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1. Leadership Challenges in Core Organizational Areas

   Area 1: Motivating Employees during COVID-19

   Leaders are facing difficulties with motivating their staff during time of unprecedented change. What individuals are encountering currently in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic is beyond panic and fear, but grief and pain following the significant losses. Today, most employees have lost their sense of normalcy and comfort, which is a significant factor to trigger symptoms of grief and anger. In wake of advancing global health and economic pandemic, leaders are obligated to ease the developing fears and deteriorating morale to work among employees by leading them appropriately through the uncertainty phase. During these unprecedented times, leaders are expected to remain respectful and attentive to the diverse needs of the workforce, clients, and stakeholders at large. Thus, leading such a broad crown amidst uncertainty comes with several challenges. Leaders are facing different issues today that never existed in history. Thus, this paper will highlight the diverse leadership challenges from the pandemic in line with motivating employees to remain focused and productive in the wake of unprecedented changes. It will also highlight strategic measures of managing the situation.

   Although remote working is not a new trend, it has never been deployed on such a massive scale before within such a limited period of time. Companies that have never paid heed on remote workforce are having it rough than ever before because they are pushed to transition to virtual operating. Similarly, firms that only had a small section of their team work remotely have been pushed to go entirely virtual. In my organization, the most challenging aspect was the fact that productivity and communication were taking a downward trend due to limited monitoring of employees from their home settings. Further, the COVID-19 has drastically upended the working world, causing unanticipated challenges in both leadership and business worlds. For instance, our leaders are currently pivoting hard to n channels of product delivery, new services and products, and totally different operating models without getting a chance to think through the options and understand their impact on performance.

   Besides, the unprecedented shift to remote working has incurred diverse challenges for organizations as leaders in my organizations find it difficult to effectively measure employee performance, management of logistics, and accountability measures. Employee motivation level has done down the drench because in the suddenly exclusive virtual world, it is much possible for the workforce to turn out invisible. Leaders have shifted their patterns in recognizing and rewarding great performance and yet it was the most useful source of motivation for employees a while back.

   Leaders are finding it hard to manage issues properly, which in turn causes performance challenges for employees due to feelings of neglect and unrecognition. Remote working in my organization has also rendered it difficult to attune the needs of workforce, a situation exacerbated by the growing pressures and stresses of their lives during the pandemic period. Thus, these unfriendly underlying conditions has made it hard for employees to remain motivated to work and stay productive. The crisis period offers organizations a critical chance to re-evaluate effective distribution of decision-making procedures both at local and global scales.

   Whereas remote working and videoconferencing programs have attained a steady progress over the past times, several other conversations and significant business relationships are better of managed in person. Trust and transparency are core factors in organizations that propel effective communication, healthy information sharing, and related follow through on commitments are only developed and maintained on a face to face basis. The incapacity to gather external and internal stakeholders in person to discuss foreseeable future and the welfare of employees makes it more difficult to achieve effective decision making, derails employee motivation to commit to productive working, thus, increasing the likelihood for conflict among involved parties. For my organization also, the critical challenge within the contemporary environment sits on how top leaders choose to engage in virtual decision making procedures with employees and other internal teams. Virtual decision making fails to address the pressing concerns of the workforce, hence, affective their morale to work smarter. Thus, the uncertainty affects critical productivity factors including teamwork, transparency, and trust at large.

   Leaders in my organization have also faced the challenge of having to manage the psychological pressure on employees to ensure that they do not encounter burn-out or lose the motivation to steer ahead. Although the idea of working at the comfort of homes was broadly positive, dissatisfaction has also been on a steady rise. Leaders on the furlough are anxious about the uncertainty and security of their job and positions in the company. Employees work from home have had to juggle numerous demands at their time and are denied a chance for physical contact with their colleagues. Thus, our leaders are left with no option but to try and engage the staff members throughout the crisis period, which is in itself psychologically, emotionally, and physically draining. Some employees are not open and transparent with their responses through calls or videos on online social events, which makes it harder for the leaders to comprehend the underpinning issues. Leaders are also facing difficulties in running and managing strategic planning meetings on online platforms, which creates a disconnection between employees and managers, thus, reduced motivation and morale to grow better. 

   The escalating COVID-19 crisis has increased uncertainty and doubt to unprecedented levels. There is a significant rise of existential fears among employees. Such downward trends are particularly challenging for the leaders in my organization because there is scarce reliable information for decision making to improve the situation. Leaders are also facing the big challenge of keeping workforce connected and highly motivated because it is hard to fix quick solutions to manage the unfamiliar situations. Such elevated leadership challenges can be a burden during these unusual times as no one anticipated these trends. It is almost difficult to strengthen the growing need of cooperating in the contemporary systems, hence, gaps in managing responses to the challenges that diverse workforce are encountering.

   As the cases of the pandemic progressively escalate throughout the world, all leaders in government sectors, private businesses, and other significant spheres of life are subject to unprecedented challenges. The pandemic has encroached public health and overall economic stability of the most influential practices within the modern society. COVID-19 has generated extreme levels of anxiety while exacting increasing human toll. These trends have pushed virtually all firms to reinvent its internal procedures to cope up well in a world where employees do not feel good about staying in the same space all the time.

   The crisis situation has affected and overwhelmed even the most dynamic leaders by presenting unexpected and highly complex scenarios evolving at a quick rate and in diverse directions. Leaders are subject to more challenges because even in scenarios where organizations have contingency plans in place, there is still need for readjustment and quick response to rapidly changing conditions. Thus, in as much as employees were the most affected with these bad times, leaders have had a rough patch trying to balance work procedures and ensuring that their workforce does not give up. Navigating through the difficult path of pandemic is not an easy task to carry.

   However, there are possible ways that the organization can incorporate to manage the aforementioned leadership challenges. All these encounters appear as opening questions on the functionality of systems. They invite leaders to focus on the need of creating new solutions because both external and internal systems are created by organizational leadership structures. The leaders in my organization should manage employee development by remaining intentional about feedback. They should be purposeful about developing the space and time to deliver feedback on employee progress, and introducing check-in conversations of about 15 minutes on a regular basis with workforce and team members.

   Leaders should also recreate organic sessions to hold conversations with employees where they can open up about their issues and strategize how best to operate moving forward. Another significant approach would be filling up the wide social gap rom missed information interactions between leaders, managers, and employees. The approach is anticipated to enlarge the surface area for interpersonal interactions in the work environment by driving a quicker rate of action. It is important to create such forums and allow employees to open up about their pressing issues at work and in the remote environments. Leaders should manage associations and enhance the frequency of touch points beyond existing regular circles. And remain deliberate about reconnecting with team members.

   Effective leadership amid the pandemic requires a balance between centralized and local decision-making. Before the pandemic happened, most organizations relied primarily on the ability of senior leaders to frequently travel to national or global headquarters to get work done and have meetings with employees, customers, and suppliers however, most of them have been forced to shift their strategic measures. It is essential to create space for local employees to participate in decision making interventions to enhance developmental opportunities. Leaders should find strategies of integrating employees into meetings and decision making procedures while delivering necessary stretch opportunities and broadening bench strength.

   For specific decisions and significant organizational procedures, leaders should incorporate the ideas put forth by the workforce to create a culture of inclusivity. Such approaches, although done virtually, help employees to feel valuable assets and boosts their creative thinking skills. It also boosts their productivity because they get a platform to voice their most critical and pressing issues at work. Thus, expanding the pool of individuals to accommodate employees is a strategic measure of breaking existing silos while identifying end-to-end process improvements.

   It is also essential to enhance professional development for individuals within the pipeline of leadership. The current global crisis has generated a flurry of organizational activities and the workforce is taking in an enormous amount of work all at once. The supply chains of most businesses have endured diverse dramatic disruptions. For instance, my organizations have experienced their primary revenue strategies go down the drench in a matter of minutes and new business models need to be pivoted all at once. Leaders in this organizations should, therefore, consider increasing its primary capacity to distribute tasks evenly and ensure every employee is well represented. Allowing the workforce to handle core assignments such as managing operational challenges in terms of efficiency, quality, and customer services helps them to stay on top of their game.

   Providing employees with adequate employment opportunities is an opportunity to prove to them that they are valuable part of the organization. Although all global organizations have in one way or another been disrupted by the prevailing crisis, leaders are left with no choice but to embrace the opportunities and seizing advantages amid the pandemic. They should introduce strategic ways of working, better systems of leading, and practical interventions for growth. It is an opportunity to prioritize the tasks that are truly essential to organizational productivity and engage employees to the best of their interests. Employees should be encouraged and trained to utilize the moment and rethink on their operating models and strategies for the future. 

   Area 2: Ensuring Employee Productivity and Performance

   Leaders are facing diverse challenges in ensuring employee productivity and performance. Although they are putting in effort to ensure everything stays aligned and in perspective, our professional workforce is subject to economic uncertainties and the workforce is subject to stressful; and draining situations. The drastic shift in the organizational culture has resulted into significant challenges for all leaders with their top priority being creating strategic measures to respond to and manage the crisis. Nonetheless, it is practically hard to ensure all employees are manage and engaged effectively through appropriate channels of communication. Employees are subject to mental health instability because the drastic work culture shift took a heavy toll on their overall wellbeing. Thus, leaders are forced to incorporate strategic measures to ensure wellness, guarantee workers high-level security, and flexibility to overcome the hindrances and maintain productivity.

   Leaders and the management desk if having it rough because the mental issues of employees are in the front seat. When leaders have their workforce operating in an office place, it is much easier to understand their issues and how these sensitivities influence performance. In such an environment, it becomes easier for leaders to navigate and manage the complexities. However, in the remote context, communication channels have been compromised significantly and these scenarios leave leaders clueless and less conscious about their response mechanisms. Productivity and performance is thus affected when leaders are unable to manage employee issues and pressing concerns. From an analytical point, leaders face diverse challenges in lien with recruitment, training, engagement, development, and performance appraisals. Altogether, these inconsistencies render it hard for leaders to maintain a strategic balance between the workforce and management, which is detrimental to their overall productivity.

   Additionally, the leaders at my organization are having it rough to manage employees working remotely because the transition is not as seamless as it sounds. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, close to 50% of organizations did not support remote working programs. Today, 80% of the firms are rushing into establishing remote work strategies, including my organization. The new normal is a serious challenge for our leaders because there are several undiscovered and unsolved issues that affect employee wellbeing and consequently, organizational performance and productivity. Strategies are designed in real time as opposed to periodic manner, which shifts the managers’ focus on employee engagement and productivity.

   Another issue as to why leaders at my organization are struggling so much with maintaining workforce productivity is their lack of agility. Many leaders are not primarily designed for agility and this affects them big time. During the pandemic period, leaders and managers are needed to respond swiftly to diverse organizational issues. However, different approvals need to be taken into consideration before adopting any action, which slows down their capacity to incorporate immediate measures of managing the crisis demand. Now that the workforce is operating from a home context, most leaders at my organization are less agile in their strategic approaches to diverse concerns.

   Besides, leaders at my organization are facing difficulties in managing effective employee communication, which makes it hard for them to voice their performance concerns hence, poor productivity and engagement. Communication is a core challenge on the priority list that my organization should take into consideration. Leaders are having a challenge managing the workforce due to lack of effective communication channels because the remote working tools in place do not support out organizational culture. Although our organization uses Slack and Zoom to meet the growing demands of the company workforce, they are certainly inadequate to get every employee on the same page. When such scenarios arise, it is hard for leaders to understand their points of weaknesses and address them in good time. In scenarios where teams are cross-functional, leaders have limited power to regulate their activities and manage their priorities. Failure to consistently update the employees in my organization impacts their morale to work hard and smart, thus, their overall engagement, productivity, and efficiency.

   Leaders have been paralyzed by the growing uncertainty. The daunting and detrimental effect of not understanding what to anticipate about the future can be draining. It is also difficult for our leaders to execute strategic measures for sustaining diverse organizational procedures. Such positions restrict leaders from understanding how its workforce is affected mentally, which renders it difficult to adequately align each process. The incapacity to respond well to these gaps affects employee engagement and productivity. The ultimate objective of any organization is to maintain high employee productivity. However, leaders find it critically challenging to ensure the workforce remains engaged while working remotely amid a crisis. These challenges affect internal communication mechanisms because it is hard for managers to keep every individual on the same page. With remote working, leaders find it pretty hard to adhere to a specific routine or a systematic workflow.

   The COVID-19 crisis remains a problematic trend for all global businesses. While diverse economic factors are beyond the regulation of entrepreneurs, leaders need to incorporate strategic measures to manage the uncertainties and challenges to reduce the cost of productivity. Leaders and managers should consider operating within a strategically defined and aligned framework through every phase of the pandemic to deliver effective workforce resilience. The aim is to initiate and align leadership capacity to evaluate, plan, decide, manage, and further communicate employee strategies. Leaders should also be clear on the core values that align with the organization’s long-term purpose and introduce active procedures of safeguarding these employee values amid these testing times. To manage the challenges, leaders need to embrace a top-down system of governance to deliver decisive and creative leadership. Leaders should be clear on the “must-have” results expected of employees and consistently communicate them to the organization. Setting standards of operation and expectations at organizational level can help employees stay focused and focus on the bigger goals of the organization. Further, leadership should empower and mold the art of leadership in their workforce. Productivity is bound to shift during lockdown because employee expectations and requirements adjusted automatically. Thus, to maintain a higher level of productivity, all managers and leaders at the organization must reassess and understand how their leadership approaches are different, and shift their mindset towards changing the strategy and allowing employees on ground to thrive in terms of performance.

   The organization should also embrace mid-level management and team leadership procedures to allow employees open up freely concerning matters related to performance. Team management should embrace better employee communication measures and policies that favor open communication and overall support. Additionally, it is essential that leaders readily identify and manage existing workforce gaps. First, managers should assess and align significant business functions, essential job roles, high-value assets, and other critical elements within their supply chain and understand how these resources can boost employee performance and morale to remain relevant in the industry. It is important to activate policies and protocols that help in identifying existing gaps within the contemporary workforce model by assessing both qualitative and quantitative effects. Good leaders learn the need to introduce a potential response mechanism to manage crisis and all underlying triggers.

    

Answer

Assessing Risk and Reward

The Nissan Motor Company is one of the leading automobile makers in the world. The Japanese carmaker has primarily enjoyed a successful run, allowing it to enter various regional and international markets such as the United States. However, the changing business environment was not favorable to the company in 2019. Notably, the cooperation recorded losses amounting to 7.8%. The experience pushed the management into making tough decisions, requiring almost all of its North American workforce to go for unpaid leaves.

In late 2019, the company announced that the decline in sales necessitated a two-day unpaid leave for the North American workers. The stated days for the vacation were January 2 and 3^rd    (Chicago Tribune, 2019).  Notably, this move was a crucial decision for the company because of its conflicting impacts. Whereas on the positive side, it could help the firm minimize expenses, it threatened to affect the public perception of the company regarding employee welfare.

The rewards for the decision involved cutting expenses by not paying the workers on leave, which eventually would translate into reduced expenses. Another reward was that the decision could allow the company to optimize performance by evaluating employee performances then developing new milestones. However, on the low side, the company risked affecting its public image and brand name, especially in the North American market. As per Chakravorti (2010), the way an organization treats its employees influences the firm’s public perception. Thus, Nissan risked eliciting a negative public perception. With a distorted public image, the company could fail to revive its declining sales.

I would have advised the management of Nissan to utilize the Predictive Analytic perspective in determining the right decision to take. Ideally, the approach tries to predict what might happen in the future if particular decisions or actions are undertaken at the moment (Traymbak & Aggarwal, 2019). Looking at the situation at Nissan, the company needed to develop a goal such as increasing sales. After that, they would have made decisions aimed at realizing the set goal. In this regard, the predicted outcome could give the management an overview of whether more risks existed or significant rewards could be realized.

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