Answer

1. Improving Team/ Employee Engagement

The increasing intensity of rivalry among firms is forcing businesses to seek new approaches to creating sustainable competitive advantages. According to Kang and Sung, (2017) one of the approaches to achieving this goal is by investing in employee engagement. Gallup (2021) defines employee engagement as the measure of the extent to which the employees are passionate, and committed to their jobs and thus, willing to invest discretionary efforts to ensuring the success of the organization. High employee engagement is essential in attracting and retaining talent. Additionally, highly engaged workforces are more motivated and committed to their employers. Backed by this understanding this section of the essay explains what can be done or reviewed to improve employee engagement.

Research by Gallup shows that only fifteen percent of employees globally are highly engaged at their workplaces. Most of the disengaged employees are reluctant going to work, they are not passionate about their jobs, and mostly exhibit low energy levels. As a result, they suggest that managers play a proactive role in helping firms address this problem. The first step to heightening employee engagement is by caring and prioritizing the employees. Shaik and Makhecha (2019) explain that contrary to the current workplace practices where employees are put secondary to customers, it is important that the management prioritizes the employees by adopting the factors the enhance engagement levels. The management should understand that all the employees have unique goals, life experiences, and beliefs. Ensuring that it supports each employees meet their personal goals for personal success, wellbeing, and performance, will greatly boost their commitment and engagement.

The second strategy for improving employee engagement is by the managers and leaders taking time to interact up-close with the employees. They should answers the questions who are the employees and what do they do. Every interaction with employees should be focused on inspiring them to be better people. Gallup (2021) proposes that some of the approaches to understand employees is by administering employee engagement surveys, selecting the right managers, and hiring the right employees whose attitude align with the organization’s needs.

The third approach to improving engagement levels is by training and holding the managers responsible for employee engagement. It is argued that the managers play a vital role in determining the engagement levels of the employees. As a result, the managers should be coached on how best to build engagement (Kang & Sung, 2017). The process should entail learning how to achieve high levels of emotional engagement. Fourth, the organization should set engagement goals and work together meeting each one of them. This process requires commitment from the managers and the employees alike so as to embed engagement into the DNA of the company.

In addition to these recommendations, Shaik and Makhecha (2019) emphasize that the managers should create an environment for team building. This statement acknowledges that creating an environment where employees can trust and confide in each other is essential in creating stronger bonds that enhance engagement levels. It is vital that the teams are equipped with skills to deal with conflicts, coordinate issues, and build strong interpersonal relationships. Additionally, there should be goal clarity when engaging in team work. The organization has the responsibility of providing the tools and resources such as technologies to ensure the employees can share knowledge, ideas, and open up to each other. These practices create more connected teams which are better engaged and interdependent.

1. Leadership as an influence relationship between leaders and followers

Daft’s statement makes a lot of sense since leaders play an important role in influencing the employees and their ability to contribute positively towards the realization of organizational goals. To begin with, the definition of leadership, as given by Daft (2014) illustrates the significance of the relationship between the leader and the followers. For instance, he defines leadership as the influence relationship between leaders and followers with the intent of achieving reach outcomes and changes that reflect and promote the realization of shared purposes. Through this definition, it is evident that the work of a leader is to align the goals of the individual employees towards the realization of common organizational goals.

Daft explains that the whole leadership process is composed of six main elements namely; intention, influence, followers, shared purpose, change, and personal responsibility/ integrity. Each of these elements make it easy for the leader to impact the nature of relationship sustained between the organization and the workers. A vital part of these activities is influence.  By (2021) notes that leaders with the ability to influence relationships among people are more effective in directing the employees towards the realization of common goals. This author explains that human relationships are not passive. Similarly, human beings have the tendency of pursuing personal goals at the expense of collective goals. Therefore, an influential leader will tactfully and non-coercively guide the employees into abandoning their personal goals and instead pursue the collective organizational goals. The best way to achieving this goal is by ensuring that the realization of the common goals contributes towards the achievement of individual goals. For instance, a leader could use motivation and reward systems to influence employees towards optimizing their input in the organization to achieve intended goals.

Another important point expressed by Daft is that a leader must have followers. By (2021) explains that leadership entails influencing followers, therefore, without the followers, there is no leader. It is noted that the effective followers have the ability to think and act independently. However, a leader moderates their ability to direct the enthusiasm and energy towards other activities, and instead, focuses them towards the realization of the organizational goals. Another interesting point expressed by Daft (2014) is that leadership is a shared process that involves a compromise of power from the leaders and followers. An effective leader has to compromise their stand to accommodate the views of the followers. This way, the leader is able to win over the followers and achieve higher levels of engagement. In addition, a leader who listens to the followers is better placed to delegate duties and therefore, shift the responsibility of achieving the organizations goals to the followers.

A reflection on Daft’s sentiments mainly emphasizes that the work of leadership is to create a shared mindset that represents a fundamental approach to thinking, understanding, and thinking that enables the realization of short term and long term organizational goals. Another interesting aspect to note from Daft’s statement is that the leader should carry the vision of the organization. A vision describes the ambitious, and desirable future position of the organization. It is the responsibility of the leader to share the vision and break it down into actionable parts so that the followers can understand and embrace it. The ability for a leader to share the vision and entice the followers to pursue it enables leaders to shape the nature of relationship with their followers, thus aligning their needs with the organizational goals and purposes.