When I started my degree at Bucks New University over two months ago , I joined BNU Buccaneers , the American football team playing in university league. After a five weeks the leauge began. We have lost our first game by three scores. Then our offensive part of the team realized that it was their fault. The defense was playing well , but offense had problems with scoring points. They were about to start some serious conflict as players had different ideas about how to deal with , none of which was good enough. Then the head offensive coach solved the problem as he viewed the game tape to the whole team and the players were told about their mistakes. All of our coaches knew what to work on during the next training session.
We turned up on that training session and we've been working on our roles exactly the way the coaches wanted us to. We were told how to perform better and it all started to work much better than it used to.
One week after , we had another game , which we won. We scored twenty two points whereas our opponents scored nothing. Our strategy worked.
John French and Bertram Raven conducted one of the most notable studies on power and identified the five bases of power in 1959 that is coercive , reward , expert , legitimate and referent power.
The coercive power is a problematic source of power. It can cause a bad behaviour and dissatisfaction in the workplace. The common tools of coercion are threats and punishment. Coercion should be used as a last resort as it is sometimes neccessary to punish or threat to somebody at some point , but it should not be used as a daily thing. For example a manager should clearly tell his team what they have to do and how. If they do it wrong because they thought that they are smarter or did not pay any attention to what he said , they should be punished. Manager should use a threat to make them work better next time , for example tell them to work the way he says or else they will be fired next time , but not threat them if they work well.
Managers and people higher in the hierarchy of the company are often in power to reward others. This is the reward power. Raises, promotions, , training opportunities, simple compliments and desirable assignments are the examples of the rewards controlled by the directors of the company. The problem with the power of rewarding is that managers need a permission from their supervisors to give rewards. Very often they can only use rewards that have a low value for their workers. If that situation happens , the effectiveness of their work may get lower and the managers's power weakens as well. Similar , when managers are able to use rewards that workers are looking forward to be rewarded with , their work efficiency increases and mangers's power increases. For example , when an employee works hard and gets more profits for the company and manager knows that he has a family and wants to buy a new house , he should be able to give him a salary raise so that he would work even better as he knew that he can gain even more money. Giving him a desirable assignment as a reward in that case would be much less efficient as his work motivation would rather get lower if he had seen that he is expected to work much harder for the same salary.
When there is a person in the company that has a knowledge and skills that enable him to understand a situation , find a solutions , judge well or outperform others , he is likely to be listened by others. If he shows a right working methods , people will trust him and respect to what he does. His work will have more value and other people will be looking forward to have him as a leader. This is how the expert power works. For example when a regular employee helps a manager in making decision in front of others by showing him advantages with explanation and manager makes that decision making benefit for the company , he is thought to be a person with a proper knowlegde , decisiveness and confidence , that makes him a leader in front of his colleagues.
Legitimate power of an individual happens when there is a leader , which leadership is formal. He was given that position by a higher means , like for example a manager , employees may but as well may not like him , but he was given that position by chief excecutive and they can't do anything about it. He should use that power to show that he is good enough to be the manager by using his decisiveness and confidence to help people working in his team and co-operate with them so that they could see that he is the right person for his position. He should not rely on his legitimate power as his only way to influence others because it takes more to than that to be a leader.
Referent power comes from charisma, charm, admiration, or appeal on an individual in a workplace. It happens when one person likes , respects and strongly identifies with another person that has these characteristics at some point. These kind of power can be a big responsibility as that kind of person can easily influence everything from what people buy to whom they elect to office. It is good to have that person in a workplace as he or she makes everybody feels good. When combined with other sources of power, it can help in achieving a great successs. For example , celebrities have referent power as they can influence everything from their fans , which is why they appear in as many adverts as possible.
If the conflict happens within the company , it can be solved by the right use of the following strategies.
The policies of human resource management, for example carrying out a system of equal pays within the equal levels of the company's employees.
The company can also provide equal opportunities for their employees such as same amount of days off or chances to attend the free qualification raising courses.
The firm must be ensured about the good communication kept within it's employees so that the managers and regular workers will know exactly what they have to do , where and how much time they can spend on it etc. When the communication is good between the managers and their teams , the members of that teams will not hesitate to ask for feedback or consult any issues with their managers. Then the decision making process will be easier as all advantages and disadvantages were clearly presented , the amount of mistakes will reduce and what comes from these is the lower probability of conflict.
The board of company's directors must ensure their employees that they have a right to complain. The grievance policy and it's procedure are significant in that case as the employees can work better if they know that they have a right to complain if somebody or something is making their tasks more difficult by interrupting them etc. They must know that if they have complained , the right procedure will be carried out to solve this. On the other hand , they must know also that the grievance policies may be used against them if they cheat or somebody complained about them. The grievance policies and procedures must be set up well as it may be used wrong and not fair if somebody did something on purpose to make somebody else fail. When solving problem of grievance policy , there should be a sort of investigation to be carried out to gain proofs of a real fault or a lie about the subject complained.
Everybody in the company should be aware of the disciplinary procedure. The company should have that kind of procedure clearly presented to it's employees so that they knew what is going to happen if they are try to take care only about their needs. They must know that they are a team and they are working for the company that gives them an opportunity to gain experience and a knowlegde with earning their money.
The discipline is not difficult to be kept if people are taking care about the company. If they are not , then they should be warned and reminded a procedure about the discipline. If that is not working , they should be fired. However , if they are taking good care of the company , they should be exaulted by their managers to show them that they are being taken seriously.
In conclusion , when it comes to being in groups , there are always problems that have to be solved. To solve that problems it is important to know what caused them and then fix it. Conflicts are caused by the wrong cooperation between people with different sources of power. If they are being solved by the right use of the strategies mentioned above they are not being a serious problems anymore or may not even happen again.
Bibliography:
- Leadership training. Leadership Styles. [Online]. Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_84.htm [Accessed: 30th October 2010]
We turned up on that training session and we've been working on our roles exactly the way the coaches wanted us to. We were told how to perform better and it all started to work much better than it used to.
One week after , we had another game , which we won. We scored twenty two points whereas our opponents scored nothing. Our strategy worked.
John French and Bertram Raven conducted one of the most notable studies on power and identified the five bases of power in 1959 that is coercive , reward , expert , legitimate and referent power.
 | |
| Sometimes manager has to use something more... |
The coercive power is a problematic source of power. It can cause a bad behaviour and dissatisfaction in the workplace. The common tools of coercion are threats and punishment. Coercion should be used as a last resort as it is sometimes neccessary to punish or threat to somebody at some point , but it should not be used as a daily thing. For example a manager should clearly tell his team what they have to do and how. If they do it wrong because they thought that they are smarter or did not pay any attention to what he said , they should be punished. Manager should use a threat to make them work better next time , for example tell them to work the way he says or else they will be fired next time , but not threat them if they work well.
Legitimate power of an individual happens when there is a leader , which leadership is formal. He was given that position by a higher means , like for example a manager , employees may but as well may not like him , but he was given that position by chief excecutive and they can't do anything about it. He should use that power to show that he is good enough to be the manager by using his decisiveness and confidence to help people working in his team and co-operate with them so that they could see that he is the right person for his position. He should not rely on his legitimate power as his only way to influence others because it takes more to than that to be a leader.
Referent power comes from charisma, charm, admiration, or appeal on an individual in a workplace. It happens when one person likes , respects and strongly identifies with another person that has these characteristics at some point. These kind of power can be a big responsibility as that kind of person can easily influence everything from what people buy to whom they elect to office. It is good to have that person in a workplace as he or she makes everybody feels good. When combined with other sources of power, it can help in achieving a great successs. For example , celebrities have referent power as they can influence everything from their fans , which is why they appear in as many adverts as possible.
If the conflict happens within the company , it can be solved by the right use of the following strategies.
The policies of human resource management, for example carrying out a system of equal pays within the equal levels of the company's employees.
The company can also provide equal opportunities for their employees such as same amount of days off or chances to attend the free qualification raising courses.
The firm must be ensured about the good communication kept within it's employees so that the managers and regular workers will know exactly what they have to do , where and how much time they can spend on it etc. When the communication is good between the managers and their teams , the members of that teams will not hesitate to ask for feedback or consult any issues with their managers. Then the decision making process will be easier as all advantages and disadvantages were clearly presented , the amount of mistakes will reduce and what comes from these is the lower probability of conflict.
The board of company's directors must ensure their employees that they have a right to complain. The grievance policy and it's procedure are significant in that case as the employees can work better if they know that they have a right to complain if somebody or something is making their tasks more difficult by interrupting them etc. They must know that if they have complained , the right procedure will be carried out to solve this. On the other hand , they must know also that the grievance policies may be used against them if they cheat or somebody complained about them. The grievance policies and procedures must be set up well as it may be used wrong and not fair if somebody did something on purpose to make somebody else fail. When solving problem of grievance policy , there should be a sort of investigation to be carried out to gain proofs of a real fault or a lie about the subject complained.
Everybody in the company should be aware of the disciplinary procedure. The company should have that kind of procedure clearly presented to it's employees so that they knew what is going to happen if they are try to take care only about their needs. They must know that they are a team and they are working for the company that gives them an opportunity to gain experience and a knowlegde with earning their money.
The discipline is not difficult to be kept if people are taking care about the company. If they are not , then they should be warned and reminded a procedure about the discipline. If that is not working , they should be fired. However , if they are taking good care of the company , they should be exaulted by their managers to show them that they are being taken seriously.
In conclusion , when it comes to being in groups , there are always problems that have to be solved. To solve that problems it is important to know what caused them and then fix it. Conflicts are caused by the wrong cooperation between people with different sources of power. If they are being solved by the right use of the strategies mentioned above they are not being a serious problems anymore or may not even happen again.
Bibliography:
- Leadership training. Leadership Styles. [Online]. Available from: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_84.htm [Accessed: 30th October 2010]
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