Evaluation Paper on JKL Company

Introduction

JKL is an Australian based company and specializes in the selling of small trucks, forklifts, and spare parts. Besides, the firm also leases trucks and fork lifts. JKL is headquartered in Sydney and has several branches in other parts of the country, including Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, and Adelaide.

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JKL Leadership Techniques and Strategies

Facilitate Team Cohesion and Work Outcomes

JKL can leverage a number of strategies to facilitate teamwork. To begin with, the company should embrace workplace diversity. The company should hire people with a wide range of skills and competencies (Canas and Sondak, 2013). This includes people from different cultural background, ethnic group, race, religion, sexual orientation, and age. Thus, they will be able to draw from the experiences in an endeavor to achieve their goals. Although work diversity brings many challenges, a company that embraces it becomes more innovative and competitive.

Secondly, JKL should develop effective policies for managing communication. A recent internal management review uncovered several issues. Among the issues highlighted was the concern of poor communication. To achieve their organizational goals, the company should effectively manage their information flow. Communication should be both from and to the employees. The management teams should encourage communication of ideas that will bring improvement to the various company departments (Cameron, 2012). Throughout to the completion of a project, there should be individual feedback as well as that of a team as a whole.

Thirdly, the company should encourage employees to celebrate their success as a team. To put it simply, celebrations such as shared lunch can help to foster teamwork. Such celebrations are pivotal since they help in building friendship amongst the team members (Cameron, 2012). They act as incentives to achieve the next milestone. Therefore, great care should be taken to ensure that the chosen method of the celebration includes all team members.

To promote cohesiveness, members should be empowered to make contributions to the team. Authority should be delegated to the team members. Consequently, employees feel that they have a stake in the issue at hand. When team members feel valued, they are more likely to collaborate in doing an agreed upon project. For JKL to realize its full potential, every member should play an active role.

Lastly, to facilitate team building, JKL should adopt constructive ways of resolving a conflict. Apparently, in such organizations, conflicts are likely to surface due to differences in power, sexual orientation, and ethnic background. Managers should lead on the frontline in solving disagreements. For this reason, they should receive training that will equip them with skills on how to settle disputes within an organization. As the company is restructuring its operation, the need for educating team members on how to solve disagreements that arise in the workplace is inevitable.

Strategies to Ensure a Shared Understanding of Roles, Purposes, and Responsibilities

Most of the problems that surface within a work environment are because team roles and responsibilities are not clearly defined. Team leaders and supervisors are not the only ones with special responsibilities. Workers equally must be cognizant of what is expected from them. Lack of clarity concerning employee's roles can greatly affect team effectiveness (Evans and Dion, 2012). A shared understanding of team roles and responsibilities is integral to the success of the company. To achieve this, all roles should clearly be defined.

The other strategy that can be adopted is to develop a role expectation worksheet. Supervisors and managers should develop a worksheet that is guided by the skills and expertise possessed by the employee. Team members should also be given an opportunity to express what they believe they are most talented on. This should also serve as an additional guideline when assigning roles and duties.

Identifying and Resolving Conflict

Identifying Workplace Conflict

As with any other organization, conflicts in JKL are inevitable. This is attributable to the fact that employees come from different backgrounds and at the same time they possess different personalities. There are myriads of ways through which a manager can identify workplace conflicts.

First, the supervisors and managers should regularly communicate with the turbinates in order to know what is going on within the company. This also helps in building trust with the employees. Correspondingly, the manager should listen to the subordinate's complaints and develop measures on how to curb them. All in all, if there is effective effective communication (top-down and bottom-up) employees are likely to open up and talk about their problems if they feel that the manager genuinely care about them.

Conflicts are imminent in an organization if individuals have different objectives yet they are required to work as one team. Without a doubt, when team members work towards different goals, it is obvious that they will have challenges in communicating with one another. This also brings unhealthy competition, which is a sign of workplace conflict. Although competition is a key ingredient of motivation, members might find themselves arguing over resources.

Besides, JKL manager can identify conflicts if he notes that there is a disruption in the workflow. If the group assigned to complete the first job is late, the second ground likely to be delayed. This regrettably leads to resentment and conflicts within the workplace. Lastly, conflicts can arise if team members do not understand their roles. This is because some members will feel as though their other colleagues are not putting the necessary effort or as being overly unimportant.

Resolving Conflicts

Learning how to handle conflicts in the workplace is a skill that anyone in the management level should possess. Conflict resolution is a process that entails four steps:

Identify the cause of the problem

The manager/supervisor should first identify the root cause of the problem. He/she should gather enough information in order to have a clear understanding of what transpired through. Each party should be granted a chance to express their side of the story.

Consider other perspectives that are beyond the case at hand

This is because it is not the context that causes disagreements to fester, but the perspective that led to the outset of the conflict. Thus, as the mediator, you should focus on the events and behaviors, and not individual personalities.

Find solutions on how to settle the conflict

After getting to know the viewpoints expressed by each party, the manager should identify how the situation can be changed. The parties should be involved in soliciting ideas on what they believe can be done to settle the disputes. At that point, of agreements and disagreements should be highlighted. Since the overarching aim of conflict resolution is not to identify who is right or right, alternative solutions that all parties can live with should be crafted. After that, the agreement should be reached to determine which actions are to be taken. It is important to mention that the involved individuals buy into the actions agreed.

There should be a follow-up to assess the actions.

A meeting should be scheduled, perhaps in about three weeks, in order to determine how the individuals are doing.

Providing Feedback to Encourage Rewards and Value

Employers should endeavor to create a workplace that is rewarding to the employees. One strategy is to provide that can be adopted to achieve this is to provide feedback to the workers. This helps them to understand their strengths whilst improve in their areas of weakness. Employers can use that opportunity to reward and recognize employees. JKL can adopt many ways to encouraging employee's feedback and at the same time reward their performance.

To begin with, they can organize skip level meetings. In this type of meeting, senior leaders meet with workers who are two levels below them in the hierarchy level. Indeed, this is an excellent way of increasing the information flow in the organization. Secondly, they can conduct a survey. This helps them to gather a lot of information.

The other technique is to conduct exit interviews. Such interviews provide a platform for employees to open up and talk things that they would feel difficult to discuss while under the employment contract. The other tactic is to introduce a confidential complaint box or line. Some employees fear to speak up due to adverse consequences that might befall them. In light of this, JKL should create a complainant line that is confidential for employees to lodge their complaints.

Modelling Desired Behavior and Practices

Human beings have an inherent character of imitating the traits of people who they consider being influential (Latham and Saari, 2015). For this reason, JKL leaders are urged to lead by examples and hence they should espouse behaviors that are acceptable. In light of this, JKL senior executives are required to model behaviors that can be embraced by employees.

Honesty. They should be honest in their dealings and messages. They should avoid making promises that they cannot fulfill.

Trustworthy. The leaders in the different departments should be trustworthy. They should avoid engaging in actions that will taint their reputation.

Integrity. Business leaders should possess strong moral principles. They should avoid being compromised through bribery.

Communication. JKL managers should speak in a courteous way, especially when resolving a conflict ((Latham and Saari, 2015). This is because employees are likely to model such traits.

Work Ethic. JKL workers are likely to take cues from the behaviors exhibited by the management team. Thus, the supervisor's work ethic can have extensive impacts on the culture of JKL ((Latham and Saari, 2015). Amid this, they are encouraged to report to the office early enough, take reasonable work leave, and ensure that all projects are completed on time.

JKL Policy And Procedures To Ensure Employees Undertake Required Roles and Responsibilities.

Policy formulation and implementation in JKL involves a number of steps. Essentially, it entails: identifying the need, collecting information, formulation of drafting, consultation, and review (Tung and Chang, 2011). JKL is in the process of restructuring its operation and thus, there is a need to also develop policies that ensure that individual members take responsibility of their own duties as well as help others understand their roles. This policy applies to all staff members.

Hire skilled and competent employees. By defining roles, the company will target the most qualified person who will easily understand his/her roles.

Clearly define the employee's role and responsibilities. Individuals should be provided with a role expectation worksheet.

The delegation of duties according to the area of specialization. This will make it easy for workers to easily understand their expected duties.

Facilitate smooth handover. During the actual handover period, all important details are furnished to the supervisor and incoming employee.

Encourage teamwork. Employees will be required to assist their fellow colleagues in understanding their duties.

Performance Issues

The JKL performance policy underscores the commitment to developing workforce and monitoring performance. Presently, the companies review its performance twice a year. They monitor it against agreed KPIs and then provide detailed feedback. However, the companies can leverage a number of strategies to address key performance issues plaguing...