Leading Distributed Teams Effectively

This assignment delves into the complexities of leading distributed teams. It encourages you to research and analyze best practices, theoretical frameworks, and real-world examples of successful leadership in virtual team environments. The focus is on understanding how to foster collaboration, manage conflict, and drive performance within geographically dispersed teams.

Developing Individual, Teams
and Organisations

Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................1
P1............................................................................................................................................1
P2............................................................................................................................................2
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................2
P3............................................................................................................................................2
P4............................................................................................................................................4
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
P5............................................................................................................................................6
TASK 4...................................................................................................................................8
P6............................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Organizations are responsible to provide training and development session for employees in
order to improve their skills, knowledge and experience. The present report is based on Marks
and Spencer which is UK based firm and provide varieties of products and services to large
number of customers (Levi, 2015). In this report, discussed about difference among
organizational and personal leaning. High performance working contribute in attain competitive
advantage.
TASK 1
P1
HRM in M&S- Human resources management department are liable for companies’
development that generate a culture and objective for this. In that an organisation needs a
manager who can head this department (Erez and et. al..2013). For a successful management this
needs an appropriate and professional knowledge, particular skills and behaviour for achieving
objectives and these are-
Technical and professional knowledge- When a person wants to start their career they need
a particular and brief knowledge in this field. For this they should have to know about hiring
process and how can they recruit an employer who will be excellent for specific post.
Strategic behaviour- HR Is a person who work on business strategy to achieve companies’
objectives. For most frequent strategy HR need to outsourcing their activity that provide most
strategic value for the company (Kozlowski and Bell, 2013).
Flexibility- In this they work it involves different outsources for background checking,
staffing and employment, administrative goals, employers’ policy and affirmative action plans
etc.
Focused decision- Decision making skills is a quick action in employment services which is
consider for a specific candidate who can full fill organisations need.
Trainer and mentor- When an entity called for new recruitment it’s their responsibility to
provide a specific training to new candidate. For this HR plays his role as a mentor and trainer
for employers.
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P2
Check job title- When company promote their candidate, employees are retiring or need
new ideas/candidate they called new hiring for organisation. For this HR of the company has to
about exist title of post to celled new candidates.
Collect information- In this process they have to collect all the information about
companies’ objectives and recruitments criteria (Marquardt, Banks, Cauweiler, and Ng, 2011).
This information is like candidate qualification, work experience and another skill.
Analysis of agenda- In another words we can this is future goal of company and their
new ideas for take a best place in competitive market.
For employment of new employer, they compulsion to check some skills-
Job requirements- Employer should have specific skills or educational qualification
which is required for the post. Through this candidate are hired by their particular knowledge and
broad ideas and new ideas (Bolman and Deal, 2017).
Interpersonal skills- In this Canadian have to show their skills weather they can adjust
in company or they will not. The next step is to identify new ways to quire that knowledge and
skills.
Technical knowledge- Now a day all the work is doing through technical equipment
because these are risk free and take less time to complete work.
TASK 2
P3
Organisational Learning- This is a process in which people at all level are increasing
their capacity of learning for achieve their future goals by work together with team. It increased
productivity of firm. In this process all the employees are learn together and their head or mentor
provide them particular training (Day, 2011). learning produce flexibility in organisation to adapt
new ideas and improve sharing and changing vision. They encourage the acquirement and
acceptance among all people. Organisational learning is also motivating employees to work
harder and make their command in all fields. This improved their personality and internal
capacity.
Training and Development process-
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 Developed management talent and success planning for firm and also provide strategy for
future goal
 In this process, all the employees are providing their ideas which is helpful to know about
their knowledge for work and capacity of acceptance.
 That is a skills and knowledge development process for worker to work effectively in
their current job role.
 It improves profit and productivity of firm, employers’ performance and helping to gain
competitive edge.
 Workers can improve their communication skill, which will be to overcome their threats
and increasing tricky idea to work faster.
 There are two modes- Single loop and double loop. In single Loop, employees search
solution of particular problem e.g. If sales of M&S are reducing day by day than their
employees work on its market essential to find reasons and solution, this is single loop
method and when a manger governing variables, make strategy for causes and effects this
will be double loop method.
Individual learning- In this an individual or a single person learn new ideas by external
sources. It exists with fundamental requirement. Through this, an individual start to learn from
co-worker and team that how can they deal with these issues. That is a helpful process to connect
a person with their society and culture (Al-Ani, Horspool and Bligh, 2011). In M&S, when an
individual learns from market they always get some personal experience by their customer and
economic factors. It is a self-made process through this a single always learn by himself and get
virtual experiences. Its interaction criteria with internal source's is Nero then organisational
learning.
Training and Development process-
1. In this process an individual is always learn by itself that how they can improve their
skills, how can they show their performance, about their new ideas etc.
2. Individual learn self-directions on accessory skills.
3. Its interaction area is broad then organisation learning.
4. This learning is shared responsibility that can have a significant impact on transition to
education.
Difference between Organisation and Individual learning-
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Basis of
compression
Organisation learning Individual learning
Meaning A process in which all employees are
learn together to achieving goals and
improve internal skills.
In this a individual learn about new
ideas and strategy by external
sources.
Self-learning This is not a self-learning process.
Whenever company needs to improve and
want a new skill from their employees
they conducts training, at times it is for
specific objective
This is a self-learning process.
When an employer wants to
improve their skills for achieving
promotions.
Share vision In this all the employees are share their
vision and ideas with management to
make a best strategy.
Its learning is work for a specific
person. So in this a single one make
their own strategy to achieve future
goals.
Importance For build a team capacity to learn together
and develop intelligence and ability. When
a company work for a big project they
always need a team to work compound.
All the employees of an
organisation have their own
importance. They always contribute
their personal ideas and planning
for a specific work.
P4
Analyse the need for continuous learning and professional development to drive
sustainable business performance.
Learning and development
Learning can be knowns as strategy that draws outlines that will shows how workforce' s
capacity and skill can be developed for organisational growth (Tims and et. al. 2013). Learning is
a process which serves employees to have new things or experiences that they never had. A
training will be provided by which begin the process of learning. Development is expansion and
more focuses on growth of individual's and future performance for organisation. Development is
not about immediate job; it is all about enhancing individual's capacity of work that directly
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related with business performance. Development is the reference says one individual will
improve performance of business in future.
Need for continuous learning and professional development
learning and development is the activity that affect organisational performance, regards with
future exceptions.
Innovations: learning and development is the way of innovation that helps employees to
think in new ways. When a person is getting training about something they have got capacity to
servers’ new generation of idea, an organisation is always expecting it from their worker, they do
their job in very efficient manner (Rosen and et. al. 2011). Learning and development always
considers as the of innovation. Innovation leads to new ventures of business, new customers can
be attracted helps to flourish roots in new market, creating new demand, enjoys the profit, and
off course cutting competition.
Capabilities: this process of learning and development teaches employees that how they
will learn rather than copying old or working in old methods. Learning and development shows a
person ability to working in any environment that gives them some of new thing that will
profiting business and enhance capabilities (Mockaitis, Rose and Zettinig, 2012). Training is tool
which shows worker how they will work in future context so an employee learns in futuristic
way. Capabilities, and abilities of an employees is the major key that affect both company's
performance as well as worker's personal growth.
Less accidents: accidents as in futuristic or on going times. It can be said that well
trained employees will be able to do his work in very sufficient manner that reduces the cost of
accidents. When accident happened it will take long to reset work and have some costing for
worker, tool or work or anything that are damaged (Yeager and Nafukho, 2012). So it is
necessary for a business that they fined remedies for such accidents. So the training/ learning
happens at work place.
Employee's moral: always, when people get to know how they will work in
uncomfortable situation, they lose their confidence sometimes, to reduce it learning and
development process are conducting where individuals learn about their work, working tool and
so many things that helps them to booting their moral. Employee's moral is the main thing that
affect organisation in both ways as if their moral is high the will work harder in any situation and
doing his job in very effective manner by this productivity will be high and performance will
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increase, apart from this is moral is not in good condition that will harm business performance
and costing will be high for a particular employee.
Supervision: a well-trained employee needs less supervision, as if individual is well
trained they will be very acquainted with his work. They can do his all work by his own so it
helps reduces waste of time, no needs of more effort in training and also cost saving (Hughes and
Jones, 2011). If company conducts learning and developing process again and again it will
consume their time as well as affect his business too.
Productivity: learning and development is the key tool for enhancing productive level for
each employee. Cause at the time of conduction training they trained his employee in such
manner that they will increase his working power, majorly in particular stream but training gives
overall improvement in personality (Katzenbach and Smith, 2015).
TASK 3
P5
High performance working contribution to employee engagement- This term is used to
pursued working process and making higher level of overall organisation and individuals. It
includes quality, new ideas, profit and productivity and performances. In employment
engagement they define a relation between an organisation and employers. So for a firm it is
very important to create a culture between employees and organisation in which they can work
with transparency, trust and clear communicative way (Goetsch and Davis, 2014)). An
engagement is defining as one who has full enthusiasm for his work to give a positive benefit to
their organisation. In M&S they are fully engaged with their worker, which provides excitement
and willingness to join them. This will exist with equality process always. Engagement always
provides transparency with positive attitude to distinguished satisfaction and commitment. A
company needs to know that their relation with their employees will always show their
achievements. In another way we can say that this a partnership between worker and
management to build a strategy and their goals. For this we can consider some points as-
 Employees should always have to understand organisations commitment and their
objectives.
 Management needs to respect their workers’ idea which is motivated them to do
additional work for company.
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 M&S always share their planning to their team for new objectives on which they want to
do work.
 For a firm it is very important to give some responsibilities to their employees this thing
promote them to drive for business forward.
High performance working contribution to competitive advantage- In an organisation
competition is always exist because that is always encourage towards success. When M&S start
their business in supermarket at that time they were the only multinational retailer in UK. After
some years they saw some big competition in this field. But they take this as an advantage which
makes them better than the competition in their customers’ mind. What they provide is must be
something which is their customers real need and their wants. In competitive market an entity
always thinks that if they are leader of market at that time so it is not important that it will be
forever (Hoda, Noble and Marshall, 2012. They must create clear goals, strategies, objectives
and operation to build continual competitive advantages. High performance working says to be
involve with competition to differentiate overall desires. But when an organisation deal with
competition this is very difficult to be involve with features because they never know that what
kind of productivity attract customers easily. So for this new ideas should be always run in their
mind to explore themselves in economy. This can be in appropriate form like When M&S
competition start to deal with supermarket they start their business in new form as they promote
products on internet and start selling on new website. This think helps them to maximise their
profit in some days. HPW helps competition as we see-
5. To check ability of competition and make determination between each other.
6. High performance working always consider to take competitor as their advantage because
it helps to look forward success easily
7. Target market helps you to know about their customers easily. It provides information
about who is your customer, who know you very well, who want to invest their money to
your product, and who believe in you. This will create their demand and economy
growth.
8. If you are an employee of market, this is necessary to know about their customers’
demand and supply of product according to their need.
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TASK 4
P6
Approaches use for developing the businesses in effective manner as in this includes many
types of approaches that helps to achieve organisation's goals and objectives. Generally,
approaches help to get new ideas and acquiring knowledge for better improvements. M&S
company use the approaches tools and techniques to get best performance from their employees
and to satisfy their customers. M&S adopt many methods of approaches like evaluation
approach, behavioural approach, result approach, quality approach, comparative approach,
system approach to improve employees’ performance while performing any task and get better
outcomes or results regarding the process (Hoda, Noble and Marshall, 2012. There are many
companies in the market who adopt the approaches techniques and follow the approaches for
workforce or work efficiency that helps to compete the competitors and make the good market
position among them.
Marks and Spencer company is using several types of approaches that helps to achieve
company's goals and objectives. There are as followings: -
Evaluation approach: evaluation approach determines the quality of work as it is a
systematic method to find the answer of questions regarding projects, policies and programmes
by the process of collecting, analysing, measuring data and use this information for improvement
of workforce effectively and efficiently. There are two functions of evaluation that is formative
and summative. Formative evaluations provide information regarding improvement of products
and process and Summative evaluation provides information regarding short term effectiveness
and long term impact to decide the adoption of product and process (Hoda, Noble and Marshall,
2012. Marks and Spencer company follows the evaluation approach as it believes in quality of
works and this company manufactures qualitative products to satisfy its customers and to make
them loyal.
Behavioural approach: behavioural approach defined as employee's action to identify
their behaviour while performing specific task or performance and it helps to separate effective
employees as well as less effective employees for the organisation. M&S company use these
techniques to know about their employee's behaviour with customers as how they treat them
while selling products and services.
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Result approach: result approach is about what outcomes, results or output get in an
evaluation to achieve strategic goals. Result approach use for feedback from all people who are
working in the organisation and who are contributing directly or indirectly to the results or
outcomes for achieve organisation goals and objectives. M&S gets regular feedback from its
employees and customers to know their satisfaction level and find the problems to improvement.
M&S use this method to get better outcomes as positive feedbacks from customers as well as
from its employees also to achieve company's objectives.
Quality approach: quality approach is a system of management that help to get long term
success for the organisation. It is a customer focused systems that focus on customers as to
provide them good and quality products to satisfy them. Customer satisfaction is the key of long
term success of businesses in the market as well as among competitors. M&S company focus on
customers as it's a customer oriented company which focus only in customer satisfaction and it
believes in providing qualitative products to retain customers.
Comparative approach: comparative approach is a scientific method that M&S company
use. In which they set the future goals or benchmarks and then follow the process of collecting
the current data, analysing, Measuring and interpretations of those data to compare with
benchmark and find the gaps if any occur or any problems which fails to meet the goals and
objectives (Hoda, Noble and Marshall, 2012. So it helps to improve the work efficiency and find
alternative solutions for several problems.
Attributes approach: M&S company sell its product in good quality to satisfy customers
need and wants. Attributes considers product's quality and features or characteristics that attracts
more customers to buy. Customers want good quality products in reasonable price so M&S care
about their customers by selling products and services in cheap and reasonable cost to satisfy
them and to meet the company's goals and objectives.
CONCLUSION
From the above project, it is found that Marks and Spencer is the firm which offer varieties
of products and services in international market in order to attract them. M&S company focus on
customers’ satisfactions because to compete the competitors’ customers’ loyalty is required and
customer satisfaction helps to retain the customers and attract more or more customers towards
company's products and services. This is a function in which HRM focuses on recruitments,
management of firm and provides training and learning to new employees who can achieve their
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goals. Above report discussed about different approaches which is useful to attain competitive
advantage.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Al-Ani, B., Horspool, A. and Bligh, M.C., 2011. Collaborating with ‘virtual strangers’: Towards
developing a framework for leadership in distributed teams. Leadership. 7(3). pp.219-
249.
Bolman, L.G. and Deal, T.E.. 2017. Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership.
John Wiley & Sons.
Day, D.V.. 2011. Leadership development. The Sage handbook of leadership, pp.37-50.
Erez, M., and et. al..2013. Going global: Developing management students' cultural intelligence
and global identity in culturally diverse virtual teams. Academy of Management
Learning & Education. 12(3). pp.330-355.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B.. 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Hoda, R., Noble, J. and Marshall, S., 2012. Developing a grounded theory to explain the
practices of self-organizing Agile teams. Empirical Software Engineering. 17(6).
pp.609-639.
Hughes, R.L. and Jones, S.K.. 2011. Developing and assessing college student teamwork skills.
New Directions for Institutional Research. 2011(149). pp.53-64.
Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K.. 2015. The wisdom of teams: Creating the high-performance
organization. Harvard Business Review Press.
Kozlowski, S.W. and Bell, B.S., 2013. Work groups and teams in organizations: Review update.
Levi, D.. 2015. Group dynamics for teams. Sage Publications.
Marquardt, M.J., Banks, S., Cauweiler, P. and Ng, C.S.. 2011. Optimizing the power of action
learning: Real-time strategies for developing leaders, building teams and transforming
organizations. Hachette UK.
Mockaitis, A.I., Rose, E.L. and Zettinig, P.. 2012. The power of individual cultural values in
global virtual teams. International Journal of Cross Cultural Management,.12(2).
pp.193-210.
Rosen, M.A., and et. al. 2011. Managing adaptive performance in teams: Guiding principles and
behavioral markers for measurement. Human resource management review. 21(2).
pp.107-122.
Tims, M., and et. al. 2013. Job crafting at the team and individual level: Implications for work
engagement and performance. Group & Organization Management. 38(4). pp.427-454.
Yeager, K.L. and Nafukho, F.M.. 2012. Developing diverse teams to improve performance in the
organizational setting. European Journal of Training and Development,. 36(4). pp.388-
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Online
Different performance management approaches. 2017. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.projectguru.in/publications/approaches-measuring-performance-
employees/>. [Accessed on 11th November 2017].
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