Leadership and Management Consultant Analysis essay

Every organization has an order according to which it distributes power. Power in this case refers to administrative power. Usually, the leadership and management of any firm should be at their best in order for the firm to perform better in every aspect from market share to ensuring customer satisfaction. For a firm to show excellent performance in its external environment, the interior environmental performance also has to be taken care of. Firms are not capable of carrying out their own internal consultations, since the internal consultants might end up being biased. For this reason, their heads hire external consultants to carry out tasks effectively.

Human Resources

From the document provided by the human resources office, it is possible to conclude that the firm has a rather tall hierarchical structure. To begin with, the document informs that its writer was the head of the human resources department in no uncertain terms. This fact shows that the leaders of this firm made it clear to junior staff that they were top management. The use of titles in the office can be both advantageous and disadvantageous, depending on the circumstance of use. For instance, when it comes to giving instructions, it would be advisable to ensure that the junior staff that receives instructions knows who exactly in the administration is giving the instruction. This approach is advantageous in such a case, since the employees are likely to work towards executing a task given by top management faster and more effectively than that given by junior management officers (Lazaroiu, 2015). However, in the case the firm might be conducting an exercise in which the employees are expected to air out their grievances, it would not be advisable to maintain the use of titles. The use of titles in such a scenario might cause fear, and the expected results of the exercise might not be achieved, since the employees fear the managers might monitor their impressions and expectations and could fire them due to divergence of interests. The above example should be taken as a recommendation to the head of the human resources department to try and gauge when exactly use of titles comes in handy and where it does not for purposes of propelling the firm toward achieving its goals.

 

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Moreover, the head of human resources has been able to illustrate the steps the firm takes when hiring new staff. The process is seen to be quite thorough: the human resources team carries out even background checks of the recruits. For example, after one month of work, the recruits go through an interview to establish their goals. Later on, when they near the year of working with the firm, they go through another interview: the human resources department checks their goals against their performance. As a result, the firm uses this information to decide whether to promote or fire the employee. This method of employee evaluation is very effective. Running background checks ensures that the credentials of these employees are all genuine so that they are able to carry out their mandated duties perfectly, especially those in the technical and professional divisions of the firm. The interviews the employees go through are also very vital, since they get to state their personal goals as employees of that firm, being aware that their goals would be used later on to test their performance. This process motivates the employees to perform better, which leads to a better performance of the firm in general (Lazaroiu, 2015). The possibility of the employees to reach a promotion is another factor that really facilitates better performance.

Actually, although the system in place is quite good, it can be made even better. The secret towards making the organization better lies in encouraging teamwork in the organization. Teamwork has proved to be a very helpful tool to organizations all over the world, since the team members are able to compensate for each other’s shortcomings and complement each other’s strongholds. Working in teams would enable the staff to come up with better ideas and help one another when they fall short, as they are not all perfect. Therefore, instead of conducting the interview on a single employee’s goals, the firm should consider making it a team assessment. In particular, the firm should come up with teams for different departments and conduct a meeting for the team members to come up with goals for their department; afterwards, at the end of the year, the human resources department should evaluate the goals of the employees against their performance (Lazaroiu, 2015). Additionally, instead of having to lay off employees, the firm could implement a system whereby when employees fail to meet their goals, they are given a chance to explain what hindrances they had and how they can be eradicated. In this case, the issue of having to promote staff would not hold; since the rate of layoffs would go down, the firm could come up with another incentive such as salary hikes. The firm would also end up saving a lot of its resources due to the lower instances of having to search for employees, since the rate of laying off employees would go down in the firm. In the long run, the firm would perform better than before.

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Finally, the human resources team has been tasked with the role of carrying out interviews with the employees to determine their professional goals. However, the problem is that the human resources team does not engage the staff member in a discussion through which the member of staff is supposed to explain how exactly he hopes to attain his goals. Consequently, the staff members might not end up attaining their goals, since they did not probably realize the hindrances that might make them fail to achieve their goals. To avoid such a result, the firm should carry out a follow up on the employee’s goals to ensure that they are attainable (Skarp, Varis, & Kettunen, 2017). During these interviews, the department should also learn the employees’ passion and be able to provide platforms and opportunities for the employees to exercise their skills. This would ensure not only employee satisfaction but also the better performance of the firm.

Leadership Style

Based on the response of the general manager of the firm to the request for carrying out an overview of his leadership style, certain conclusions can be made from the note. First of all, the general manager is an authoritative leader. He says that he started at the bottom of the firm and worked his way up to the top. This revelation shows that the manager is a person who believes in improvement and reward through promotions. Having such a manager is very encouraging to the staff who are still part of the junior recruits (Skarp, Varis, & Kettunen, 2017). The manger would encourage them to work harder in order to achieve a better reward, which in this case is a promotion. The general manager’s revelation also illustrates why the firm is offering promotions as an incentive to employees to work and perform better. The general manager clearly has an understanding of the difficulties that employees who are lower in the hierarchy face, since he has been there before. Given this, the general manager is likely to be very helpful when employees come to his office to seek his help.

Furthermore, the general manager has been able to show strength by stating that he tends push people to achieve goals they did not imagine they could possibly reach. Thus, he seems to be a goal-oriented person. The leadership style of the general manager is very advantageous as he oversees everything that the firm does with the aims of achieving certain goals that he set (Lazaroiu, 2015). The goal-oriented style is also advantageous, since the firm uses it as a means of evaluating the performance of an employee before deciding whether he/she becomes laid off or promoted. This promotion factor ensures the staff works toward performing better in order to get promoted.

However, the general manager has a weakness: he seems to have maintained the very same methods used by his predecessors to encourage employees to perform better. In particular, the general manager has found the concept of promotions put in place previously and did not change it although he talks about not having anything just handed to him. The general manager could improve the performance of the firm by creating a friendlier environment for his employees, which does not necessarily lead to the firm making losses in the process.

Moreover, the general manager believes in transparent and clear work ethic that relies on hard work. This aspect acts as a motivational factor for the employees to ensure their performance is at optimum levels, since the general manager leads as an example. Hard work among the junior employees guarantees the firm is able to retain its market share and even gain more ground in the market, since the junior staff are normally the ones in direct contact with the customers to whom they end up satisfying.

Another problem that the general manager shows is his gravitation to perfection. He says that he is looking for members of staff who are able to get to his level of performance. The general manager focuses on searching for new employees immediately as he realizes that present ones are not capable of meeting his every standard. Thus, he creates fear among the employees, since they become afraid that when they might seek for clarity from him, he would end up believing that they are not at par with his performance level. As an alternative, the general manager should focus on improving the skills of the recruits and other junior workers as they can become better through training and experience (Elnaga & Imran, 2013). He could also save the firm’s resources this way, since it is quite clear that the firm is likely to be spending a lot of money searching for staff. The provision of such a program whereby the employees go through training is likely to increase the price of the firm in the stock markets due to the fact that the firm carries out community development.

Finally, since the general manager has the view of maintaining a strong performance based culture, he should try to implement leadership tactics that ensure the firm performs better internally. To begin with, instead of firing the less performing employees, the general manger should come up with a forum through which he together with the staff could set actionable strategies for improving the individual’s performance, which in the long run would greatly improve the performance of the firm as well (Skarp, Varis, & Kettunen, 2017). The general manager also should be open to criticism, since he seems to believe that the employees are the only ones who might not be performing well. For instance, during the actionable strategy development forum, he should allocate time and allow the employees to criticize him.