Using other disciplinary resources, research how motivational leadership is used in your field. Using this information, write an essay that describes how motivational techniques can be used to enhance employee performances within your field. Be sure your essay addresses the following topics:
§Describe specific motivational techniques that could be used within your organization or one that interests you to improve work performances. Include your rationale.
§Examine the effectiveness of motivating employees for the purpose of organizational retention.
§Explain how goal setting and motivation promote positive organizational behavior and ethical decision-making.
§In your opinion, explain how today’s leaders can best motivate followers to perform to their greatest potential.
Your APA-formatted response must be a minimum of two pages (not including the title page and the references page) and must include an introduction, a thesis statement (concise summary of the main point of the paper), and a clear discussion of the questions/topics above.
Your response must include a minimum of two credible references, one of which is attached. All sources used must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying citations.
DYADIC TEAM DEVELOPMENT ACROSS CULTURES: A CASE STUDY Vicki V. Vandaveer The Vandaveer Group, Inc., Houston, Texas This case concerns 2 high potential leaders from vastly different cultures who came together as supervisor and supervisee as part of a large corporate merger of 2 American global companies. The case recounts the rocky start of their relationship and the process, facilitated initially by better understanding the cultures of their respective upbringings that ultimately led to their finding their way to having an effective working relationship. Societal cultural dimensions from well-known cross-cultural research served as a helpful framework and tools for helping this dyadic team communicate more effectively and better understand each other. Keywords: leadership, cross-cultural, culture, dyadic team development, consulting The consulting project described in this case study arose as part of a long-term consulting engagement with a large U.S. international company. The names of the participants in the case and some of the locations have been changed in order to ensure anonymity. The author-consultant had been working with a man I will call Steve, president of a global business unit (GBU), for several years—first as his executive development coach, then in an ongoing role as a trusted advisor on behavioral, performance, and leadership aspects of the business. The consultant’s contract with the company was an “umbrella” contract for “organizational change management consulting services” associated with the merger of two large international companies. The overarching contract generally described the scope and nature of the work to be performed and was appended with “Statements of Work” (SOW) for the specific services provided to different business units (BUs). For this particular engagement, because the consultant was already working with the BU President and his leadership team (LT), no additional SOW was deemed necessary, because the description of services included leader coaching, team development, and subteam development as needed. An important aspect of the context in which this case occurred was the merger. In addition to the normal responsibilities of running the business and meeting financial reporting deadlines, managers were working feverishly to effectively merge operations and two very different corporate cultures. I was working with the overall merger strategy team and leading the change management team, and was working with the merger teams of several BUs. Everything was urgent; everyone was working 16–18 hour days; and the work required to lead—and to overcome organizational immunity to—significant change was all-consuming for all. Steve was a designated “high potential” (HIPO) manager. He had been promoted twice in the 5 years that I had been working with him as he advanced from Regional Vice President (VP) to the Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Vicki V. Vandaveer, 426 West Cowan Drive, Houston, TX 77007. E-mail: [email protected] Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research © 2013 American Psychological Association 2012, Vol. 64, No. 4, 279–294 1065-9293/13/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0031652 279 mailto:[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0031652 Executive VP’s Advisor to president of a GBU. He was not an immediately open person naturally, and it took some time before he opened enough with me that I could add value in his executive development. Over time, I became his trusted advisor and he made significant progress in looking deeply at himself and allowing me to help him enhance his already strong leadership effectiveness. His primary executive development need identified by the senior leaders of the company was to have an international assignment. Thus far, all of his assignments had been in the U.S. corporate headquarters and several field assignments as he had come up the ranks from engineer to manager to now a senior level leadership role. His next assignment would be international. At the time of this project, he was in his first year as the GBU’s president with the expectation of moving after two to four years. After 6 months in his new role, Steve made some changes in his LT for purposes of (a) developmental reassignment, (b) bringing talented people from other countries and cultures onto his team to have representation of GBU countries on the Headquarters (HQ) LT, and (c) providing identified HIPOs within their respective countries with the kinds of developmental experiences only obtained by working in U.S. corporate HQ. He also wanted experience in leading a multicultural team prior to taking an international assignment. He used the company’s worldwide staffing process to review candidates and select people for key roles on his team—one of which was a Financial Planning Manager. For that role he selected a HIPO woman from a developing Muslim country, whom I will call Misha. She had been working for several years as the Financial Planning Manager FPM for the Asia/Pacific Region, based in Hong Kong. I was pleased to learn that Misha had been selected, both for Steve’s team’s sake and hers. Over the past 8 years, I had observed and worked with her on a number of occasions in two of her Regional Planning Manager assignments: (a) Africa–Middle East region, based in East Africa, and (b) in her current assignment—Asia/Pacific region—based in Hong Kong. We worked together in the Africa–Middle East region on two different initiatives: (a) LT development of the multicultural team of which she was a member and (b) implementation of the new performance management system, which among other things, required cultural adaptation of the behavioral indicator ratings (i.e., “behavioral anchors”) in each of the different cultures—to support the company’s Core Values and Corporate Compliance Guidelines. Cultural adaptation meant wording the definitions and behavioral anchors on the rating scales so that the intended meaning would be conveyed. For example, one dimension rated was originally worded as “Demonstrates respect for others’ cultures.” In some cultures the term respect for was replaced with acceptance of, because, although there was not genuine “respect” for certain customs in other cultures (e.g., treatment of women), employees were expected to “accept” that that was the custom, and therefore not criticize nor engage in behaviors that demonstrated lack of “acceptance” while working in or visiting that country. In other cultures to “accept” others’ customs means to “adopt as our own”—clearly not intended; thus, “demonstrate (show) respect” conveyed the intended behavior. Misha was adept at recognizing English terminology that had very different meanings across different cultures. I had had several other opportunities as well to work with her on different initiatives, including cross-cultural LT development with the teams of which she was a member in United Arab Emirates and later in Kenya. She was obviously very bright, perceptive, and respected by and had influence with her colleagues. In LT meetings she was the focal point when the conversation concerned the Region’s finances. Her demeanor was quiet, and she was always very respectful in talking with everyone—no matter their level in the organization. At the same time it was clear to any observer that members of the LT sought out and respected her judgment in business analysis and planning. With a bachelor’s degree in finance from a well-respected university in the United Kingdom, Misha had lived and worked very successfully in five different countries in the past 15 years. Although she had had one assignment in the U.S. for a small Joint Venture (JV) company prior to the mega-merger of the JV’s parent companies, she had never had an assignment in a large U.S. Corporate Headquarters. A true “citizen of the world,” Misha had become quite Westernized in her dress and demeanor and had departed considerably from the behavioral norms of most women in her home culture. After she had received her degree, she went to work for her present employer 280 VANDAVEER company and happily took assignments in different countries. She told me that she would never go back to her home country to work, as there were no jobs for women there at the same level of responsibility and pay as her current and recent jobs with this multinational company. She looked forward to having a U.S. corporate HQ assignment. A Rough Start Six months into her new assignment as Financial Planning Manager, reporting to Steve, I received an urgent call from Steve that he needed my help with Misha. He said that she was “floundering” in her new role and he did not know what to do about it. We met to discuss the problems, and I learned that Steve had changed her job title (and responsibilities) to Manager of Strategy and Planning. As Financial Planning Manager, Misha’s responsibilities were to collect the budgeting and financial information from each region every month, analyze the data, develop reports with graphic profiles for use in BU planning, and work with BU regional and country managers to understand the results and trends. This was a very analytical set of responsibilities that required effective commu- nication and (supportive) relational skills. As Manager of Strategy and Planning, she was expected to work with the other members of Steve’s LT, facilitating their developing BU strategy. This (to Steve, “minor”) change was actually a major one, as some substantially different skillsets were required for actively facilitating strategy development among some very strong and competitive Western regional leaders, each of whom had different agendas, drivers (i.e., balanced scorecard performance metrics), and needs. Perspectives of the Leader In our initial meeting, Steve acknowledged that Misha was “a very hard worker, a team oriented leader, caring and supportive of her team, and had quiet confidence.” However, as a facilitator of strategy development, she was failing miserably. The entire LT was affected, no one happy with the process of strategy development, everyone “dug in” to their positions. No one was willing to “give up” anything, and several had come to Steve to complain. Steve asked me to conduct confidential interviews with Misha and each member of his LT to assess the issues and make a recommendation to him about how to resolve the problem. I saw that (a) he was envisioning a kind of 180 degree feedback (i.e., from peers and supervisor) on Misha’s effectiveness (a very U.S./Western methodology, characteristic of individualistic cultures), (b) he perhaps hadn’t fully understood the significance of her job redesign on her performance effective- ness, and (c) some “misfires” in communication were occurring between the two of them—likely at least in part attributable to cultural misunderstandings. I suggested that I first talk with Misha to get her perspective on how things were going with her job, with Steve, and with Steve’s team—and then propose an approach. I explained that one-on-one interviewing to get individuals’ perspectives on Misha’s effectiveness and the effectiveness of the relationships between the LT and Misha, and between Steve and Misha, is a very Western practice that could feel quite threatening to someone from a collectivist culture; and that it could make the situation much worse if cultural norms were violated. We agreed that the process needed to do no harm. I wanted first to understand Misha’s perspectives (I did not assume collectivist orientation, given her history, but needed to be