Mountain West Case

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Mountain West Case

Several types of leadership can be used in organizations, with each having its advantages and disadvantages as well as places and situations it could work best (Williams, 2010). From the Mountain West case, it is obvious that Evelyn and Erik adopted different kinds of leadership with the staff coerced into Eric’s leadership style in a very short time. This led to the mixed reactions considering that the workforce mainly opposes changes especially when they do not favor them.

Evelyn can be termed as a people-oriented leader from her concern towards the staff. In all instances, Evelyn ensured that her staff was well motivated by understanding how they felt after having to deal with different kinds of customers. She was concerned with the workforce’s welfare before anything else. Evelyn motivated the staff by offering many breaks and regular training opportunities as a way of compensating for the stressful work and lowly payments. This kind of leadership style had its benefits as well as disadvantages within the organization. With such treatment, employee turnover was bound to be kept at the maximum level since the staff’s welfare is well taken care of and they feel recognized considering that fact that Evelyn always told them they were very important the organization.

One limitation is that goal achievement was quite low since the employees are made to understand that work is not as important as the human resource. Through such leadership, the staff upheld present performance with lack of advancements owing to the many breaks and unmonitored work. From the setting, it is obvious that Evelyn acquired her influence from experiences in positions that she rose from to her final one before retirement (Williams, 2010).

Erik on the other hand is enthusiastic about his new position with the need to change the current cost of labor; his influence is derived by the need to deliver or perform in his work. Considering that Erik has never been in such a position, he has no idea how stressing the job is. This leads to his adoption of the autocratic type of leadership where he imposes various policies on the workforce. However, Erik could be better viewed as a task-oriented leader who has little concern for his staff. He reduces their breaks and training opportunities leaving the staff without any kind of motivation. Additionally, Erik does not care to see what they need; rather, he only sees what need be done towards achieving the set goals.

In his leadership, only changes have been outlined to reduce the cost of labor without any slight concern of consequences to the staff. This kind of leadership is quite advantageous when quick change is required since the leader monitors the tasks. Subsequently, performance goes high and objectives are largely achieved (Williams, 2010). However, without concern for the staff, motivation goes down especially because employees are viewed as work machines. A consequence of this is lack of motivation that leads to a low employee turnover has been noted in the Mountain West Case.

If I were Martin Quinn, I would recommend some modifications to Erik’s leadership style considering it has evidenced mixed reactions instead of the desired changes. Eric would need to amend his leadership style to accommodate staff welfare considering they are the most valuable asset in any organization. While initiating such change, it is important to use democratic leadership to infuse comfortable ideas with the staff. Using influence such as educating them on the need to adopt a new working system in enhancing efficiency would be better and probably face less resistance. It is possible to make the necessary changes towards reducing labor overheads.

Desired changes can be facilitated through involving the staff actively in initiating the change since they can easily adapt to ideas they have participated in designing rather than just imposing new ones. Through more training on efficiency, the staff would be well equipped in dealing with clients easily and fast as opposed to impressing new ideas that the workforce is not properly acquitted with. Using both task and people- oriented styles of leadership is better at achieving such change towards maintaining a balance rather than using an independent approach that tends to leave one side neglected and hence causing mixed reactions as in this case (Williams, 2010).

References

Williams, C. (2010). Mgmt 3 (with Review Cards and Bind-In Printed Access Card).New York, NY: Cengage Learning.