Leading Your Team
Scenario: Your company is introducing a change to technology or personnel that will affect your team’s working environment. You are tasked with gaining buy-in from your team, as well as learning if they have any objections to this change.You already know that certain team members have strong opinions about the change and are not going to agree with each other. You call the team together for a meeting.
Considering the course materials for this week, answer the following:
- Describe the change to technology or personnel that requires your team’s buy-in.
- How will you account for differences in your team’s personality types? In your answer, refer to your results from the DiSC assessment you took in Week 1 of JWI 510: Leadership in the 21st Century.
- What will you do to assure your team members that they have a voice and are free to challenge each other’s input?
- How will you align your team around the final decision, even if some members disagree with it?
Post your initial response by Wednesday, midnight of your time zone, and reply to at least 2 of your classmates’ initial posts by Sunday, midnight of your time zone
1st response
Maria Reyes RE: Week 4 Discussion
Technology Change
Today, employee training and development have become a core element that influences an organization’s productivity and performance. Many companies use extensive resources to ensure that their employees gain the skills, knowledge, and experience required to produce positive outcomes. Additionally, according to Elnaga and Imran (2013), employees who undergo training and development programs bring about more desirable results than those who do not receive any training. For this reason, employee training and development is an essential process in organizations. However, firms’ means and methods to provide training and development programs are sometimes ineffective due to various. In this sense, the company has decided to introduce a technology aspect that will be significant in training employees.
The new technology changes in the company involve applying microlearning as a training and development technique for all employees. In recent years, technological changes have focused on improving different areas in the workplace, including training and development. Hall (2021) explains that microlearning is the most recent technological trend for providing employees with learning and development programs. Our company decided to introduce microlearning because it believes the employees will gain more from this technology than the current training methods. Microlearning involves a modern technological advancement that allows employees to learn new skills in bits, ensuring they optimize the lessons. Therefore, the microlearning technology change is essential and significant for employees that require training and development.
Accounting for Personality Differences
In every team, each individual displays a different personality from the others. The difference in personalities may create problems such as lack of understanding, discrepant response to situations, and comprehension of matters at hand. However, there are several ways I can account for the difference in personalities. First, I would ensure I build a relationship with all the team members because connecting as a team makes it easier to work with different personalities. Secondly, understanding what the team members consider important to them is another way that I will account for the personality differences. These two ways can help me manage the team’s differences in personality.
Encouraging the Members to Challenge Input
Several ways can help me encourage members to ask relevant questions and challenge input from others. For example, I can encourage members to ask questions by leading by example. Leaders who ask questions influence their followers and team members to ask questions regarding issues that have been discussed. Secondly, I have to provide a listening ear to members when they are contributing to the discussion to encourage them to ask questions further. Additionally, giving them time to contribute or challenge others’ points will be good for encouraging them.
Aligning the Team around the Final Decision
All members of a team need to be in agreement before a final decision is made. However, in some cases, members may fail to agree on certain things, which leads to a final decision based on the majority or the leader. In such cases, I will have to explain to the members that the decision had to be made. Despite some of them not agreeing with me, we could present the best decision as a team. Therefore, I will have to explain to the disagreeing members why I settled for the final decision and how it impacts the changes.
References
Elnaga, A., & Imran, A. (2013). The effect of training on employee performance. European journal of Business and Management, 5(4), 137-147.
Hall, T. (2021). Technological Advancement in the Workplace. Retrieved 16 January 2021 from https://www.financedigest.com/technological-advancement-in-the-workplace.html
2nd response
Chuck Chadwick RE: Week 4 Discussion
Leading Your Team
Scenario: Our organization recently implemented a change within our SalesForce customer relationship management system (CRM). The change impacted the way our Territory Sales Managers (TSM) schedule virtual customer contacts. The change was to reduce clicks and allow TSM’s to gain access to customer information faster. I am our team’s SalesForce Super User. My responsibilities include rollout and demonstration of new features. The new process was not received favorably by all TSM’s which created several challenges.
Personality differences within our team generated differing acceptance levels of the change. According to Andrew Martins, there are four generations currently in the workforce (Boomers, Gen X, Millenials, Gen Z) (1). My teammate Lisa who has been with the company going on 25 years, was not fond of the scheduling process changes. Lisa tends to be somewhat set in her ways and resistant to change. I took the approach of overselling the benefits and rationale for the differences in hopes of gaining Lisa’s buy-in. I also made myself available to her to answer questions after our demo call. According to my DiSC Assessment, I tend to focus on maintaining stability to get results (2). I believed in the stability that the change within our CRM would create for our multiple workstreams, and thankfully I was able to sell Lisa on it as well.
To ensure the team that their voice and opinions mattered and foster a healthy discussion about changes, I opened the call by asking several questions and soliciting feedback. In my experience, questioning effectively helps get the conversation started. I asked each teammate for their opinions individually. Had I read this week’s lecture prior to our call, I could have reinforced that disagreements, when managed well, can have positive outcomes (JWI505, 3).
Finally, to align the team around the final decision, I again reinforced the rationale and benefits of our CRM change. I also made myself available for follow-up after the call. TSM feedback is always welcome and is the driving force behind most SalesForce enhancements and new features; with that in mind, I reinforced that point and set a date for a follow-up call to debrief pain points after testing the new process for two weeks. Stay tuned; the follow-up call is this Thursday.
References
1. Andrew Martins. 2019. Team Communication Remains A Pain Point for US Workers. Business News Daily Staff
2. Chuck Chadwick. 2020. Everything DiSC Workplace
3. JWI505. Week 4. Lecture. Team Communication
