Leadership and Change Management Model Analysis

This assignment provides an in-depth analysis of leadership styles and organizational change models. It discusses the importance of change management and how leaders can use various models to reduce resistance and implement successful changes within their organizations. The assignment also explores the role of leaders and managers in facilitating change, as well as the key principles of leading change authentically.

LEADING AND
MANAGING CHANGE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Case Scenario.........................................................................................................................1
Challenges while executing a 'wholesale cultural change' at Barnacle Bay Hotel.................2
Planned approach for execution of change at Barnacle Bay..................................................5
Leadership style and business strategy develop route way to future changes........................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
In the modern era, it can be seen that change is an inseparable component of each and
every organisation that is functioning as a part of corporate world. In this regards, the main role
that is played in bringing about the necessary change within the organisation premises is that of
managers as well as leaders (Carter, 2015). The significance of change owes to the rapid
fluctuations that take place within every business sector at frequent intervals. With time, a
number of technological changes have taken place within the business environment and are
constantly occurring. Taking these into account, strategic leaders and managers incorporate
changes in the company and gain a competitive advantage over rivals.
The following assignment is about the analysis of case study based upon The Barnacle
Bay Country House Hotel. This is an organisation whose position and sustainability in market
place has been recently challenged by the establishment of a rival firm named Peacock Hall. To
deal with this, the top management of this hotel has considered bringing a wholesale cultural
change. This assignment includes the challenges that may be faced by management along with a
systematic approach to execute the proposed change. In addition to this, relevant leadership style
and strategy are discussed to bring wholesale cultural change.
Case Scenario
The ‘Barnacles’ or the Barnacle Bay Country House Hotel is a luxury organisation
operating within the hospitality industry which strives to allow users to experience a lavish
standard of living and an exceptional customer service. This is done to derive maximum
satisfaction from guests and to retain them for a long term. This hotel consists of almost every
facility that a user desires from the hotel management inclusive of external swimming pool, 100
rooms, big golf course and food & beverage outlet. It has been recognised that Barnacles was
deriving huge profits in the historic course of time, however, the hotel is presently facing
challenges in attracting the attention of new customers. The source of profits for the organisation
in the present time is the old base of customers who maintain their loyalty towards the
organisation and visit on a regular basis owing to the high level of satisfaction that they derive
from the facilities of Barnacles. The conventional lunch menu of Sunday has also been quite
successful in attracting the local people.
1

Over the course of time, Barnacles has been operating in a satisfactory manner. One thing
that acts as threat for this organisation in the present context is the emergence of a 4-Star lavish
hotel, Peacock Hall, which has been established by transforming a huge stately home. This hotel
is at a very small distance from Barnacle Bay and thus serves as a big challenge for the entity to
maintain its sustainability in marketplace. Peacock Hall has been making use of extensive
marketing to become a top market player and offers services such as gymnasium, health spa, hi-
tech conferencing, leisure club, suites to attract people. This constantly puts the position of
Barnacles at stake. To deal with this and taking into account the recent customer complaints, the
management of Barnacle Bay is proposing to incorporate some changes within the organisational
premises.
Challenges while executing a 'wholesale cultural change' at Barnacle Bay Hotel
Owing to the threat caused by Peacock Hall, it is essential for leaders and managers to
come up with certain essential changes. In this regard, the top management has come up with the
idea of executing some changes with which the effect of rivalry from Peacock Hall can be
reduced. The top executive of Barnacles realise that positive changes need to be brought within
the entity at regular intervals so that the position and stake of hotel in the industry is not
hampered. To facilitate this in a proper manner, wholesale refurbishment is proposed within the
hotel. A loan has been procured from the bank for this. Wholesale refurbishment is an innovative
and excellent concept wherein old items are restored and presented in a manner such that they
seem new (Iles, 2017). With the help of this technique, Barnacles will now be having new décor,
carpet, furnishing, fitness centre and a new indoor pool. This reflects that the organisation will
undergo overall restructuring of the present culture. For this, deployment of existing staff and
processes will take place in a manner such that organisational productivity and performance can
be enhanced. Owing to the existence of Peacock Hall and its luxurious offerings, this becomes
necessary for Barnacles to carry out an analysis and review of its activities and undertake an
elimination of such processes which do not assist the entity in enhancing its market position.
This will foster the hotel management to match the standards and benchmark set by Peacock
Hall. As a result of this, customers will be influenced to avail the services provided by Barnacle
Bay Country House hotel and remain loyal to this organisation for a long period of time. With
the satisfaction of their needs and preferences and the fulfilment of their standards of living, such
people will be encouraged to visit the hotel again and also do its mouth publicity.
2

Wholesale cultural change comprises of several components of culture such as beliefs,
values, norms, practices, vision, interior, decor, leadership style, business strategy and mission of
business (Bell, 2019). To tackle the existing level of rivalry within the hospitality industry,
Barnacles is required to bring about certain modifications which will suffice the expectations and
needs of people in the market place. While formulating the wholesale cultural change, Barnacle
Bay might face several challenges or barriers which are described in detailed manner below:-
Unplanned Change Approach: While implementing a change within the organisational
premises, the biggest challenge that may be faced by an entity is the absence of a well structured
and planned approach to execute the change. In this regard, during the execution of wholesale
cultural change in Barnacles, the lack of an effective change approach will imply that the
changes have not taken place in a desirable way. At times, change also becomes challenging to
formulate within the premises owing to the likelihood of personnel of the company towards the
traditional approaches, practices and techniques in which they exercise comfort and ease. The
wholesale cultural change can be feasible within the entity only when it is planned prior to the
execution. The need to bring about such a transition as well as the expected positive outcomes to
arise out of this should be transmitted by the hotel to the employees so as to gain facilitation as
well as support from them. Further, it is essential for the change leader of Barancles to link the
underlying reasons of the change with the vision of hotel and illustrate it in front of new and old
employees. The change leader of Barnacle Bay hotel has made use of “Facilitation and Support”
approach which is devised by Kotter and Schlesinger. This is a kind of approach that emphasis
on provision of training to employees to equip them with the understanding of change and
facilitate them in contributing towards the implementation of wholesale refurbishment (Six
Change Approaches, 2018).
Barriers of communication: In the present context, Barnacle Bay comprises of 75
employees of which 55 are local people while the rest are from abroad. This reflects that the
national and cultural backgrounds of personnel are different. This consequently implies cultural
and linguistic barriers in the organisational premise (Hughes, 2018). But owing to the long term
existence of this hotel within market place, the personnel have adjusted to these diversities. Now,
to bring wholesale cultural change, the top management needs to deploy certain quantum of the
existing staff and hire new candidates to join the organisation.
3

When new employees will be selected, they can either be from the local areas or from
overseas. In case the candidates hired are from the nearby locations, the personnel who are from
abroad will tend to face issues while working with them owing to the linguistics barriers. On the
contrary, if opposite situation takes place, then also it will be challenging for the entity to deal
with the cultural and linguistic issues. Further, this may also give rise to the emergence of
conflicts between the executives and workforce. Now when the company executes the wholesale
cultural change, a definite proportion of employees will be facilitating the change while the rest
will be resisting it. There is a possibility that the operations may become complex owing to the
conflicts and employee resistance. Besides this, Barnacles has a number of stakeholder groups
such as clients, investors, government, community which may have a contrasting point of view
in response to the proposed change within the hotel premise. Thus, taking into consideration all
these challenges, it is significant and relevant for the manager of Barnacle Bay to design and
devise an effective communication strategy so that the need and vision of wholesale cultural
change can be communicated to employees, customers and other stakeholders. This will assist
the enterprise in influencing the purchasing behaviour of customers such that they can be
attracted towards the new and refurbished features and components of the hotel (Turner, 2019).
When essential information about a change has to be transmitted within or outside the
organisation, an optimum strategy is to be devised by the company which cannot be easily
interrupted by any barrier. When such a large scale is being brought within the Barnacles, lack of
effective communication cannot be afforded by the management as this leads to lack of trust
among the workforce.
Employee resistance: The workforce of Barnacles has become used to the traditional
culture of the hotel. They exercise ease and comfort in the existing manner of operating and do
not intend to shift to other operational ways. While facilitating execution of wholesale cultural
change, some of the employees may resist the change. To deal with this, the change leader has
made use of Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model. The steps of this model are briefly described below:-
Create urgency: In the first step, the change leader of Barnacles creates urgency for
bringing about wholesale cultural change within the premise.
Build guiding team: Here, a change management team is formed which is responsible for
feasibly executing the proposed change within the organisation (Doppelt, 2017).
4

Develop a vision: Post the formation of a change management team, the change is linked
with the vision of Barnacles and a relevant association is determined between them.
Communicate the vision: Here, the link determined in previous step is communicated
within the organisation so as to gain maximum support from the workforce.
Elimination of all the obstacles: This step is aimed at review and altering of existing
organisational structure with a view to feasibly introduce the wholesale cultural change within
Barnacles and remove all kind of barriers falling in the pathway.
Creation of short-term wins: It is essential for change leader of the Barnacle Bay hotel to
communicate about the short term wins within the entity to make people understand the need and
significance of bringing the change.
Not giving-up: The leader should not give upon the proposed change owing to small failures and
should continue to work for the long term-success (Alavi and Gill, 2017).
Execution of change: Here, the success associated with execution of wholesale cultural
change within Barnacles is communicated to the employees so as to gain acceptance from them.
Further, to reduce employee resistance and to equip the staff with standards of optimum
service and quality such as that of Peacock Hall, training should be provided by the manager of
this hotel to the existing as well as new staff.
Planned approach for execution of change at Barnacle Bay
Looking upon the emerging competition due to the existence of Peacock hall, Barnacle
Bay has planned to carry out wholesale refurbishment of the organisation with the sole motive of
attracting customers and retaining them. The hotel will be able to earn increased profits by
making use of its low cost strategy. To execute the proposed change desirably, the leader of
Barnacle Bay Country House Hotel has planned to make use of a change management model.
LEWIN'S CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODEL
Lewin's change model is used with the aim to formulate wholesale refurbishment in a
systematic manner within the Barnacles. The stages of this model are described below:-
(a) Unfreeze: In the first stage, the organisation prepares the workforce for the proposed
change (Fullan, 2014). To execute the change, the management of Barnacle Bay has already
procured a bank loan. To gain a competitive advantage in market place, the management of this
hotel has already started looking in the core areas of the organisation by contrasting them with
5

the offerings of Peacock hall. This has provided assistance to the entity in determining ways
through which Barnacles can stay ahead of its competitors and attain long term sustainability.
(b) Change: Here, the changes are embraced within the company. In this relation, the
change leader of Barnacles has already used Kotter’s 8 Step model to reduce employee resistance
and to facilitate the receipt of support from employees to carry out wholesale refurbishment
within the hotel. Changes take time to be executed in an effective manner (Jones and Harris,
2014). A well established plan should be taken into use by the Barnacle Bay hotel to feasibly
introduce the proposed change within enterprise. The company should adopt an optimum
communication strategy so that the benefit of implementation of this change can be easily
transmitted to the workforce. Thus, it can be seen that time and communication, are the two
factors that must be duly considered by the management while bringing any significant and
relevant change in the organisation.
(c) Refreeze: The previous stage dealt with the formulation of wholesale cultural change
within the premise of Barnacles. This illustrates that the hotel will now have new furnishing,
carpet, gym, interior, pool, decor with a view to gain the attention of a large number of
customers towards the high standards of living maintained by the management. The stage of
‘Refreeze’ is associated with facilitating stability post the implementation of any significant and
necessary change within the enterprise. Within this stage of Lewin’s Change Management
Model, the top executives of Barnacles Bay hotel ensure that things get back to the normal
routine and people adapt themselves to the changes positively. For this, input is required from
employees at individual as well as collaborative level so as to ensure that there is least or
negligible negativity and/or resistance from the old and new employees (Komives, 2016). This
will strive to ensure that wholesale cultural change has been brought in a manner such that the
entity can enhance its sales as well as profitability within the marketplace. Also it will mean
increased customer loyalty towards the brand and its offerings.
When organisational stability is attained, the workforce of Barnacle Bay Country House
Hotel exercise ease and comfort in relation to the operations of entity and the new working
structure. Certain other essential elements of refreezing are clearly stated job descriptions given
to personnel and a well formulated and systematic organisational chart whereby each and every
employee has the knowledge about one’s reporting manager. Apart from that, successful and
feasible wholesale cultural change execution will aid the hotel to significantly enhance its sales
6

and profitability in market, thereby, improving its industry ranking simultaneously. Also, it will
aid the entity in facing with the threat posed by rivals such as Peacock Hall by utilising its
refurbished features and products.
Leadership style and business strategy develop route way to future changes
To bring about any significant change within the organisation, effective leadership is
required to be exercised by the change leader. Such kind of leadership is helpful in aligning the
functioning and behavioural attributes of personnel towards the embracement of change
(Leadership Skills, 2019). Apart from this, leadership also aids in reducing the resistance of
employees. It is often seen that organisational changes fail more than succeeding despite the
availability of resources. This is because of lack of effective change leadership which has the
potential to assure that change will be executed in the premises in the desired manner.
With reference to Barnacle Bay Hotel, the senior executives have introduced a wholesale
cultural change. With this, the hotel management will now apply a customer focused approach
with a view to attain maximum satisfaction from them and retain them for a long period of time.
Further, it will aid the enterprise in gaining an edge over its biggest rival at present, Peacock
Hall. In this relation, Rita is advised to adopt the 3C's of Change leadership. This will provide
assistance in making sure that wholesale cultural change becomes a successful move for the
entity and with this, the organisation is able to improve its industrial ranking. In this regard, the
3C’s are explained as follows:-
Communicate: The change as well as the need to bring it is communicated to the
workforce and customers of Barnacle Bay to gain approval and facilitation from them. Here, by
utilising an optimum communication strategy, the change leader will be easily able to develop an
understanding of the purpose of change and link it with the vision of hotel. This ensures lesser
resistance from employees operating in the hotel.
Collaborate: Grouping a number of persons together to facilitate the introduction of
change within the entity is one of the most important attributes of a leader (Komives, 2016). In
addition to this, top management of Barnacle Bay hotel have also intended to incorporate the
views and opinions of employees in the decision-making process with a view to reinforce their
devotion towards change.
7

Commit: The change leader must ensure that their views and beliefs match with those of
personnel working within Barnacles. This becomes essential to feasibly execute the change in the
hotel premise and gain a competitive advantage in market place.
Transformational Leadership
The leader who is in-charge of introducing the wholesale cultural change within Barnacle
Bay will exercise transformational leadership. This will facilitate in bringing about the necessary
and relevant alterations within the entity. Such changes will take place in terms of employment,
activities, leadership approach and business strategy (Alavi and Gill, 2017). Using
transformational style will assist the leader in encouraging the employees to support and
facilitate wholesale cultural change.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of above mentioned discussion, it can be said that changes are essential for
company as well as employees. Besides this, it has been evaluated that employees often resist the
introduction of change and thus, Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model can be used by leaders to reduce
such resistance. Further, it is analysed that the role of leader and manager is key to the
implementation of any change within the company. Leaders must communicate the link between
the proposed change and organisational vision to gain support from customers as well as
employees. Lastly, it has been comprehended that Lewin's change management model serves as
an effective technique through which the leader can successfully execute the change.
8

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Alavi, S. B. and Gill, C., 2017. Leading change authentically: How authentic leaders influence
follower responses to complex change. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies.
24(2). pp.157-171.
Bell, L., 2019. LEADING AND MANAGING PROFESSIONAL LEARNING. Principles of
Educational Leadership & Management. p.95.
Carter, A., 2015. Leading and managing change. Australian Educational Leader. 37(1). p.33.
Doppelt, B., 2017. Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for
business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Fullan, M., 2014. Leading in a culture of change personal action guide and workbook. John
Wiley & Sons.
Hughes, M., 2018. Managing and Leading Organizational Change. Routledge.
Iles, V., 2017. Leading and managing change. ABC of Clinical Leadership. 24(1). pp.49-87.
Jones, M. and Harris, A., 2014. Principals leading successful organisational change: Building
social capital through disciplined professional collaboration. Journal of Organizational
Change Management. 27(3). pp.473-485.
Komives, S. R., 2016. Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model of
leadership development. John Wiley & Sons.
Turner, P.S., 2019. Leading, Managing, and Facilitating Organizational Change. In Evidence-
Based Initiatives for Organizational Change and Development (pp. 261-282). IGI Global.
Online
Leadership Skills. 2019. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://www.skillsyouneed.com/leadership-skills.html>.
Six Change Approaches. 2018. [Online]. Available Through:
<https://expertprogrammanagement.com/2018/05/six-change-approaches/>.
9