Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality

Paper Info
Page count 2
Word count 690
Read time 3 min
Subject Business
Type Essay
Language 🇺🇸 US

State some examples in which leaders you have worked for have exhibited leadership practices that relate to TQM. Also, provide examples for which they have not? How did their behavior affect you and your co-workers?

While working for a highly reputable company in town, I noticed that most of its manager’s decisions and practices strictly adhered to TQM practices. First, the manager recognized employees who achieved the best results. In fact, there were weekly rewards for the best-performing employee. Additionally, on-job training was provided to improve employees’ performance. Most importantly, the manager organized all expenses paid trainings for senior employees for self-improvement. The manager also encouraged teamwork. She could organize teambuilding exercises and retreats to foster teamwork among employees.

The manager’s leadership skills ensured not only unity, but also high performance. She provided the much needed inspiration and direction and was very committed to organizational objectives. Through her commitment, all employees understood organizational philosophies, goals, and values. Communication was perhaps the manager’s strongest pillar. Vital information could reach employees almost instantly. All modes of communication from emails, to blogs, fax, short mobile messages, and phone calls were exploited to ensure that there was a common understanding between employees and management. The management relied on self-evaluation and motivation to achieve its objectives, thereby minimizing inspections. Even though there were no frequent inspections to ascertain the quality of employees’ output, the production process was continuously reevaluated to ensure that the methods used were both effective and safe. This process involved the employees a lot, as their input was crucial to job performance improvement.

The company manager had monthly quotas set for each employee to attain despite the wide usage of TQM practices. The manager ensured that every employee attained her/his quota for the month. This is against the spirit of TQM. However, the manager’s professionalism, commitment, and level of integrity impressed me a lot. In fact, I came to realize how the organization has been able to achieve its objective with minimal supervision.

Managers can enforce rules about what people do and say at work. But can they enforce a culture? If yes, how can they do it? If no, what does this say about the limits of managers’ ability to ensure quality?

Managers cannot enforce organizational culture, but they can influence and eventually change it. An organization’s culture is not easily changeable. In fact, it is one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult task a manager can face. The difficulties in changing an organization’s culture arise from its interlocking set of values, objectives, operational processes, and roles. These elements combine to become one; therefore, attempting to change any of the parts becomes almost impossible. It is for this reason that single-fix changes may succeed in the short run, but fail miserably in the end.

Changing an organization’s culture requires wining all stakeholders’ hearts, minds, and support. Doing so requires both patience and persuasion. A manager’s first hurdle in the journey of changing corporate culture is explaining to stakeholders why the change he/she is introducing is necessary. Secondly, limitedness of resources becomes a challenge since any organizational culture change is associated with shifting the organization’s resources to achieve new goals and strategies. The third challenge to organizational culture change is motivation. If any change, no matter how small, is to be achieved in an organization, its workers must be willing to make the change. Finally, yet importantly, is institutional politics. All institutions have some form of politics. Attempts to change organizational culture tend to bring this to the fullest.

Overcoming these challenges requires both time and tact. A manager’s best bet is to win over influential people in the organization before moving to the rest. Additionally, leading the change has proven effective in many instances.

Evidently, enforcing organizational culture is impossible considering the need for willingness from employees and other stakeholders. Unlike instituting new rules, changing organizational culture requires every stakeholder’s consent and support; therefore, it is not easy to achieve. Since we have seen that an inclusive approach can achieve organizational culture change, we can conclude that a manager’s ability to ensure quality is dependent on employees’ cooperation.

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Reference

EduRaven. (2021, October 21). Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality. Retrieved from https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/

Reference

EduRaven. (2021, October 21). Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/

Work Cited

"Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." EduRaven, 21 Oct. 2021, eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.

References

EduRaven. (2021) 'Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality'. 21 October.

References

EduRaven. 2021. "Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." October 21, 2021. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.

1. EduRaven. "Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." October 21, 2021. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.


Bibliography


EduRaven. "Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." October 21, 2021. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.

References

EduRaven. 2021. "Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." October 21, 2021. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.

1. EduRaven. "Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." October 21, 2021. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.


Bibliography


EduRaven. "Leadership Practices Ensuring Quality." October 21, 2021. https://eduraven.com/leadership-practices-ensuring-quality/.