MBA 701 Online Draft 1

1. Goal Outline

Goal

To persuade decision makers to implement a required professional
development/leadership skills course within one year of appointment as a manager.
Current managers, including all levels, will comprise the pilot program.

Purpose

To inform and persuade.

Briefly describe your purpose:

In my organization, many of the department heads lack the ability to effectively
communicate and motivate their staff. They apply one-size-fits-all methods of
management and similar attempts to motivate staff which tend to have opposite
effects. Staff feel like management doesnt take the time to actually learn what they
care about who simply who they are as people, and therefore attempts to build
morale backfire. The attempts are seen as patronizing and I honestly dont believe it
is the intention of my counterparts or superiors to make staff feel this way. I believe
a level personal assessments and increased personal awareness could help these
individuals learn more about themselves and recognize the need to really use
leadership skills based on the situation and individuals versus cookie-cutter
approaches. I believe there also needs to be a value placed on leadership
development that just doesnt exist right now. Management is supportive of our
efforts but is not encouraging of those who fail to make efforts to improve
themselves. Individuals who arent good interacting with others are accommodated
and moved away from tasks that involve interaction instead of the value of
collaboration being emphasized. In many instances, accommodations are made for
certain individuals and others are made to fit the mold of what is expected of them.
Currently, double-standards exist and again it doesnt seem upper management is
aware of this and how it impacts morale. I believe an effective leadership
development course/program would allow managers, and staff to learn more about
situational leadership and change the culture within our organization for the better.
Because our office is overall a good place to work, there is the perception there isnt
a problem. Individuals who have expressed strong opposition to particular aspects
of our office have effectively been pushed out of the office. Those of us who
recognize the injustices have adapted and go with the flow. I dont believe the
correct method to deal with these things is to expose my perceptions, but to propose
a program that will lead everyone to their own self-awareness and development of
leadership skills including situational leadership.


Topic Focus

To develop leadership expertise in our staff, we must create a program that
provides deliberate practice while building a supportive work culture that values
high-quality feedback.

Dimensions

Communication Dimension:


Leadership Dimension:


Ethical Dimension:


Questions:

My project directly relates to communication and leadership, so I dont have a
problem with those dimensions. I will have to think more about the ethical
dimension and the best way to incorporate it. I have been relying on four articles
from peer reviewed journals, thus far. Each focuses on leadership development as
something that needs to be more targeted than most programs tend to be. I was
intrigued by the idea of the programs being most effective with real-world scenarios
and also how the articles discourage using the real world as a learning stage. Testing
out theories on clients obviously is not a great idea, when you have not mastered a
technique. It is like letting a new driver learn how to drive by putting them in a
Nascar race. When you are learning a new skill you need to practice in real-world
situations, but they need to be safe and such that if you make mistakes you wont be
in the position to die (wrecking in a Nascar race or being fired from your job).
Student drivers are in a car with an instructor equipped with his/her own brake to
keep the learning driver from making too big of a mistake. In the workplace we cant
have the exact same support but we can role play scenarios that would actually or
have actually occurred in a safe environment where our mistakes wont cause us to
be derailed. This includes the need to create this safe environment. The baseline is
to get individuals to the place where an open environment exists. Lengel and Larsen,
(2012) suggest this open environment can be created by having Complex
Transformative Conversations (CTCs). These conversations seek transformation,
innovation, and learning to challenge the existing physical stage reality or the status
quo (p. 30). In another article, Day (2010) stresses the importance of deliberate
practice in developing expertise (p.41).



Introduction v.1

Leadership development workshops and management training courses are
prevalent and in many cases impart individuals with a wealth of knowledge and
resources. However, these workshops and courses rarely focus on the real-life
situations these individuals will experience in the workplace. To effectively develop
leadership skills individuals must assess and learn to modify their own behavior as
well as develop an ability to profile others and apply the appropriate tactics to
effectively manage situations. In an article for Industrial and Organizational
Psychology, Day (2010) stresses the importance of deliberate practice in developing
expertise (p.41). To develop leadership expertise in our staff, we must create a
program that provides deliberate practice while building a supportive work culture
that values high-quality feedback.





Arguments:

Top 3 reasons to support my idea or proposal:

1. To continue to be an effective department we need to focus on building a
more inclusive environment and encouraging more effective communication
upward, downward, and vertically.
2. Employee motivation can be increased, thus increasing our overall
effectiveness if management learns the appropriate leadership style(s) to
utilize depending on the situation and individuals involved.
3. Building leaders benefits the organization, individuals will be better able to
resolve their own conflicts and more creative solutions can be realized with
an open environment.

3 key points my case study will review:

1. Methods to create an open environment have Complex Transformative
Conversations, the Art of Hosting
2. Leadership Development curriculum needs situational leadership,
personality assessments, EI, diversity, self assessments, conflict management
3. Leadership is best learned through deliberate practice, using scenarios true
to our work environment.


Potential Counter Arguments:

1. Things are fine the way they are
2. Cost of the program
3. This should be initiated by HR instead of our department.


Evidence

1. Data from the research.
2. Possibility to work with HR to develop a program to meet our needs. HR is
working on something similar and our department could be part of a pilot
program to help them assess as well as help our department minimize costs
associated with the rollout.
3. Find research about employee satisfaction surveys and the whether the
instruments we have used are likely to have yielded accurate results.






Strategy

I am uncertain of my strategy. I know I need to inform as well as persuade and the
decision makers in this scenario have opposite personality styles. One is
relationship-oriented and the other is more task-oriented. So, I know that I will need
to appeal to both by illustrating the needs from a person-centered perspective as
well as from the perspective of workplace effectiveness and efficiencies.




Artifacts

I need to find additional articles on the subject that include case studies and real-
world examples of effective leadership development programs. I also need to more
fully review the student examples provided to see how others chose to incorporate
other forms of data into their project.


Discussion Questions








2. References


Baran, B.E., & Adelman, M. (2010). Preparing for the Unthinkable: Leadership
Development for Organizational Crises. Industrial & Organizational Psychology, 3(1),
45-47. Doi: 10.111/j.1754-9434.2009.01186.x

Day, D.V. (2010). The Difficulties of Learning from Experience and the Need for
Deliberate Practice. Industrial & Organizational Psychology, 3(1), 41-44. Doi:
10.1111/j1754-9434.2009.01195.x

Corssan, M. , Vera, D. (2004). Strategic Leadership and Organizational Learning. The
Academy of Management Review, 29(2), 222-240.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/20159030

Larsen, G., Lenger, R. (2012). Transcending the Folly of Leadership Development
Efforts. Leadership & Organiational Management Journal, 2012(1), 21-44.