Leadership Practice The Vice President of operations recently promoted you and moved you to a new branch office where the morale among employees is low and performance is poor. Of the five employees, Amani has the most tenure with six years. Amani seems to have the lowest morale and is not motivated to do the work, although he is quite capable of doing it successfully. Bassmah has been with the company for four years, but has not mastered the new software and is performing at a low level even three months after being trained on the software. Hadeel also has four years with the company and Rawan has two years. Hadeel and Rawan are responsible for client contact, and while in the past they worked well together on reaching out to clients, now there are conflicts and low morale. Samah has been with the company just three months and does not understand what is expected on the job and is contemplating leaving the company. Approach the case as a manager well versed in situational leadership. Explain situational leadership to your Vice President. Determine the readiness level of each employee and explain your reasoning. Determine the appropriate leader behavior to match the employee level and explain your reasoning. Develop a plan of action as to how you will lead each person to higher performance and morale, and explain it to your Vice President. Directions: Write an essay that includes an introduction paragraph, the essays body, and a conclusion paragraph to address the assignments guide questions. Do not address the questions using a question-and-answer format. Your well-written paper should meet the following requirements: Be 3-5 pages in length, which does not include the title and reference pages, which are never a part of the content minimum requirements. Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from the textbook and at least two current, scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles. Current articles are those published in the last five years. It is strongly encouraged that you submit all assignments to the Turnitin Originality Check prior to submitting it to your instructor for grading. If you are unsure how to submit an assignment to the Originality Check tool, review the Turnitin Originality CheckStudent Guide for step-by-step instructions. In advance of submission, review the grading rubric to see how you will be graded for this assignment. Practice For Your Success As you work through the module content, think about a leader in your organization or in an organization with which you are familiar. Does that individual change his/her leadership style to fit a specific situation, or does he/she seem to use the same approach regardless of the circumstance? If you are currently in a leadership role, which kind of a leader are you? To prepare for the Critical Thinking assignment that is due this week, complete all assigned readings and watching videos in your interactive lecture material early in the week. Review the assignment instructions and grading rubric. In your critical thinking, you are asked to review the follower readiness levels for specific tasks, and then propose a plan of action as to how you will apply Situational Leadership Theory concepts. You are also asked to explain SLT to an upper manager in the case example. Read through the learning outcomes and come back to the list at the end of the week to ensure that you are comfortable enough to state that you have learned the stated outcomes. Learning Outcomes 1. Critique the main components of the Situational Approach to leadership. 2. Critique the main components of Fiedler’s Contingency Model. 3. Analyze how these approaches facilitate innovation and organizational change to accomplishing innovation and organizational change.
