Leadership Paradox and Inter-team Relations

Leadership paradox and inter-team relations

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Question A:  What is the leadership paradox? Give some reasons why a leader can encounter difficulty in newly formed teams or groups using a participative management system.

Leadership paradox is defined as a situation in which a person views leadership in a different way. In such a case, the team requires a leader but the team’s autonomy is threatened when the leader is available. It helps in providing a model to achieve a defined leadership. The ideas leaders use to define their capability to transform a fearful system into a free system is defined through leadership paradox (Barker, 2007). While some people thrive and participate in relationships between systems, others engage in the promotion of self-determination, freedom and unity. However, a number of the systems have a context of anxiety and fear. The situation makes a leader to consider himself as the most crucial factor and at the same time not the most important in his company. For example, a company may vender many employees of freedom, personal discretion and decision-making but in its culture, the leader participates in monitoring the work process, quality of work and managing the team members in the organization. As a result, the leader invents their cultures as they seem to be the mirrors of their personal characters.

A participative management system can make a leader face difficulty with the new teams due to many reasons. Firstly, an implicit leadership, especially in the team’s operation, can be a problem. According to Thompson’s theory of implicit leadership, difficulty results when the team considers to be worthy of their manipulation (Thompson, 2014). Consequently, the group is formed without the leader’s designation thus interfering with the overall operation. Due to leadership paradox, the team rebels the leader by failing to show respect for him. The other difficulty may come from the top team of the management. In this, the leader suffers from the control and decisions he has to make over the team especially in the employees’ participation.

Question B:  Present a discussion of the strategies for encouraging participative management in the workforce, and how to implement each of these strategies.

The following are the strategies that encourage participative management in any workforce. According to Thompson & Thompson (2008), the first strategy is getting seriously involved in the job. For example, if the job requires the employee to make decisions concerning the evaluation of the organization’s success, then the worker should put more effort and show determination in accomplishing the task assigned. As a result, a strong participation enables the employee to achieve the set goal of completing the task easily. Job involvement can be implemented when a leader ensures that all employees in the organization are individually undersigned duties. Every employee should be punished for a failure in undertaking the duties. As a result, all the employees end up focusing on their job until everyone completes the task.

A delegation of tasks can also be a strategy. It is aimed at making sure employees hand over the authority and responsibility required in accomplishing the task without considering the last accountability. According to Thompson (2014), the failure of a leader to have a proper delegation may lead to underused subordinates and overload among the executives of the organization. The leader can implement the strategy by ensuring he participates in undertaking multiple tasks. For example, the leader may decide to divide work among the employees as well as delegating the task. A correct task delegation can relieve a leader from facing challenges associated with the employees. The reason is that employees prefer working with a leader who makes good decisions. However, despite job involvement being costly as compared to task delegation, employees still have to be manipulated to perform their duties and responsibilities with seriousness. This can help in improving the performance of the organization through their hard work. Therefore, job involvement and task delegation strategies ought to be applied in the employees’ workforce to enhance participative management.

Question C: What serious biases or misassumptions do groups that are involved in inter-team conflict sometimes experience? How do these biases and prejudices affect the ability of teams to accomplish their goals?

The groups involved in the inter-team conflicts experience serious misassumptions. The first bias is social differences among the groups. It occurs due to lack of unity that results from the conflict. As a result, the involved team find it difficult to unite and come up with a solution to reconcile (Tajfel, & Turner, 2004). Therefore, the changes between the two groups pose a misassumption that is difficult to resolve. Also, the members involved in the inter-group conflict overlook personal differences amongst themselves. Consequently, one group decides to unite against the other team thus increasing the difference gap. The effort to unite affects the stated task to be accomplished if unity existed. The loss of focus in the group hinders the implementation of the objective to be achieved. After the conflict, the communication process between the groups is affected thus becoming ineffective. This leads to failure in the exchange of important information among the group members. As a result, it becomes a challenge for the groups to accomplish their objective when they are not united. Lastly, the groups experience failure in making and implementing decisions.

According to Sherif (2015), the outlined biases affect the ability of the team members in implementing their goals in different ways. For instance, ineffective communication reduces the chances of the groups implementing decisions concerning the team. Secondly, the increased differences resulting in hatred among the members cause disagreement among the team thus making it difficult for the team to accomplish their tasks. The reason is that disunity among the members does not allow the leaders amongst them to make proper decisions to enhance success. Since achievement of organizational goals requires unity among the members, the team should reconcile and continue with performing its tasks without engaging in conflicts.

References

Barker, B. (2007). The leadership paradox: Can school leaders transform student outcomes? School effectiveness and school improvement, 18(1), 21-43.

River, NJ: Pearson.

Sherif, M. (2015). Group conflict and co-operation: Their social psychology (Vol. 29). Psychology Press.

Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (2004). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior.

Thompson, L. (2014). Making the Team: A Guide for Managers (5th ed.). Upper Saddle

Thompson, L. L., & Thompson, M. (2008). Making the team: A guide for managers. Pearson/Prentice Hall.