Impact of Leadership Styles on Team Performance

This assignment delves into the crucial relationship between leadership styles and team performance. It explores various leadership models, including transformational, transactional, and participative leadership, analyzing their impact on team dynamics, motivation, and overall success. The analysis considers factors like communication, conflict resolution, and decision-making processes within teams. Furthermore, it examines the challenges of larger teams and the importance of intercultural competence in diverse work environments.

Running head: ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
Organizational Behavior
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Introduction
This case study report is a study of organizational behavior (OB) and
how it can help in the management of contemporary organizations and push
them towards reaching their strategic goals with the help of their people by
means of understanding the way of explaining, predicting and influencing
the behavior of individuals and teams. The case study deals with Australian-
based Domino’s Pizza Enterprises and their upcoming recruitment drive. The
organization has decided on upsizing the workforce and their remuneration
packages. The organization is going to use their centralized recruitment
website for bringing in the new workers, along with word-of-mouth and the
local connections. Their already strong brand reputation helped in reducing
the recruitment time for team members. The main areas that this report
would be covering are team effectiveness and recruitment, organizational
culture and leadership, and conflict and stress in teams. Factors affecting
group effectiveness, selection methods, leadership styles/behaviors, types of
group conflict and their impact would be discussed in details, with the help of
academic literature and proper analysis, while addressing the main areas in
the report. Recommendations of effective techniques would be provided for
the proper management of teams, related challenges and conflicts,
recruitment and communication challenges.
Discussion
Teams and Recruitment
The most important factors that impact group effectiveness for
creating a list of team-member selection criteria for selecting a Dominoid for
Domino’s are discussed as follows:
Cohesiveness: The first important factor for consideration is the way
members are cohesive with one another. A cohesive team pushes the
members towards willingness and commitment for striving for excellence.
Team cohesion influences the extent to which members get along with each
other, like one another, and respects and trusts one’s opinions and abilities
(Ohland et al. 2012).
Communication: Effective communication mechanisms are vital for the
development of effective teams. For understanding the scope of a goal and
agreeing upon a path for reaching that goals, it is necessary for teams to
develop an effective communication method (Nelson et al. 2012).
Groupthink: Groupthink is the inclination in decision-making teams for
suppressing contending viewpoints for preserving group harmony. This can
occur as individual team members possess an overwhelming wish of being
accepted and teams wish to reduce conflicts.
Homogeneity: Homogeneity is the degree by which team members are
similar or dissimilar. At the time of evaluating team homogeneity, managers
can consider similarities and dissimilarities in individual characteristics, skills,

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education, capabilities, cultural background, generational backgrounds and
income levels. Homogenous teams have an inclination of being highly
cohesive and can effortlessly develop effective communication approaches
that help in reducing conflict. However, excessive homogeneity leads in the
direction of greater examples of groupthink (Levi 2015).
Role Identity: Role identity is the degree to which the members of a group
have the capability of assuming different roles all across the team structure,
therefore diversifying exertions and developing subject matter experts. The
diverse range of knowledge and skills that each of the members bring to the
team offer a large range of capabilities required for achieving goals.
Stability: The extent of stability amongst members and leaders largely
impacts team performance. Managers get the option of evaluating the extent
to which members are securely autonomous with one another that comes
with steady and trusting relationships.
Team Size: By assessing team’s size, managers have the capability of
maximizing productivity for ensuring high levels of team performance. For
evaluating whether a team is extremely large or small, managers need to
consider the effectiveness and harmony by which the team members work
together and if the necessary tasks are getting effectively accomplished by
every member of the team (Mueller 2012).
Selection or sourcing methods that can be used for selecting team
members, making sure of validity and acceptability are as follows:
Internal sourcing: Internal sourcing the method of promoting a fresh or
lately vacated position inside an organization for existing employees. This
situation arises when the employees who are presently working in an
organization are departed to another department or promoted to a higher
position. If the performance of the employees is good and up to the mark
they are provided with the opportunity of occupying a higher level from their
current position. If additional skills are necessary, at times the organizations
are prepared for providing training. It is one of the easiest way of selecting
applicants as their performance is already under the notice of the senior
management. Some methods of internal recruitment are promotions, internal
advertisements, contract to temporary, temporary to permanent, and so on
(Brunswicker and Vanhaverbeke 2015).
External sourcing: The external sourcing method of recruitment is the way
of conducting employee candidate searching with the help of external
recruitment tools, like newspaper advertisements, job boards and trade
publication announcements. External employees always feel fresh,
innovative and young for their new job, more motivated and active enough
for finding any business issues and then fixing it. Even though recruiting
external applicants might become difficult for the organization, however,
that has more positive influence on the business in comparison with the

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internal source. External sourcing helps in creating better and new
opportunities for the job seekers. It assists in externally increasing branding
and in turn improves business strategy. The new innovative ideas and
advancements helps in bringing high productivity (Brunswicker and
Vanhaverbeke 2015).
Interviewing: Interviewing is a selection procedure that is designed for the
prediction of future job performances based on the candidate’s verbal
responses to verbal inquiries. Interviewing method must only be used if it is
known that there will be an uninterrupted time for reviewing the applicant’s
resume and conducting an insightful interview. Interviews are useful in the
determination if the candidate possesses the required communicative or
social skills that might be necessary for the position. In this method the
interviewer gets the option of obtaining supplementary information about
the candidate. This method can be put to use for selecting amongst equally
qualified applicants. It even makes it possible for the applicant to ask
questions for additional information (Tarzia et al. 2013).
Culture and Leadership
Today’s business landscape is defined by globalization and diversity.
The intermingling workforce has made it necessary that the leaders have the
capability of managing the culturally diverse workforce in an effective
manner. In a succinct approach, leadership inside a culturally diverse
workforce is a hurdle and it hard to mention any single leadership style or
behavior that would be the most suitable (Bordas 2012). Therefore, an
optimal mix of different leadership styles and behaviors would be discussed
for finding what fits the atmosphere.
Transformational Leadership: Transformational or charismatic leaders
have the ability of inspiring and motivating followers, not from exercising any
authority but from the dint of their personality. That is why this style has
been hypothesized by many as being universally effective across cultures.
This form of leadership is encouraging, motivating, dynamic, confidence
building, and excellence oriented. This hugely supports the transformational
approach, completely substantiating it. The influence of charismatic
behaviour has been proved universally positive across cultures. Cultures that
are less traditional in nature are more receptive towards transformational
leadership style, making the implication that some nationalities embrace this
style more enthusiastically than their other counterparts (Avolio and
Yammarino 2013).
Team-oriented Leadership: this form of leadership undertakes an
organizationally competent leader who concentrates on the achievement of
one common purpose and objectives tactfully. Team orientation is
considered very vital for leadership effectiveness across a lot of nations.
Team sense is largely entrenched in collective cultures, making the scenario
that it might not end up as one separate element for being noticed. This form
is more embraced by females than males at any workplace. There exists a

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negative correlation of this form inside culturally individualistic societies, and
even after that this form is worthy of being given the vote in current day
business scenario (Dorfman et al. 2012).
Participative Leadership: Managers across majority of the nations in this
world espoused participative leadership, even though they have a small
voice when discussing their subordinates’ capabilities of taking part in
decision making. Even though this form is considered by managers as being
suitable across some of the major cultures, its contribution towards effective
leadership in an organization is different across cultures. The leadership form
in itself is efficient in a culturally diverse setting. However, its functionality
might lessen if the subordinates do not possess the necessary potential of
taking art in decision making (Lam, Huang and Chan 2015).
Supportive Leadership: this form of leadership is positively associated
with job satisfaction of employees along with their leaders all over the world.
A supportive or humane-oriented leader displays the due significance
towards the workers that they deserve and that matters, and its outcomes
are displaying universal applicability. Humane-oriented leadership have
strong and sharp cultural variations backing it (De Vries 2012).
Conflict and Stress
Conflict and stress in organizations stop individuals from giving their
best. Stress gets caused by a number of different factors and that can lead
to serval consequences. Stress has become a frequent outcome of conflict
and conflict increases stress. In case of workplace conflict, that can arise
from different interpersonal relationships, from different intergroup
relationships and among organizations and their environment. Workplace
conflict is dangerous for people’s physical and emotional wellbeing. Conflicts
in an organization brings in increased levels of stress for everyone who is
contact with it, irrespective of whether they are directly or indirectly
involved. With the increase in stress levels among workers, productivity
suffers and absenteeism rises. Workers who are dealing with the impact of
stress are more probable of fueling existing conflicts as their capability of
objectively dealing with emotionally charged situations reduces (DeTienne et
al. 2012). For further adding to the complexity, even intense conflict might
become so much ingrained in the processes and the regular interactions of
any organization that it might mix into the background, so that the steps for
remedying the situation might not be noticeable amidst the pessimism. This
continuous cycle of conflict and stress not just has an impact on the mind but
also on the body and even contributes to injury rates. It has been widely
understood that making the body suffer under extended or chronic stress
might be leading it to illnesses like ulcers and heart diseases. However, the
combination of conflict and stress could also put the body at the risk of
injury. People get less focused on the mechanics of their tasks, make
mistakes that can lead to injuries and this has led organizations in looking at
"mind-body" programs as a broad way of preventing and managing conflict,

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stress and injury. Stress and conflict directly influences the organization, as a
result of which performance declines and withdrawal behaviors like turnover
and absenteeism occurs. People even start exhibiting poor attitude when
they are under too much stress. Even burnouts happen from stress and
general feeling of exhaustion that might arise when any individual is under
excessive stress (Rubenfeld and Clément 2012).
It has been seen that workplace tension and disagreements happen
from communication breakdown (Beheshtifar and Zare 2013). Poor
ineffective communication, in which people send mixed messages, say
something and do something else, or do not listen or follow results in
conflicts. Conflict cannot always be considered as a negative force - at times
it helps push an organization towards findings solutions for something which
they would never have come up with in any other time. Most of the time
workplace conflict is all about innovation and creativity attempting at taking
place (Serrat 2017). For solving conflicts that arise because of
communication issues at Domino’s, the following recommendations can be
followed:
Addressing issues openly and immediately: It is important that
whenever any conflict arises amongst the team members immediate action
must be taken up for resolving it quickly. With all the parties it must be
addressed as soon as possible. If it is ignored by the leader it can aggravate
and then corrode the reliability of the leader and the culture of the
organization.
Setting clear expectations: Good management of expectations - in terms
of what is expected from others and what is expected from the leader - is
one of the most crucial thing that can be done by the team for facilitating
better communication. Anything that is needed from one another needs to
be properly defined and expressed. At times managers fail explaining or
communicating clearly what is expected in terms of deadlines, format,
quality or any other key factor.
Build listening skills: Listening is a very undervalued skill that can have an
actual influence on the way conflicts arise and the way that can be avoided.
Especially at times of conflict resolution, it is very important that
communication is clear and honest, and what others are attempting at
communication is listened to. There is a need of a culture that is created
where people are actually listening to one another.
Conclusion
On amalgamating the discussion, analysis and synthesis of the ideas
extracted from the report and case study analysis, it can be said that
strategic goals can be met with the help of the people inside the organization
by means of understanding the way of explaining, predicting and influencing
the behavior of individuals and teams. Factors affecting group effectiveness,
selection methods, leadership styles/behaviors, types of group conflict and

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their impact was discussed in details, with the help of academic literature
and proper analysis, while addressing the main areas of organizational
behavior.

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References and Bibliography
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