Introduction
In the present days, the improvement of operational reliability requires the interplay of a strong team (Fisher, 2000). In addition, the success of any organization is highly depended on the input of the employees and the management as far as realization of the goals of any given organizations are concerned. However, research and analysis has showed that there is a growing need for the organizations to embrace development of employees and the management of the organization. Khanfar (2004) pointed out that managing employees and the management itself goes a long way to enhancing high employee job satisfaction, and the subsequent employee retention. However, Wageman (2001) showed that the achievement of the organizational goals and the enhancement of high rate of employee retention can never be possible without excellent management and leadership. In spite of such needs, most organizations do not have the necessary strategies and programs that can be used in enhancing effective leadership within the organization. Consequently, in response to the unique organizational needs, many organizations have customized their training and development programs to impart the needed skills and knowledge to their employees. The management of any organization should come up with development programs that are aimed at embracing effective leadership. Such programs can include training programs that are geared at boosting leadership through embracing teamwork among the employees and the management itself.
This paper thus, seeks to offer an insight on the significance of employee development by embracing leadership skills among employees and the management in a bid to ensure that the organizational goals are achieved, as the employees develop. In order to address the concerns raised, the paper will make use of the ABC Oil & Gas Company to investigate how it has established strategic employee training and development strategies to address capacity problems in some of its units that are based in non-English-speaking countries. In this write-up, the primary concern will be on the issue of employee management and the view of a leader as a facilitator.
Problematizing Process
In this case, the problem is on the subject of employee management and their subsequent retention. This follows the concept that the development of employees plays a significant role in the satisfaction of human resources. The problem thus, is that most organizations lack employee development programs that are aimed at imparting the necessary skills to employees and the management to enhance skills and knowledge. However, in a situation where some organizations have development programs, it happens that they are inadequate and do not help in increasing the rate of retention of employees, their satisfaction or even their skills and knowledge base. Such a scenario occurs when an organization establishes programs, such as development and training, which are only focused at the general fitness of the employees and tends to overlook the management of the workforce.
In the light of Martins and Michael (2009), organizational management, as well requires a degree of development and training considering that the effectiveness of the management determines the performance of the organization’s employees. For this reason, organizations are supposed to develop the management in order to be able them lead the employees into achieving the goals and objectives of the organization. The reasoning behind such a strategy is that the management’s workforce through development opportunities gets knowledge and skills on how it can best lead and maintain satisfied employees, who are productive in their assigned tasks in their place of work. Organizations should aim at strategies and development programs that focus on the development of the entire organization.
Technological advancement and the onset of human resource development that tends to follow the modern management have had a lot of impacts in the development of human resources in the modern world. The process of enhancing effective leadership and upgrading workers in the organization should therefore, adopt the form of training, development, as well as education, with the organization’s goal being the focus (Raelin, 2010). Such active strategies ought to be implemented as part of any organization’s human resource development department since it is the one concerned with the company’s human resource development department that does the annual calendar employee retention tactics.
Literature Review
Most of the organizations nowadays are faced with special challenges and approaches that are related to the management and development of employees. ABC Oil & Gas Company is not an exception to such challenges. Even though ABC Oil & Gas Company is a medium-sized company, it has come up with measures to embrace employee training and development that ensures that the employees and the management acquire the necessary skills and knowledge. However, the company needs to establish training and development programs that can suit the demands of its local workers, especially those who are based in non-English speaking countries.
As a discipline in organizational management, employee management development is a recent discipline. ABC Oil & Gas Company have made great strides towards ensuring better treatment of employees as partners and key tenets of the business as opposed to the previous periods where human resources were viewed as an extra cost to the organizations.
The recognition of the centrality of employees in the success of the organization emanates from the fact that organizations need a wide range of talents and competencies to ensure success in their activities (Barker, 1993). For an organization to realize the required competencies in its employees, training and development become a very vital tenet. Further, it is crucial for organizations to not only achieve the competencies that are needed for their smooth running but also in ensuring that employees are retained to continue adding value to their (organizations) bottom-line through their competencies (Parker, Kram, & Hall, 2012). Therefore, human resource department has the role of establishing the right measures towards training, development, and retention of employees. Research and analysis indicate that employee development and training enhances acquisition of leadership skills among employees and management. As such, training employees on self-leadership help the management of any given organization to use dialogue and embrace teamwork (Manz & Sims, 1991).
Insights
The review of the literature showed there is a need for redefinition of organization’s programs and culture in order to ensure smooth operations. The employees and the management are at the centre of any organization’s activities. For this reason, a deeper look into the motivations of employees indicated that employee training and development is crucial. However, the employed programs should focus on imparting knowledge, skills and embrace teamwork in order to help increase the performance and productivity of the concerned organization.
Problems Redefinition & Reframing
This case presents a problem of inadequate employee development programs that can enhance leadership and teamwork among employees in an organization, as well as the lack of the same. However, such a scenario can be redefined and reframed to feature a case where the lack of adequate employee development programs is seen as an opportunity for any organization to implement development programs not only for the employees but also for the management itself. This should also feature the change of an organization’s old programs to others that feature the changing technological world, and that embrace the need for teamwork among employees and the management (Kirkman & Rosen, 2000). In this case, the problem will be the absence of trained and developed leaders who can help the employees improve their leadership and teamwork skills while they remain satisfied at their workplace.
Conclusion
From the foregoing, it is evident that there is a need to change the measures that different organizations use especially in the development of employees and the management team. For the organizations to achieve the set goals and objectives, all employees should have the necessary leadership and knowledge skills. Through training and development an organization will be in a position to ensure that its employees embrace teamwork, which is necessary for improved performance.
Reflection
Case Study: Facilitating a team during its growing pains
From the case study on facilitating a team during is growing pains, it is evident that there are cases whereby the team facilitator is required to set up a number of facilitation points of reference to help within the course of the facilitation. As such, in the aspect of such conditions, there are always cases of tensions and problem with leadership and the group development given that different people have diverse outlook of leadership (Kirkman & Rosen, 2000). This makes it hard for the facilitator and the team members to work towards a common goal. By embracing self-leadership, an individual is able to evaluate himself or herself through self-observation in a bid to establish behaviors that one can change, enhance or eliminate. Such an approach heightens the behavioral awareness of the members in a team in order to help them in moving towards set goals and objectives. As such, self-leadership helps to boost team performance (Barker, 1993).
Considering the challenges that the team members might be facing, each member is always experiencing cases of leadership tension. As such, everything the members do it is always accompanied by tension and fear from the supervisor. However, it is the duty of the facilitator to act as a source of encouragement to the team members and to embrace free speaking of the members. According to Raelin (2003), team members cannot achieve their set goals if they just start projects without first laying out a plan of actions. As such, there is need for team members to be open and to ensure that they work towards managing their conflicts as opposed to suppressing them.
In order to ensure that a given group is developed well, it is always important to ensure that the challenges are legitimized to the facilitation, as well as modeling a method that can be used in to explore such challenges in a means that recognizes the challenges but in a means that addresses the difficulties openly (Raelin, 2010). Such an approach to challenges and conflicts arising from facilitating a given group of individuals is suitable in that it uses intervention to help the group to understand how to approach issues. In addition, from the case study, it was evident that the means that individuals use to quest for anything matters a lot. For this reason, there is a need to model an inquiry that suits the prevailing situations. A suitable inquiry should be guided by necessary illustrations since explanation gives a chance for all the members to understand the condition at hand.
Self-leadership
Self-leadership refers to the ability of an individual to guide themselves towards positive activities, and places that they have never had the chance of being (Manz & Sims, 1991). There have been many arguments as to whether self-leadership is significant before the engagement of any form of team leadership. Self-leadership is thus important before one engages in team leadership in that it forms the base for team’s influence and regulation (Fisher, 2000).
From the foregoing, it was evident that facilitation plays an important role especially in enhancing teamwork. However, many people are not aware of how to implement the role of facilitator. Thus, in order to implement the role of a team facilitator, one should assure the team’s appropriate composure, define the agendas that will be used in guiding the teamwork, guide the discussions of the team in the course of the meeting, summarize the main points, determine the mode of decision-making process embraced by the members of the team. In addition, implementation of the role of a team facilitator can be achieved by guiding the members in a team in establishing the ground rules during any form of teamwork.
References
Barker, J. (1993). Tightening the iron cage: Concertive control in self-managing teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 38(3), pp. 408-437.
Fisher, K. (2000). Leading Self-Directed Work Teams: A Guide to Developing New Team Leadership Skills. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Khanfar, M. (2014). Training and its Importance in the Efficiency of Employees Performance in Five -Star Hotels in Jordan. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 6(2), 137-158.
Kirkman, B., & Rosen, B. (2000). Powering up Teams. Organizational Dynamics, 28 (3), pp. 48-66.
Manz, C., & Sims, H. (1991). Super leadership: Beyond the myth of heroic leadership. Organizational Dynamics, 19 (4), pp. 18-35.
Martins, B., & Michael, S. (2009). Qualitative Research: A Guide to Design and Implementation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Parker, P., Kram, K., & Hall, D. (2012). Exploring risk factors in peer coaching: A multilevel approach. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 49(3), 361-387.
Raelin, J. A. (2003). Collective leadership in creating leaderful organizations: How to bring out leadership in everyone. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
Raelin, J.A. (2010). The leaderful fieldwork: strategies and activities for developing leadership in everyone. London: SAGE.
Wageman, R. (2001). How leaders foster self-managing team effectiveness: Design choices versus hands-on coaching. Organizational Science, 12 (5), pp. 599-577.