C203 Becoming an Effective Leader

C203 Becoming an Effective Leader Task 2

Loretta Caldwell

Western Governor’s University

Table of Contents

A        

A.1        3

A.1A        4

A.2        4

A.2A        5

A.3        6

A.3A        6

A.3B        7

References8

The leader I will be evaluating will be my current director at my local animal shelter. Although she is not my direct supervisor, she often interacts will staff at all levels. Under the previous leadership there was little staff engagement and interaction and the culture with the organization was negative. There was a lack of trust in management which negatively affected staff. Moral was also very low among employees. She has made several changes to positively affect our organization since joining the organization.

A1.

The habits of our director align mostly with the expectancy theory. “The expectancy theory of motivation mean that the amount of effort people expend depends on how much reward they expect to get in return. It emphasizes the thoughts, judgments, and desires of the person being motivated (Dubrin, 2013) One practice of the theory in which the director implemented to improve the organization was through the training and encouragement given to staff. Before she began, our shelter had no official training programs to learn their skills. All training was through on the job training which varied by employee and department and the correct procedures were not always taught to new staff. The director implemented monthly all staff trainings where all staff was trained equally on proper procedures. The proper training encourages staff and increased confidence that the requires tasks could be performed.

Another practice was by setting clear and attainable goals and determining the level and kinds of performance needed. Our goal was to increase our live release rate and she established several objectives that would help us to accomplish this. Many felt these goals were attainable and in the past, this seemed to be an impossible feat. These clearly defined goals helped to motivate our team to succeed.

A1a.

One way in which our director could have improved was to better understand what motivated members of our staff. “To motivate group members effectively, leaders must recognize individual differences or preferences for rewards” (Dubrin, 2013). Our director created a Rockstar Award program which identified staff members that perform exceptionally during the month. The employee was recognized at staff meeting. While this was a great way to recognize employees, this may not be motivating to all employees. For myself, this program was not substantial enough to increase my performance. Also, there would be some staff members that like public recognition and others who wouldn’t. A way to improve would be to determine a variety of rewards for high performance that could appeal to the differences in our staff.