implementing solid plans to create leaders for the future (Mcquarrey & Media, 2012). A company’s customer service is important to an organization for a number of reasons. Most critical, it would be real tough for an organization to make it through without customer support, as there would be no one available to deal with questions from current and prospective customers. The employees should have some examples of communicating successfully both internally and externally at all levels of management. If the organization has a below average customer service department, it will result in a negative cash flow and continue decrease of customers and personnel. The staff members who do not receive leadership and instruction from management will ultimately provide inadequate customer service because they are unhappy. Customer service is essential to an organization simply because it is often the only contact a customer has with a company. Consumers are crucial to a corporation. Some consumers invest hundreds and even thousands of dollars each year with an organization. Consequently, when they have an issue or product issue, they expect a company’s customer support division to handle their problems. The customer service training for managers is essential to a company because of potential consumer bad feedbacks. In the new technologies age harmful customer service travels rapidly causing companies to rethink their customer principles.

 Conflict Resolution-Accommodating

In the real work environment, employees learn to adjust to the lack of communication while avoiding conflict with the manager. However, when the relationship impacts the growth of the company, it is the responsibility of everyone to find a solution to the barriers. In this case, the relationship between the leadership and employees started to become a detriment to the company because the leadership did not support open communication. The employees were not empowered to participate. In addition, the management team does not like interaction with the employees. The leadership was open for communication whenever, the team was making suggestions about a project or workplace improvements. In order, to reach the management team without causing tension, the conflict resolution strategy ”Accommodating” is an effective tool. The management team is given a list of positive improvements that would improve the bottom line. By accommodating the leadership with what they want, they will be open to suggestions. The accommodating strategy basically gives the leadership exactly what they want allowing new channels of communication to be opened. The team requested a meeting with the leader to share what we have found concerning improvements that would make the company a profit. The meeting with the leader was successful because we had a chance to win the leaders over with our ideas. This gave us the platform on some other issues that blended very well in the meeting. The reason the accommodating strategy worked because authoritative leaders have set specific goals to meet deadlines but normally not open to collaboration. In this situation the leader responded when we provided the specific request that was important to that leader.

Ethics in Leadership

Ethics in management is basically doing the right thing. The right thing is setting an excellent example or model for others to emulate. Ethics in management can be defined as your actions as a leader. In order to set the bar for ethics in your business environment, the leadership must provide an everyday example of solid business ethics. The leadership can deliver ethical messages to the working environment by standing firm against bullying or speaking up for rewarding employees. The bottom line the leadership’s daily conduct can show others how to be ethical in the business environment. The management discretion rule has not worked in the past are allowing the managers or other upper management breaks ethical rules but punish non-management employees for the same offense. The leadership would use to allow their managers to avoid following the policies and procedures for the whole company. The best example is holidays pay. The company does not pay employees when they missed the day before or the day after a holiday. The management team used management discretion to regularly take those days during holidays to get more days off from work. It is unethical to allow your manger to break policy and procedures. The employees must feel all polices apply to everyone not just a few employees. This method did not work because it lowered morale and employee’s attitude became inflamed. It was unethical for the management to use management discretion policy to circumvent establish rules.

The management’s behavior was unacceptable causing the morale of the team to plummet. The management team spent more time engaged in practices aimed at ensuring their own performance was seen as valuable, and never admitting something was wrong or dysfunctional. In chapter 8 of Essentials of Contemporary Management by Jones and George (2011), gives an excellent example of management team that is not willing to communicate with employees. Allan Mullay (CEO) approached managers asking why did they keep communication to a minimum with employees. The managers indicated they were taught that employees work harder when you do not converse with them. The CEO explained that is why you never make deadlines because you do not communicate with the people that will make the company great. The CEO found that the managers had been taught never to admit making a mistake. That was the Ford’s dysfunctional learned culture (Jones & George, 2011, pg. 259).

Approaches to Unethical Managers

In an environment that has an unethical manager can cause some uncomfortable moments. Therefore, here are a few approaches to handling an unethical manager. The employee should document the unethical behavior. In addition, the employee should try to avoid or limit interaction with the unethical manager as much as possible. Does your job to the best of your ability but at every change keep your distance and only speak with the unethical manager with another employee. Finally, do not react to his unethical remarks and do not agree, keep your cool. After you have gathered your documentation of incidents, take them to Human Resources.

Direct Approach

The direct approach did not work with the unethical and non-communicating managers. We requested a meeting with my leadership team to share some great ideas and points of improvement. This did not work because they took it very personal because it was done in the presence of their peers. In the future, you should meeting with management one-on-one because managers will react different in a group setting versus a one-on-one. The second problem was present the issues without being too specific confused the leadership team because each one was responsible for different parts of the team projects. Instead, the managers address each issue negatively because they were trying to save face in front of their peers.

Solutions to Problem

The solution would begin with a leadership-training program for managers. The solution to the company’s leadership problem would be to build and development strong and effective leaders. The Leadership development program will build on the development of individuals to become leaders. In addition, the leadership program will focus on the interpersonal linkages between the individuals in the team. The leadership program should teach the managers about excellent communication skills using Total Quality Management (TQM) as a tool for learning. The leadership program will not promote authoritative leadership strategy, which is an outdated style of management.

The program will introduce the basics of collaborative leadership. It has been proven that good leaders are followed because people trust and respect them, rather than the skills they possess. There are born leaders, but even those people evolve their approach to leadership over time. The leadership development program will have workshops every 3 months to ensure we track the success and measure our leadership’s success. Often programs do not measure the results, therefore the programs are just as ineffective.

The leadership development program will ensure all managers utilize the same collaborative management style. Each leader will be responsible for talking to their respective teams to find out what the people think about their style of management. This training is a critical step in growth, which takes a page out of Total Quality Management (TQM), which requires the staff to evaluate the manager. This part of the leadership program will be a real eye opener and growth for managers. The leadership program will employ a 360-degree approach wherein you receive feedback from your team members and peers. The team will be explained the objective behind the survey. A relaxed and open environment will help draw out their honest opinion. The leadership development program will encourage managers to practice listen skills. The manager should become adept at listening to team members talking about all their work related worries and the development program will make managers learn to hear them out instead of tune them out. You could convey empathy, suggest alternatives, and create harmony within the team. Great leaders are great listeners! The manager should make a connection while taking complete responsibility for how you are heard. The training will teach managers to always rephrase your message to make it sound positive.

 Conclusion

The primary leadership-training goal is to make sure leaders develop relationships with other leaders to help them keep growing and get through the difficulties they face. As leaders, we sometimes feel isolated in our jobs; we need others to listen to our thinking, and we need to listen to others’ ideas. The leadership program will set up a peer leadership group. The management training will be measured and tracked every other week or once a month. In these meetings, management will talk about their experiences and challenges of being a leader. The leadership groups will be a valuable program for the organization.

The best way to develop leadership skills is to teach others to be leaders. It is easy to get buried in your own daily activities and halting your own business growth and the personal growth of those, you lead. When a manager begins to develop their leaders, the employee learns to change their thought process.. With a clear vision and purpose, goals can be established that provide the road map to an effective leadership-training program.

References

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Gaudine, A. P., & Saks, A. M. (2001). Effects of an absenteeism feedback intervention on employee absence behavior. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 22(1), 15-29. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/224869425?accountid=34899

Jones R.J. & George, M.G.Essentials of contemporary management, 4th edition. New York: NY: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Longo, R., & Doty, J. (2012). “Maybe it’s time we got back to the basics of” …leadership. Fires, 67-71. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1221240245?accountid=34899

Markowich, M. M., & Eckberg, S. (1996). Get control of the absentee-minded. Personnel Journal, 75(3), 115-115. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/219790856?accountid=34899

Mcquarrey, L. & Media, D. (2012).How does poor customer service affect a business. Retrieved from http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/poor-customer-service-affect-business-3062.html

Neufeld, D. J., Wan, Z., & Fang, Y. (2010). Remote leadership, communication effectiveness and leader performance. Group Decision and Negotiation, 19(3), 227-246. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10726-008-9142-x