Leadership in Holden Company: Communication and Conflict Management

Leadership
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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................ 2
Answer 1.................................................................................................................... 2
Answer 2.................................................................................................................... 3
Answer 3.................................................................................................................... 3
Answer 4.................................................................................................................... 4
Conclusion.................................................................................................................. 6
References................................................................................................................. 7

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Introduction
The primary aim of the paper is to evaluate various issues regarding leadership aspects in Holden
Company. Holden invested about $400 million in manufacturing the latest V6 engine at its new
site and aimed at returning around $450 million from the sale of the V6 engine. It will provide
ways to apply the guidelines for the firm on the working team to improve communication skills
and leadership skills within the workplace. The leadership training program will be competent to
solve the problems of communication and conflict at the new plant of Holden. Leadership plays a
vital role in managing conflicts within the team members.
Answer 1
The new plant of Holden consists of a large number of employees from a diverse background. There were
many new employees who had never worked with the firm; many were from outside the company and a
few long-term employees. The employees of the firm were from 60 different nationalities and thus, create
various issues within the workplace. Different employees have a different culture which creates
communication and conflict issues among them (Behfar, Friedman and Brett, 2016). It is noticed that
people from diverse culture brought a diverse set of assumptions to communicate with the other in an
organization. Hence, it becomes a priority for the people of the firm to understand the way of
communicating effectively with the persons from other culture. Individuals from diverse cultures
experience problems like misunderstanding or miscommunication due to various factors such as
language, communication style, and stereotypes (Alhejji et al., 2016). Leader of the team should learn
the way diverse culture people communicate to prevent the occurrence of the issues. Leaders required to
understand the behavior, as well as the beliefs of the workers to solve the cultural diversity issues within
the working environment.
Cultural diversity also provides benefits to the company, but it adds communication issues between the
diverse cultural workers (Zhang, Chen and Sun, 2015). Ineffective communication cause lack of
teamwork, low morale of the employees, and confusion about the work. The issues need to be overcome
to provide benefit to the firm in the long run. In the given case, communication between the groups was
so poor, and less effort has been put by the leader to maintain workplace relationship. Thus, the leader of
the group should arrange programs and provide training to all the workers so that they can communicate
effectively and understand, along with respect for each other cultural perspectives. This would make the
production of V6 engine easy and effective and provide a huge benefit to the firm.