Impact Of Gender Differences On Conflict Management Styles Of Managers In Bangladesh

Use of Plan for Fulfilment of Team Objectives

In terms of serving the role as a Department Manager in a retail format I focused on designing an effective performance plan outlined as follows.

The generation of a Purpose Statement ideally contributes in rendering needed clarity to the team members regarding the objectives for working in a collective format. It thus encourages the team members to pursue the stated goals collectively. The development of Actionable Goals and KPIs contribute in setting goals based on identification of stated objectives, competencies of team members and thereby in measuring or evaluating their performances based on the stated performance indicators. Similarly, the need fulfilment of the team members are also focused on being met through reviewing of their performances during weekly meets, encouraging knowledge sharing and development by experienced and high performing team members (Williams 2016). Finally, the incorporation of customer feedback in evaluation of the team performance reflects the level of responsiveness of the team members in addressing the queries and problems faced by customers. It also contributes in allocation of needed resources for helping the organisational members carry out needed interactions with the customers. It also contributes in improvement of team efficiency through enhancement of their listening skills to issues and queries reflected by customers and also in brainstorming of solutions in a collaborative fashion (Woodcock 2017).

As a Department Manager my central focus would be to help the team members in fulfilling the identified or stated objectives. I would focus on first setting of team/departmental targets and thereby in allocating the same to the team members on an individual level and on a daily and weekly basis. Further, I would focus on working together with the team leader in taking note of the stock levels and in helping in the arrangement of needed inventories in an effective fashion. Similarly, I would also need to focus on returning back such inventories that have slow or no sales to warehouses and thereby helping in generating larger shelf space for storage of items that account to be hot sellers. Along with inventory allocation at an optimum level, I also need to generate needed support to the team members regarding the generation of new visual merchandising solutions. The application of effective visual merchandising activities in the department through use of colour contrasts would help in enhancement of consumer traffic in the department. Effective training is also needed to be rendered to the team members associated to the generation of knowledge regarding new product launches, effective customer servicing and interaction skills and also regarding increasing of cross selling activities for enhancing the basket size of the customers. Support is also required to be provided to the team members regarding information technology resources like personal computer, tablets and Smartphone and internet connections such that the same would help the customers in effectively servicing the queries and needs of customers.

Support Provided to the Team for Fulfilment of Objectives

As a Department Manager I have worked with a team of eight team members inclusive of a team leader for the accomplishment of the department goal. The team included of both new and experienced personnel and were taken to work in a collective framework for fulfilment of departmental goals.

-In terms of poor planning process, my workforce planning process potentially failed in generating the right quality and quantity of personnel in areas demanding increased customer flow. Rather, the areas with less customer flow had larger number of team personnel which in turn failed to generate needed benefits regarding customer conversions and also growth in basket size. Further, I failed to arrange the needed number of tablets and Smartphones to help the staffs generate needed information regarding stock availability and movement to the customers. The same affected the credibility of their customer services and thereby impacted the level of customer satisfaction (Turner 2016).

-Further, lack of needed clarity to customer satisfaction objectives failed to excite the commitment of the staffs in rendering needed customer services and thereby in enhancing customer loyalty. The staffs failed to effectively prioritise the activities such that which would help in render the right quality of customer services. Delay and lack of focus associated to customer servicing affected the levels of customer satisfaction (Martin 2018).

-I also countered another potential challenge owing to failing to evaluate internal competencies and abilities of the team members at an individual level and the same happened to increase the work pressure of the staffs in terms of needing to accomplish overemphasized targets. The staffs behaved in a resilient fashion to new targets and fulfilment of departmental objectives thereby bringing about effective dysfunction (Weber 2013). Further, the growth of internal tensions affected team cohesiveness which in turn affected the interpersonal relationships between the team members. The team members were observed to be busy in shifting the blame of failure on one another thereby affecting the social fabric. The team wellbeing was adversely affected which impacted the accountability of the staffs to work in a committed and organised fashion in meeting of group objectives (West 2012).

 -The team members failed to sustain effective relationship with potential stakeholders like vendors, customers and also with other staffs belonging to the head office of the firm. Greater focus was generated by them in addressing team conflicts owing to lack of work and role clarity which in turn affected their relationship with stakeholders. It affected the team’s customer servicing standards and responsiveness in addressing inventory problems through sustaining proper communication with the vendors or suppliers (Zein 2016).

Issues concerning Team Performance

Focusing on recommendations, it is quite imperative on my part to decide on targets after having effectively evaluated the competencies and strengths of the team members. Further, I am required to continually interact and communicate with the team members thereby understanding their needs and problems and thereby generating needed solutions thereof. The same would contribute in creating a healthy work climate in the team and encourage the team members to work in a committed fashion for meeting of group objectives. Further, I also need to work on workforce planning for allocating the right quota of team members depending on the priority of the different sub-departments. The same would help in reducing work pressure on team members, increase customer satisfaction and also reduce tensions within the team. I am also required to focus on allocating effective information technology resources such that the same can be accessed by team members for internal training, communication and also in maintaining effective liaison with potential stakeholders.

The leadership qualities of Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba Group are outlined as follows.

-Ma’s leadership reflects the existence of needed authenticity that contributes in the development of loyalty with both internal and external stakeholders and also designs a stronger business foundation.

-Jack Ma’s leadership success owes to the fact that he tries to evaluate the product offerings made in the e-commerce platform from the viewpoint of the customers. In terms of empathising with the needs and expectancies of the customers, Jack Ma tends to build effective relationship with customers.

-Ma focuses on uniting the team members and other stakeholders like investors and vendor firms based on the firm’s goal rather than endeavouring to govern them. The same helps in the development of an effective team culture in the firm (LU 2018).

-Jack Ma’s leadership style is visionary in nature such that he focuses on designing vision and mission objectives for the firm and envisages working in a tenacious fashion in accomplishing identified objectives.

-Another potential leadership quality of Jack Ma is that he encourages criticism regarding the decisions and ideas taken and generated by him. Criticism is encouraged by him such that the same helps Jack Ma in understanding the expectancies of the stakeholders and thereby in redesigning the business and customer servicing policies (Sattar 2017).

-The authentic leadership style of Jack Ma requires me to trust and focus on developing my personal strengths and capabilities. Further, it also requires me in working based on formulation of vision and mission objectives in that the same would help in tracking of accomplishments of the objectives in future.

Recommendations for Improving Performance

-The leadership style of empathising with the needs and expectancies of the customers would contribute in designing effective product and service offerings before hand and thereby gain on market leadership in the long run.

-The evaluation of Jack Ma’s leadership style reflects the need of working in a tenacious fashion for fulfilment of stated commitments. It is thus required to identify the work objectives and mission and vision guidelines and thereby work tenaciously to fulfil the identified goals.

-I also need to have an open ear to the different types of criticisms that are generated by stakeholders such that the same would help in redesigning the business processes for gaining needed profitability and also in rendering greater customer satisfaction.

Jack Ma’s focuses on collaborating with the conflicting party based on understanding of the other people or institution’s needs and aspirations.  Effective consideration is needed thereby for discussing and arriving at mutually agreed goals and objectives. Apart from development of mutual understanding the collaborators work in a creative fashion for resolving problems (Sogra 2014).

The collaborative conflict resolution style is observed to be advantageous in nature in that it works in an assertive fashion for generating the best possible solution in resolving the conflict. However, the collaborative conflict resolution style is often criticised in that it requires the use of greater time, energy, effort and also needed skills on the part of the negotiator than that required in the case of other conflict resolving patterns. In the event of emergence of an external force, the collaborative conflict resolution process becomes difficult to be enacted upon (Lussier & Achua 2015).

References 

LU, Y 2018, Lessons From ‘Crazy Jack’: An Extraordinary Leader In Style And Beliefs, viewed 7 September 2018, <https://leaderonomics.com/business/5-leadership-lessons-from-jack-ma>.

Lussier, RN & Achua, CF 2015, Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development, Cengage Learning, United States.

Martin, K 2018, Clarity First: How Smart Leaders and Organizations Achieve Outstanding Performance, McGraw Hill Professional, United Kingdom.

Sattar, SB 2017, Leadership Qualities, Styles and Skills of Jack Ma, viewed 7 September 2018, <https://www.gotabout.info/leadership-qualities-skills-styles-jack-ma/>.

Sogra, KJ 2014, The Impact of Gender Differences on the Conflict Management Styles of Managers in Bangladesh: An Analysis, viewed Cambridge Scholars Publishing United Kingdom.

Turner, R 2016, Gower Handbook of Project Management, Routledge, New York.

Weber, C 2013, Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On, McGraw Hill Professional, United Kingdom.

West, MA 2012, Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organizational Research, John Wiley and Sons, United Kingdom.

Williams, C 2016, MGMT, Cengage Learning, United States.

Woodcock, M 2017, Team Metrics: Resources for Measuring and Improving Team Performance, Routledge , New York.

Zein, O 2016, Culture and Project Management: Managing Diversity in Multicultural Projects, Routledge, New York.

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