Essay/Term paper: Conservative personalities

Essay, term paper, research paper:  History Essays

Conservative Personalities


1. Conservative

From the introduction, we know that the performance has begun to suffer
under Jack's style of leadership. It is mainly due to the personality of Jack.
He is a quite conservative person who has a tendency to maintain a state of
affairs without great or sudden change. Also, his style of leadership is task
and production-oriented. Task-oriented leadership tends to emphasize task
effectiveness. So, from the case, we can see that he would turn down the
subordinates* suggestion whenever new ideas come. Jack seems to define role and
tell people what, how, when and where to do various tasks only. On the other
hand, Jack isn't a relationship-oriented leader as he doesn't emphasize the
building of relationships with employees. Accordingly, Jack can't maintain a
good relationship with his subordinates. In his mind, he thinks that there is
no equality status between the superior and the subordinates. He would highly
respect the superior order without questioning. Thus, we can see that Jack is
very loyal to Carfax Corporation and works hard to follow the company policies
and procedures and the orders of the managers above him.
Under such leader, the performance of the financial section has begun to
suffer. Due to his conservative personality, the tendency to face changes is
very low. When sudden changes occur and as the same time the upper doesn't give
guidelines immediately, Jack can't handle well under this situation. Then the
flexibility and imagination in facing different situations tend to absolutely
low. Because his task-oriented leadership, he always neglects the new ideas and
unresponsive to change.
Mostly important, Jack doesn't realize the importance of staff
motivation. Subordinates think that the budget in their section is
comparatively lower than other department. As a result, they feel they are
underpaid and overworked. Overwork implies that the shortage of workforce. And
underpaid mean that the workload is greater than the payment for it. As Jack
has such "easygoing" manner, considerable dissatisfaction in the department is
resulted and everyone thinks that Jack is just a puppet for management.

2. Team Work

Not only the conservative personalities cause the financial section to
suffer, but also he has neglected the importance of team work. Team work means
that two or more people who interact with an influence each other towards a
common interest. Financial section is actually a team work. However, from the
case, we can see that Jack doesn't manage his subordinates to be a team work.
Instead, he looks them as labors. He only orders his subordinates what to do
and how to do without any subordinates* ideas. Then it just like a factory
labor who is in the assembly line does a task within the instruction and
guidelines. On the contrast, an effective team can facilitate cooperation and
improve employee morale. So, team work can increase job satisfaction. Also,
implementing work teams allows managers to redirect their energy toward bigger
issues such as long-term plans. Furthermore, if the manager can move decision-
making vertically down to teams, it allows the organization greater flexibility
for faster decisions. Because team members are closer to those problems, they
are more familiar with the situation and can easily solve them. For this reason,
team work performance is higher than the same job achieved by the same
individuals working alone. Due to Jack's style of leadership, direct
participation of subordinates in the financial section is nearly absent. If the
subordinates can have more direct participation, they would be more
understanding and supportive of organizational decisions. As the direct
participation is so low that the subordinates feel that Jack never really pushes
hard enough for a more substantial slice of the budget.
As a result, the dissatisfactions among the subordinates occurred. Then
the turnover rate and absenteeism may be high under Jack's style of leadership.
Inefficient and inefficiency may be resulted. In this way, the performance for
financial section has begun to suffer under Jack's style of leadership.