MGMT 371 Liberty University Effective and Ineffective Leaders Research Paper

Part 1.  Research Project: Final Submission

Individual Assignment

Submit the final draft of the written portion of the Research Project. Ensure you have incorporated your instructor and the Turnitin feedback from prior submissions applying any suggestion for revisions.

Complete and submit the following to this assignment:

Title Page

Table of Contents

Executive Summary – Brief summary of the purpose of your research, capturing the main points. In this summary, you will provide the audience with an overview of the entire research project without reading the entire research project final submission. Order the points in your summary chronologically (where applicable) to match your research project outline. The summary should include the following:

An introduction: Start the summary by identifying your research project audience, your professor, and the board of directors. This introduction should capture the reading audience’s attention. Length: 1-2 paragraphs.

Statement of the purpose: Provide concise yet informative paragraphs offering only the essential information about your research project and introducing your approved leaders. A good way to do this is to provide a short synopsis of what makes the selected leaders effective or ineffective, in your opinion. Consider using a very brief referenced example for each leader. Length: 2-3 paragraphs.

You may consider providing a bulleted section comparing and contrasting your selected leaders at a high level. This is not a historical overview but an introduction to your research purpose.

• You may briefly introduce applicable theories, recent events, etc.

Intended achievement for the research project: You may close with your intended achievement once you’ve completed your research. What message are you conveying to your reading audience? Length 2-3 paragraphs.

• Five Models of Personality

Traits of Effective or Ineffective Leaders

• Leader’s Theory X and Theory Y

Leader’s Ethics

Leader’s Motivation

• Contingency Leadership

Influencing Styles

• Leader’s Communication Skills

Charismatic vs.Transformational Leadership Styles

Conclusion

• References (Compiled from research in Modules 2-7)

As a reminder, you will also provide a Final Presentation of your submission in Activity 9.2.

• Your paper will automatically be evaluated through Turnitin when you submit your assignment in this activity. Turnitin is a service that checks your work for improper citation or potential plagiarism by comparing it against a database of web pages, student papers, and articles from academic books and publications. Ensure that your work is entirely your own and that you have not plagiarized any material!

Part 2a.  Discussion. 

• In Assignment 6.5, you were asked to submit a leadership-related topic that is current and of interest to you. Based on the topics submitted i have selected two issues that i would like to hear your thoughts on.

a) For employee motivation and bringing about work life balance, many organizations in light of the pandemic, are rethinking the options of remote work. Do you as a leader of your team agree, or see an opportunity for remote work in your current positions?

• b) Do you think that your current work environment truly represents a diverse and inclusive work environment?

If there are two relevant leadership topics, your instructor will break your class into two sections. The students in each section will only respond to one topic.

• If your instructor has selected two topics, you may reply to students working on either topic.

Post and Engage

• Your response should be a minimum of 300 words with two (2) external non-textbook references. Be sure to respond to at least two (2) of your classmates, offering quality scholarly replies. You can upload any documents to support your position if you wish.

Posting Date: Post your response by Module Day Four (4) to allow time for your peers to view and post replies.

• In your reply to your classmate’s post, evaluate the relationship of the post’s content compared to module concepts and material and other relevant sources deemed meaningful.

The overall goal for your discussion engagement is to push each discussion forward through professional argument, gentle yet valuable critique, and effective opinion.

•  2b Respond to Part two discussion:

For employee motivation and bringing about work life balance, many organizations in light of the pandemic, are rethinking the options of remote work. Do you as a leader of your team agree, or see an opportunity for remote work in your current positions?

• Over the past two years, my team has been working remotely except for a small number of technicians that need to be onsite for hardware deployments and troubleshooting. The most interesting aspect of this has been how well the team has been able to adapt to this huge change in their work routine. I have noticed that a lot of our productivity was inhibited by the requirement to be in person and discuss complex ideas in an in-person meeting. Since we’ve gone nearly fully remote, our team has used Microsoft Teams meetings to collaborate on documents and keep the focus of our work tightly zoomed in on the topic at hand.

The increase in productivity does have a dark side, though, I’ve noticed a general trend to blur the lines between personal and work time, and the concept of ‘work-life balance’ has been eroded. It takes a strong leader to establish and maintain policies that encourage a positive work-life balance. As leaders, we’re responsible for ensuring that we don’t schedule meetings during lunch and encourage people to take breaks throughout the day (Barron, 2020) to prevent followers from becoming burnt out.

• Do you think that your current work environment truly represents a diverse and inclusive work environment?

I think determining the quality of diversity and inclusion in a workplace is more complex than it appears at first blush. Inclusion isn’t something that can be directly quantified by enumerating the demographics represented by your employees but is based on your followers’ perceptions. An article in the Harvard Business Review suggests that leaders can conduct surveys to get a ‘pulse’ of how their followers feel they are doing when it comes to inclusion (Romansky et al., 2021). I think my current work environment does an excellent job of being inclusive, and I can’t say I’ve seen a situation where someone wasn’t included in any project. Still, I also don’t think I can make that determination. To measure my team’s inclusiveness adequately, I’d have to ask the team.

• Barron, S. (2020). 9 tips for working from home that can help with work-life balance. Owl Labs Blog. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://resources.owllabs.com/blog/remote-work-lif…

Romansky, L., Garrod, M., Brown, K., & Deo, K. (2021, August 27). How to measure inclusion in the workplace. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved March 28, 2022, from https://hbr.org/2021/05/how-to-measure-inclusion-i…

• Respond 2:

Teleworking as a leader is a fantastic topic which I believe that I bring a unique perspective in that I had never teleworked throughout the pandemic and have seen both detriments and benefits to actual output depending on the nature of industry and necessity of work. This is echoed by Viccarbe (2021) who states, “we may think that teleworking is all about advantages, but not all sectors, companies or workers have the capacity to easily adapt to this model: either because of their lifestyle, because the work sector does not allow remote work or because of the personal circumstances of their employees.”

•            In customer service centric fields, I have actually seen an increase in productivity as the hours have been expanded due to the decreased time required to commute back and forth to the office along with the requisite time to set-up their workstations. This has also had an unintended benefit that allows office spaces to be repurposed now that those employees do not have to come into a company owned space. Additionally, I have seen an increase in output because the teleworking individuals work at their own pace, free of normal office distractions that would otherwise delay servicing employees, i.e., training day closures, office morale events, intrusive phone calls, random no-notice meetings, etc.

           However, there is no substitute for interpersonal interaction, and this can cause issues as a leader. I have seen many cases of hindered communication due to decreased personal contact which detriments a team based on the reduced amount of face-to-face contact. According to Clark (N.D.), “some employees are more extroverted and use social interaction to give them energy throughout the day. These employees may feel unmotivated and discouraged when working remotely.” Also, some employees experience increased distractions at home due to individual situations and many were ill-equipped to establish home offices as the pandemic suddenly up-turned households and lifestyles.

•            The nature of my job required physical interaction to which I never had the “pleasure” to telework, but I would say that occasional interaction coupled with expectation management would help most situations. Additionally, establishing upper and lower limits would help those who do not have an “off” button to not work more than required, while keeping the low-performing outliers from doing nothing because the motivated few would handle all the rest.

References:

Clark, B. (N.D.). Pros and Cons of Telecommuting. Career Sidekick. Retrieved from: https://careersidekick.com/telecommuting-pros-cons…

Lussier, R., Achua, C. (2016). Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development. Cengage Learning.

Viccarbe. (2021, April 27). Advantages and Disadvantages of Teleworking or Telecommuting. Retrieved from: https://www.viccarbe.com/spaces/advantages-and-dis… 

Part 3. 

Research Project Presentation

Individual Assignment

Prepare a seven to ten-minute audio/video presentation as an executive summary of your 8.3 – Research Project: Final Submission.

You will also provide either a presentation outline, script, or speaker notes. Use this document to guide your presentation.

Include the following:

Title Slide

Introduction – attention getter with the hook and also an introduction to the central idea. (one slide)

Body – statement of the purpose:

An introduction of the chosen leaders. (two slides, one for each leader)

A short synopsis of what made the selected leaders effective or ineffective. (two slides, one for each leader)

Conclusion – summary of points and final thoughts:

What message do you want to convey to the audience on each leader? (one or two slides)

References- one slide, with no more than six references.