Leadership and Followership

Competency

In this project, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following competency:

Apply leadership and followership in managing individuals and groups
Scenario

You work for Brooke Lillian travel agency, and you are a corporate trainer. Your boss, Brooke Blake, has asked that you develop a formal presentation that focuses on change management. During periods of transition, it is especially important to focus on leadership and followership in managing groups and individuals. This request is in anticipation of a major reorganization initiative.

Company Overview

Brooke Lillian travel agency provides professional, tailored travel-planning services to its clients. Many of its clients are busy, working adults with families. The travel agents work closely with their clients, taking their interests and needs into thoughtful consideration to help them plan the perfect vacation experience.

Role Changes

The reorganization initiatives will enable the agency to grow more rapidly and to efficiently manage this growth. In the previous model, the travel agency covered a few main areas, and travel agents worked with clients who wanted to travel to specific areas. In the new model, travel agents will work on more diverse teams across a variety of geographic areas. They will cover more areas, and travel agents will be assigned based on availability, not the specific area that they cover. These changes will present the following:

Long-standing teams based on specific areas will become integrated into larger, more agile teams. As part of this initiative, travel agent titles have changed. Instead of including a specialty, such as “Caribbean travel specialist,” there is now the simple title of “travel agent.” The roles of travel agents have expanded to cover all areas.

Managers will oversee small teams, and many travel agents will work with new or different managers than they have worked with in the past. Many of the travel agents have experienced a role change in addition to the new structure, as some have been promoted to managers overseeing teams. Newly promoted managers have leadership development training.
Audience

The audience for your presentation will be new and existing managers. As a result of the reorganization efforts, managers will oversee teams of new people, and established teams will be shuffled. Managers should be prepared to effectively lead their new teams by applying principles of leadership and understanding their own leadership style. The team is made up of many long-tenured employees who are set in their ways and not willing to change, along with newer employees who are embracing the change and looking to improve the processes.

Opportunities for Improvement

Prior to the training, management conducted an employee satisfaction survey. They want to start the new teams off on the right foot, so they compiled a list of key points and issues from the survey results. Brooke would like you to address conflict resolution and negotiation skills in your presentation.

Since managers have a variety of leadership styles, some employees embrace the change, and others may struggle with the change. Some of the managers have a style that is more direct, and some employees have voiced that they feel uncomfortable with that style, while others prefer a more direct approach. Managers should use their natural style but have the flexibility to adapt to working with new employees.

Some team members feel overwhelmed by the amount of work and tight deadlines, whereas others are comfortable with the workload and timeline expectations. This is creating conflict among the teams, as many people are complaining and bringing down team morale. Managers should be able to support struggling employees and help them avoid becoming overwhelmed, while also ensuring that team members who are doing well feel supported and recognized.

Previously, teams approached their day-to-day work, including tracking completion and status, in their own ways. In the new paradigm, teams are having difficulty agreeing on the “right” approach, specifically for tracking and managing work. This is where you, as the leader, must pull your followers together to create the most efficient tracking system possible.
Directions

Brooke has requested that you specifically address the following in your presentation:

Team Dynamics: Discuss strategies for effectively managing teams, especially as they apply to leadership strategies to support open communication and foster effective followership within teams.

Discuss the impact of role changes within a team on team dynamics for informing management about what to expect in terms of followership and leadership approaches.
Include management approaches for effectively leading teams during times of transition.

Describe strategies to establish trust and open communication on teams for informing leadership approaches and supporting followership. Address the following in your response:
What leadership approaches support teams and encourage open communication?
What leadership skills encourage effective followership?

Discuss conflict resolution and negotiation skills for addressing each opportunity for improvement outlined in the scenario for fostering productive team dynamics. Address the following in your response:
How will the conflict resolution or negotiation skill identified address the issue?

Leadership Style: Each manager you will present to will have their own unique leadership style. Brooke would like you to provide leadership skill development for the management team by discussing the importance of leadership skills and applying their leadership style.

Discuss individual efficiencies in leadership and followership for informing management approaches. Address the following in your response:
What is the difference between an effective leader and an ineffective leader?
How does an effective leader manage individuals and encourage followership?

Explain the use of self-assessment tools and strategies for determining potential on or within a team. Address the following in your response:
How do self-assessment tools and strategies support employees in considering team contribution and supporting group and individual goals?

Discuss the importance of understanding one’s leadership style. In the speaker notes, highlight your own style or the style of an admired leader as an example for illustrating the application of leadership styles in a workplace setting. Address the following:
How does natural leadership style influence leadership and followership in managing individuals and groups?

Discuss the situational leadership model as it applies to natural leadership styles. Include the following in your response:
How can all leadership styles use the situational leadership model to support their natural leadership style?
As an example, discuss applications to your own leadership style in speaker notes.
What to Submit

Every project has a deliverable or deliverables, which are the files that must be submitted before your project can be assessed. For this project, you must submit the following:

Management Training Presentation
Your management training presentation should be 10 to 12 slides, not including an introduction or references slide, and should include speaker notes on each slide.