Terry Gau
After 20 years gaining position and power within the technology manufacturing industry Gag leveraged his efforts to launch the company now known as Foxing Technology and has since grown It to almost a million employees In 9 countries with almost $50 Billion in assets.
(Foxing, 2013).
Estimates of Gas’s personal worth at between 6 and 10 Billion dollars though he claims to have little Interest In that figure, stating In a 2010 Bloomberg Business week Interview that, “l m working not for money at this moment, I am working for society, I am working for my employees. ” Now In his ass’s Gag has begun planning his succession at the head of his company with a focus on executives In their ass and ass’s who have proven “themselves by running their units assertively. ” (Dean, 2007).
Terry Gag sees himself as a benevolent dictator as Is evidenced In both his behaviors and In his words; “The important thing in any organization is leadership, not management.
A leader must have the decisive courage to be a dictator for the common good. ” (Dean, 2007). Lie Change, a department manager in charge of component production staffed by entry level workers proved herself an asset to the company through her Task-oriented leadership style. (Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 1 15).
Through close supervision and ongoing disciplinary action Change was able to keep her staff engaged and production on schedule.
Upon her promotion to manage a larger department employing a skilled labor force made up of designers and engineers whose technical knowledge exceeded her own and whose work practice was very different than that of the assembly line workers Change had previously supervised. Having had success in her former role, Change began to implement changes in her new department believing she would increase productivity but found that her authority in the new department was purely positional as she had neither the knowledge base of her new team nor did she have their trust not having built a positive working relationship with them.
Fred E. Fielder’s Contingency Leadership Model might have shown her that while leveraged positional authority may work well with task oriented employees It may not work as well with a skilled labor force. (Lesser & ACH 2012, p.
117) Whereas the reduction department was made up of an unskilled labor force the custom design team was highly skilled and educated. Changes failure to adjust her leadership style brings to mind Dry. Laurence Pewter’s hypothesis, widely known as The Peter Principle, which proposes that “In a hierarchical organization, employees tend to rise to the level of their incompetence. (Burks, 2014) Burks goes on to point out that The Peter Principle is characteristic only of those who once promoted find that the skills from their prior assignments are now inadequate to the task at hand and do not adjust, learn and grow into their new role. This is entirely consistent with Lousier and leader may be ineffective.
” (2012, p. 1 17). This certainly appears to be true in the case of Lie Change in her promotion to lead the Foxing design department. Fielder recommends that leaders who found themselves in situations like Changes should work to “change the situation rather than their leadership styles. (Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 117) The authors note that according to Fielder, the prescribed action for Change would be to build better relationships with her new team “by showing interest in them, listening to them, and spending more time getting to know them reasonably.
” (2012, p. 1 17). Some research into Fielder’s Contingency Model seems to suggest, however, that changing the context of the Job is more difficult than changing our style to fit the situation with which we are faced. (Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 19).
Ironically, Changes leadership style is consistent with the values both of founder Terry Gag and Foxing as a whole, which place a premium on assertive leadership, (Dean, 2007). Nevertheless, Changes failure to adapt to the new environment caused production to fall off and her workforce to complain about her leadership. Attenuate and Schmitt would have encouraged Change to embrace a more participative leadership style which would have allowed the skilled labor force find and test out solutions for themselves. Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 121).
In this method of leadership Change would need to assume the role as a member of the group taking a less directive approach and allow the group to find consensus among the group. William Bridges notes than when implementing change transitions the “Outcomes work best if they serve (or at least don’t violate) the self-interest of the participants. ” (2009, p. 9) Robert House’s Path-Goal Leadership Model might also have proven useful to Changes situation.
Lousier & ACH point out that this model posits that “the leader is responsible for increasing followers’ motivation to attain personal and organizational goals. ” (2012, p.
122). Whereas her directive approach served her well with the production line crew it is apparent that a the Participative style might be more effective with the engineers and designers on her new team. Based on this Model proposed by House, Change would involve her new team in the decision making processes thus building trust in her leadership and her trust in hem as a team. (Lousier & ACH, 2012, IPPP).
Lie Changes personality style is best characterized as Autocratic which fits neatly within the Currency personality dimension described as “including dominance, extroversion, and high energy with determination.
” (Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 37. ) While these characteristics were ideally suited to her first management role with the assembly line crew she found this a less effective approach in her new assignment. John Maxwell, author of The 5 Levels of Leadership, would have observed that as a positional leader, people followed Change because they had to. Maxwell, 2013).
Change quickly discovered that her new team was not about to be dominated by her as they knew her to have less knowledge, training and expertise at their particular Jobs. The obvious next step was for her to find a way to work with her team and to motivate them to achieve the corporate goals and objectives. Had Change been aware of Mascots Hierarchy of Needs and how to apply them to her situation she might have realized that her new team were functioning at a level where their Social, Esteem and Self-Actualization needs had to become a priority for her. (Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. ).
This team had motivation factors which focused on physiological and safety needs. Frederick Herbert recognized such workers or employees as being intrinsically motivated “because motivation comes from within the person through the work itself. (Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 84). Changes promotion was the direct result of her success supervising a production crew where her positional power was all that was required to keep her team functioning at an acceptable level. Once she moved up to her new position she needed to learn how to leverage that position of power in new ways.
Being as she lacked the expertise and experience of her new team it would be critical for her to begin focusing her attention on the acquisition of personal power with her team. Lousier & ACH observe that “Personal power is derived from the followers based on the leader’s behavior. ” (2012, p. 149). Of the 7 identified power types one might expect Change to have some success were she to work at improving her personal power by focusing on Referent, Connection, and Reward strategies.
(Lousier & ACH, 2012, p. 1 51-155). Lousier & ACH (2012 p. 51-155) describe these types of rower: Reward Power is based on the user’s ability to influence others with something of value to them. Connection Power is based on the user’s relationships with influential people Referent Power is based on the user’s personal relationships with others.
Assuming her meeting with Terry Gag afforded her the opportunity to continue in this role as supervisor of the design department then there is hope for several reasons, not the least of which is the confidence of her employer.
As we learned early on from Lousier & ACH, “Influencing is the process f a leader communicating ideas, gaining acceptance of them and motivating followers to support and implement the ideas through change. Effective leaders have the ability to influence others.
