Leadership Styles and Team Management

This assignment focuses on Barry, a recently promoted team leader. He faces the challenge of managing his new team effectively. The analysis explores various leadership styles, including Fiedler's Contingency Model, House's Path-Goal Theory, and Hersey and Blanchard's Situational Model, to determine which strategies Barry can utilize for optimal team performance. The assignment emphasizes understanding team dynamics, member capabilities, and the importance of choosing appropriate leadership approaches.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND DESIGN
Organizational Behavior and Design
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR AND DESIGN
Table of Contents
Answer 1....................................................................................................................................2
Answer 2....................................................................................................................................3
Answer 3....................................................................................................................................4
Answer 4....................................................................................................................................5
Answer 5....................................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Answer 1
There are various types of political activities prevailing in an organization by its
employees to attain a specific goal or position. However, it has been seen that organizational
political benefits the organization by helping them meet their goals on some way or the other.
Political activities thus refer to the tactics that play an influencing role on meeting the interest
of the organization or an employee. It is evident from past experiences ad study that political
behavior and using tactics in the organization always has an beneficial effect on the employee
and help them gain a lot from it. It helps the employees to gain personal power and manage
their stress effectively. In turn, a happy employee benefits the outcomes of an organization
(Lawton et al. 2013). In this particular case study, Raphael has also used a type of politics by
which he was able to seek fast promotion in the organization. He also takes any necessary
steps to grow in the organization at the expense of anyone. Due to his political behavior other
employees of the organization is not being able to seek any growth in the organization. The
most effected employee is Barry. This is because Raphael has become his boss and is not
sending any information about his good performance to higher authority. Moreover, Raphael
is taking the credits of Barry for any good work done by him. This shows that Raphael is
using weeds type politics in which personal influence play a major role. By influencing a
person or organization, a person can get the desired position or result they want from the
political activity (Van Deth 2014). Similarly, in this case Raphael carried out influential
effect on the organization and got its first promotion. He did not stop there and continued to
play the weeds political effort on the organization and higher authority by taking all the
credits of works done by Barry. This is making Raphael move up at the expense of Barry and
on the other hand, Barry is losing his chance of getting into a new higher position. Moreover,
Raphael was doing these political activities without letting others know about it and in a very

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secretive manner. This makes this activity an informal one and wrong on his behalf.
However, such activities leads to harmful effect on the organization as it might cause
resignation of Barry and other employee due to lack of growth opportunities (Pettigrew
2014).
Answer 2
Barry should put these kinds of behavior forward to the organization that he is facing
from Raphael even after working hard every project. This is because lack of complaints and
the authority being unaware of it will cause a huge problem for Barry in future. It might
happen that Raphael slowly brings down the reputation of Barry in front of the organization
just as one of his political tactics. Moreover, such activities might also harm other employees
in the organization as well. Thus, it is essential that Barry take a step forward to let the higher
authority know about it. This will not only benefit him and his fellow employees as well.
However, he cannot reach to the authorities directly regarding the issue, as it might look very
unprofessional (Hutchinson and Jackson 2015). Thus, Barry needs to use various power
tactics to send the message to his higher authority about Raphael. Power tactics will not only
help him pass the message to his mangers and other higher employers, it will also help him to
influence his higher authority by showing his performance. Thus, power tactics will help
Barry in his promotion, which was difficult under Raphael’s supervision. Power tactic that
Barry will use to reach out to the authorities is called inspirational appeal. This is because
inspirational appeal helps a person to inspire other person by influencing them about the
goals they want to reach in future. Thus, in this case, Barry will also use inspirational appeal
by which he will inspire the higher authority that the actions done by Raphael will put a
negative effect on the growth of the organization and they will be unable to meet the goals
and desired growth of the company. Such type of tactics will hit the aspirations of the

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authority and they will take immediate actions for Raphael. This is because the major motive
of running a business is to achieve growth both in short term and in long term. Moreover,
businesses also expect that continuous growth will help them fight and survive in this
competitive environment. However, a wrong action conducted by one employee will
discourage other employees and affect the overall performance of the business (Wadsworth
and Blanchard 2015). Thus, inspirational tactic will be one of the best way Barry will be able
to pass the issue to the higher authority and help company to meet the issue as soon as
possible.
Answer 3
Yes, it is true that whining and complaining about the place leads to a lot of problem
and lower the reputation and power in the organization. This is because people that complains
and cry about their position in their organization show low emotions and a negative attitude
towards everything. This makes their existing position week in the organization and makes
them feel low in front of their supervisors and boss. Thus instead of improving their job
position and reputation at work, the employee starts losing their position by such negative
attitude. This is because every organization ahs some of the other problems in their
management or other employees. However, complaints alone would not work for the reason
(Rose et al. 2015). Various types of factors the higher authority in an organization holds
about a whiner such as they think they are unproductive, they are of the assumption that the
person will complain about them too, there comes a trust issue and they are unsure about the
ability of the person to take up responsibility and manage change. Thus, all these factors
together put a bad impact on the organization and the higher authority becomes uncertain
about that particular person. Firstly, it is not advisable to Barry to complain about his boss to
the managers and higher authority. However, if he decides to do so, he should do it in a

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smarter manner. Thus, in order to take steps against Raphael, Barry should think of putting
the matter in front of the managers in a different manner. His decision of complaining about
the matter is wrong, thus he should take a smarter step to get his work done instead of
becoming a whiner in front of his organization. For fulfilling the purpose without risking his
own reputation, Barry should first realize ways by which he could improve the problem. This
is because approaching the manager with a desired solution of the problem will show his own
ability and will save his reputation. For the purpose, Barry can also use coalition in which he
can portray his problem as care about the company and not just a problem with his boss. He
should provide aid to his fellow employees and support the organization in such as situation
instead of just complaining about it (Dang and Hathaway 2014). This will make his existing
position much stronger and might help him gain a better position in the business due to his
capabilities.
Answer 4
Barry is facing a situation that is very normal in today’s working environment. This is
because of increasing competition in the working environment and organizational politics.
However, leaving the job is a very subjective matter as there are lots of factors that the
employee needs to consider before deciding to find another job. This is because there are
many considerations that can be analyzed to reach a decision of whether to find another job
or not. The reasons that one should never take up another job are that a new job has various
new challenges and problems that one should cope with even after being skilled in one thing.
This is because it becomes difficult for a person to come out of his/her comfort zone and
enter a new environment again. It is one of the most challenging things one will face while
deciding to change a job. Moreover, it is uncertain that one will not face any problem or
management issue in his new office (Hurst et al. 2016). Thus, running from one job to

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another is not a good and fruitful decision one could take. However, there are various reasons
also given by other authors stating the usefulness of changing job if one is facing problem in
its present job. The reason of leaving the present job and look for a new one are facing
financial issues in the organization, getting continuous warnings from the boss or managers,
continuous hassle from the boss, unnecessary politics and ignorance to employee problems.
This is because these problems cannot be solved even after continuous efforts from the
employee or giving better performances. Barry in the case also faced problems from his boss
as Raphael is at his back in order to his work done and seeks growth in the organization. It is
seen that Raphael being the boss of Barry is purposely putting Barry down even after giving
good performances to the company. Moreover, he is also taking up all the credits for himself
of the jobs done by Barry. This is making Barry feel unsafe and unsecure with his job as he
feels that he will not get a growth in this company because of his boss. Even though Barry
has all possible reason to leave the company, yet he should not take any such decision
suddenly. This is because he still has certain hope with the higher authority after approaching
them in an appropriate manner. Moreover, it will be not be easy for him to cope in the new
business environment (Hall and Krueger 2016). Thus, Barry should give one chance to this
organization before planning to change his job.
Answer 5
Contingency theory of leadership is a organizational theory that explains that one can
never state a single way by which they can organize their team or the corporation. This shows
that the actual performance of the team or the organization depends upon the internal and the
external situation of an organization. Two past research programs put the contingency theory
of leadership forward, which states the behavior a leader should maintain in order to manage
its team. The contingency theory put forward two types of leadership behavior mostly visible

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in a leader such as consideration leader and initiating structure leader. There are three popular
contingency theories that help a leader to manage its team in the most effective manner such
as Fiedler’s contingency model, House’s Path-Goal theory and Hersey and Blanchard’s
Situational model (Antonakis 2017). Barry in this case has been promoted to a new team as a
team leader in which he has his own group to manage. This has been possible because Barry
agreed to put forward the issue faced by Raphael in a smarter way and has decided not to
leave the company just because of one reason. However, managing a team is not an easy task
because it requires a lot of dedication and understanding of every team members and their
capabilities. Thus using Fielder’s Contingency model will be effective for him to chose his
team members effectively and offer maximum productivity. With the help of this model,
Barry will be able to judge its team members and their behavior towards the leader. In this
model it will help Barry to carry out a test which will help him to know the team member that
he wants to keep in his team and persons that he does not want to work with. In this test, the
leaders rank its team members within certain range with a best ranking grade and a poor
ranking grade. These score are measures under a Least Preferred Co-worker test (LPC) and
grade is offered under a LPC Score (Chemers 2014). Thus, this theory will be efficient for
Barry to choose the best members for his team and carry out coordination easily.

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References
Antonakis, J., 2017. The nature of leadership. Sage publications.
Chemers, M., 2014. An integrative theory of leadership. Psychology Press.
Dang, H.V. and Hathaway, T., 2014. Vietnamese Students’ Perception and Loyalty towards
an Image of Vocational Education and Training. Journal of Education and Vocational
Research, 5(4), pp.228-238.
Hall, J.V. and Krueger, A.B., 2016. An analysis of the labor market for Uber’s driver-
partners in the United States (No. w22843). National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hurst, C.E., Gibbon, H.M.F. and Nurse, A.M., 2016. Social inequality: Forms, causes, and
consequences. Routledge.
Hutchinson, M. and Jackson, D., 2015. The construction and legitimation of workplace
bullying in the public sector: insight into power dynamics and organisational failures in
health and social care. Nursing inquiry, 22(1), pp.13-26.
Lawton, T., McGuire, S. and Rajwani, T., 2013. Corporate political activity: A literature
review and research agenda. International Journal of Management Reviews, 15(1), pp.86-
105.
Pettigrew, A.M., 2014. The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge.
Rose, K., Shuck, B., Twyford, D. and Bergman, M., 2015. Skunked: An integrative review
exploring the consequences of the dysfunctional leader and implications for those employees
who work for them. Human Resource Development Review, 14(1), pp.64-90.

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Van Deth, J.W., 2014. A conceptual map of political participation. Acta Politica, 49(3),
pp.349-367.
Wadsworth, M.B. and Blanchard, A.L., 2015. Influence tactics in virtual teams. Computers in
Human Behavior, 44, pp.386-393.