Writing Assignment 4 (WA-4)

Your final writing assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate your collective learning about leadership from this semesters course and your experience in general.

For this assignment assume that you have been hired as a Director of a Marketing Research and Competitive Intelligence for a large Fortune 500 manufacturing firm. You are replacing an incumbent Director who was promoted to another position in the firm and the company decided to hire an external candidate to bring some new blood and fresh thinking into the organization. The position has been vacant for about three months.

You are coming into the position with 15 years of experience in marketing research and competitive intelligence in another manufacturing firm but have only 2 years of experience managing people. In your new role you will be responsible for a team of 5 marketing research and competitive intelligence professionals as direct reports. Four of them are current employees in the department, two females and two males, and you will need to hire one additional person after starting the job. The group has generally been working well together as a team and department for the most part.

Two of the direct reports, Kim and Joe, are junior level analysts, and this is their first job after graduating with a four year degree. Kim has been with the company for about a year and Joe is a recent hire with less than 6 months on the job. Both are highly motivated employees but mostly with entry level market research, competitive intelligence, and corporate organizational skills. Joes experience has come primarily from working on class projects and as an intern for another company for three months.

Kim has demonstrated her aptitude as an analyst and gained some valuable on-the-job experience during her first year with the firm.

Charles and Trish have been with the firm for about ten years and are both senior level analysts. Trish is a highly skilled researcher and competitive intelligence analyst with 25 years of experience and the quality of her work product is usually excellent. At times she can be somewhat difficult to work with because she is a confident researcher, usually insists on doing things her way, and is not always flexible or open to suggestions from her internal clients. This has, at times, led to concerns expressed by her internal clients, not about the quality of her work product but her inflexibility. At the same time Trish is a very hard worker who is dedicated to the company and can be relied upon to get the work done without much guidance. Trish is not interested in a management role and happy in her role working with internal clients and to be a behind the scenes contributor.

Charles is also a very experienced researcher with approximately 20 years of experience, who has had several different positions in the firm. Charles started out as a product requirements specialist in product development and has been in his current role for about five years. Hes well connected and networked across the firm, has strong product knowledge, and adequate technical research skills. Charles thinks of himself as the de-

facto leader of the group, in the absence of a Director, and believes he should have been considered for the director role, He is very unhappy with the decision to bring someone in from the outside. While Charles is capable of doing top notch work, his gruff personality, lack of executive presence and behind the scenes, misplaced, criticism of his

supervisors has resulted in his being perceived as not being promotable into a supervisory role. His lack of self awareness has contributed to Charles having a noticeable attitude and this has not only impacted his performance during the last three months but has also created a negative work climate within the department. Although Charles continues to do the job, his performance is adequate at best and it is clear that hes not highly motivated to do more than what he needs to do to meet his objectives. There is a risk Charles will not be accepting of your leadership and may decide to move on to another position within or outside the firm.

Given this background, your assignment is to write about the approach you will take to take charge of this group as their new Director. What specific steps and process will you follow to establish yourself as the leader of this group and turn this department into a high performance team once again?

Think and write about the leadership approach, style and methods/tools, such as the Situational Leadership SLII model, Blake and Moutons Leadership (Managerial) Grid, and the Psychodynamic approach that you might utilize to assess, better understand and engage/connect with each of your direct reports. Also, write about the best leadership style/approach, such as Path-Goal, Leader Member Exchange, etc. that you would use with each of your direct reports to motivate each member of your team to ensure maximum performance and outcomes. Also describe the challenges and obstacles you expect to encounter and how you will address and overcome these issues as you assume your leadership role and try to motivate and turn your teams performance around?

Finally, how would you approach the hiring of the fifth member of your team? What kind of a person (skills and traits, level of experience, personality, and characteristics) would you be looking for and how would you approach maximizing their fit and role within the team?

In addition to the directions provided in paragraph form above, the following is a numbered list of the key topics/questions you will need to address in your paper.

1. What specific steps and process will you follow to establish yourself as the leader of this group and turn this department into a high performance team once again?

2. Think and write about the leadership approach, style and methods/tools, such as the Situational Leadership SLII model, Blake and Moutons Leadership (Managerial) Grid, and Psychodynamic Approach, that you might utilize to assess, better understand, and engage/connect with each of your direct reports.

3. Also, write about the best leadership style/approach, such as Path-Goal, Leader Member Exchange, etc. that you would use with each of your direct reports to

motivate each member of your team to ensure maximum performance and outcomes.

4. Also describe the challenges and obstacles you expect to encounter and how you will address and overcome these issues as you assume your leadership role and try to motivate and turn your teams performance around?

5. Finally, how would you approach the hiring of the fifth member of your team? What kind of a person (skills and traits, level of experience, personality, and characteristics) would you be looking for and how would you approach maximizing their fit and role within the team?