Micromanagement: Leadership and Shelly

Question1

Is George guilty of micromanaging? Why or why not?

Answer:

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No. George hates micromanaging and even disagrees that he is micromanaging. He thinks “micromanaging” is an excuse that Shelly threw out to dissemble her incapability, for the reason that a successful manager would never micromanage those employees who are capable enough. In additional, he thought Shelly is not so enthusiastic and hungry-to-learn as the beginning, which costs him a lot of time to correct her mistakes. Therefore, George may be angry rather than guilty.

Question2

What influence tactics does George use with Shelly and what is her reaction to those tactics? Give an example to support your response. To what degree do his tactics engender trust with Shelly?

Answer: George used

1. Rational persuasion,
2. Ingratiation,
3. Pressure.

• Rational persuasion. After reading the release draft at the first time, George recommended a new title, and Shelly countered that she doesn’t agree. To make Shelly align with him, George used the rational persuasion tactic to analyze the situation logically and give evidence, and argued why he consists to use such a strong title.

The reaction of Shelly here is she pursed her lips and nodded slightly, which means she wanted to argue, but gave up and accepted his suggestion reluctantly. Without enough participation from Shelly, George made the decision himself, largely harming the trust between them in this situation.

• Ingratiation. After persuading Shelly to adopt his suggestion, George tried to encourage Shelly a little bit by flattering her: “Thanks Shel, you are the best”. Ingratiation tactic was used here.

However, Shelly didn’t feel any happiness when hearing this, and she no longer like him as before. Again, the trust was failed to engender.

• Pressure. This tactic was used many times in this case. For example, George demanded Shelly to do two things on the release. George also said: “I count on you to get these things right. ” Etc. Shelly had different response on the two situations I mentioned above. In the first case, Shelly accepted George’s suggestion reluctantly. In the second case, Shelly made up her mind nd defended herself by explaining why she wrote it in her way but not George’s way. Obviously, trust was failed to engender again since Shelly didn’t meet George’s expectation, and she was unsatisfied with George as well.

Question 3

Using our knowledge of the “full-range of leadership” model presented in class, how would you classify the type of leader behavior used by George to manage Shelly? Be specific and provide an example.

Answer: To my understanding, George manages Shelly with the transactional leadership. To be specific, he used Management-by-Exception actively.

For example, once George found a mistake on the unfinished release draft, he gave feedbacks and corrections immediately. Then he started to follow the case, and tried to monitor and correct Shelly’s mistakes and keep things constructive in an active manner. This is exactly as Rich said, “when George takes an interest, hands-on isn’t the beginning of it. He’s elbow deep in the stuff. ” He thought he was providing guidance and necessary feedbacks to Shelly so that she would improve. This type of leadership behavior is a part of transactional leadership.

Question 4

The Company in this case is not meeting its goals regarding visibility, leads and sales. Shelly is responsible for this functional area of the business. What should George do to lead her more effectively to meet these business objectives?

Answer: George can lead Shelly more effectively in several ways. Firstly, according to the Leader-Member Exchange theory, Shelly belongs to the out-group of George’s team. In this group, the relationship between leader and members is cold and impersonal with formal leader authority and less effective influence on members.

Under this tense relationship, eventually, members would be tired off to boss by bad performance and less OCBs. To make it better, George can try to give Shelly more freedom, latitude, and responsibility, give her more support, and try to build trust with Shelly. In return, Shelly would probably generate higher performance and satisfaction, and greater dependability, involvement, and eventually, better OCBs would occur as well. By bringing Shelly from out-group to in-group, Shelly could enhance her performance and meet company’s business objectives more effectively.

Secondly, George should learn how to apply efficient transactional leadership on Shelly. Besides the MBE active he uses, he should also use contingent reward and punishment. By using this tactic would help Shelly better meet George’s expectations. In this situation, George should communicate with Shelly and give her clear guidance on what would be rewarded and what would be punished, and deliver the promised rewards or punishments every time, therefore, trust would be built between George and Shelly.

Thirdly, after effective application of transaction leadership, George should go beyond it and try to upgrade to transformational leadership. Transformational leadership requires more trust, credibility and integrity between George and Shelly. George should empower Shelly at a higher level, trust her and respect her decisions. Besides, George should discuss with Shelly about what are their shared goals and values, deliver the company’s short-term and long-term objectives to Shelly, and let she know how her work and efforts would help company to approach the objectives.

Moreover, George should move Shelly to address higher needs besides salary, such as bigger growth opportunity, etc. Also, according to Bass’s theory, idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration are some useful methods well implementing transformational leadership. Overall, using transformational leadership would help Shelly to perform beyond George’s expectation, so that their team would finally achieve company’s business objectives more effectively.

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