43 6.10 Exercises
[Author removed at request of original publisher]
Management Skills Application Exercises
- Identify a charismatic leader and a leader with little charisma. What are the traits and skills that allow them to succeed in their roles? How can you incorporate the traits that allow them to be successful in their roles into the skills you will need to have in a leadership position?
- You have just taken a leadership position where 40 percent of the workforce telecommutes. You want to encourage teamwork and want to ensure that telecommuting is not hurting teamwork. What is your plan to discover how things are working and how to communicate your desire to have effective teamwork?
- You are at a meeting, and during the meeting someone on the team addresses their manager and points out a crucial mistake that could doom the project. The person says that their manager should have caught it and because of that should resign. As a leader of the group, how would you deal with the subordinate, the manager, and communication with the entire team?
Managerial Decision Exercises
- You are the newly appointed commissioner of a major sports league that is currently in a very public game three of a best-of-seven-game playoff. After an emotional opening ceremony that recognizes a tragic event in the community that is widely praised, you settle in to enjoy the game. Early in the game, a player on one team is seen celebrating a scoring play by acting out a racially insensitive behavior after the play. How would you act in a leadership position? Read the ESPN article [http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/21199462/rob-manfred-leadership-was-tested-yuli-gurriel-racially-insensitive-behavior-passed] and comment on how this commissioner acted in this instance.
- One of the challenges for a new manager in a leadership position is managing stress. Reflect on a time in your life where you have taken a leadership role in a summer job, as a member of a team, or in a study group for this or another course. Develop a stress management plan that includes how you can recognize stress, how you will notice the stress, how you will manage changes to address stress, and how you will seek outside counsel and help, including a mentor to help you manage stress.
- Few people would want to hire a skilled manager with no leadership skills, and you would not want to hire an inspirational leader who can’t manage planning, delegating, or keeping things organized. Draw two “T accounts” with positive attributes on the left and negative attributes on the right for managerial skills and leadership skills that you would look for as a hiring manager for a crucial managerial and leadership position in your organization.
Group Exercise
You are charged with hiring a manager for a fast-food restaurant. The operations within the store are highly standardized, and employees have very specific job descriptions. The person will be in charge of managing around 30 employees. There is a high degree of turnover among employees, so retention will be an important priority. Most employees who work in the restaurant are young with low levels of work experience, and few of them view the restaurant business as a full-time career. The atmosphere in the restaurant has a fast pace. In this company, managers are often promoted from within, and this position is an exception. Therefore, the incoming manager may not expect a warm welcome from employees who were passed over for a promotion, as well as their colleagues. Finally, the position power of the manager will be somewhat limited because employees are unionized. Therefore, the manager will have limited opportunities for distributing pay raises or bonuses.
Discussion Questions
- Identify the leadership traits and behaviours that are desirable for this position.
- Design an approach to selecting this person. Which methods of employee selection would you use? Why?
- Develop interview questions to be used in hiring this manager. Your questions should be aimed at predicting the leadership capabilities of the person in question.
