COURSE: LEADERSHIP, ENGAGEMENT, AND PEOPLE

PERFORMANCE

CASE STUDY: THE TEAM THAT WASN’T

Project Submission Template

Student Name: Rajeev Ranjan

Question I A summary of the major leadership and team problems at

FireArt.

There is a lack of cohesion among the members of the team

made in Fire Art. There is no synergy among the team
members which further leads to the inefficiency
of performance of the team. This is caused because Eric lacks
in making appropriate efforts in order to create a culture of
group working.

There is no mutual understanding among the members of the

team. This is because Eric has not used the team building
model effectively, which implies a process of building an
effective team in four stages.

The first stage known as “FORMING” implies that the team

members should develop a mutual understanding in order to
work efficiently and effectively. Thus, lack in mutual
understanding at leadership level lead to non successful team
building.
Question II List and elaborate on three steps which Eric Holt and CEO
Jack Derry can take in order to intrinsically and extrinsically
motivate the team.

Leadership qualities: Eric should display his leadership

qualities by setting up an agenda or mission statement of
what they want to achieve and needs to redefine his role in
the group and take responsibility to act as team leader.

Setting up a Goal: Eric should set a goal post for the

employee so that they can be targeted.

Define problem statement: Eric needs to define the

problem statement and understand his “art” and “threshold
capabilities” and develop emotional intelligence.

They should create a stepwise execution plan where

progress is check in a series of meetings, everyone
contribution in each meeting is measured, implemented, and
rewarded.

Jake (CEO) to motivate it’s employees and make them

remember the mission statement of the company.

Eric should define Randy’s role in the team as it’s causing

lot of setbacks to the company

He should set up a reward system so employees can

contribute ideas to meeting, and make sure good ideas are
implemented.
Question III Evaluate the 'conflict' and 'commitment' dysfunction of the
FireArt team

Difference in Contextual Backgrounds

Eric selected the team members of different contextual

backgrounds. This has increased the overall conflicts among
the team members as each members in the team has different
cultural and ethical values, which gives rise to conflicts
among the team members and subsequently decreases the
overall performance of the team.

Superiority complexes

The team members selected by Eric are of various levels of

hierarchy such as Randy pertains from the top level of
hierarchy, whereas, Ray pertains to lower middle level of
hierarchy. Thus, this creates superiority complexes in lower
level employees, which further effects negatively on the
overall performance of the team work.

Personal Biasness:

After comprehensively analysing the case, it seems that

Randy is only considered about gaining only his personal
advantage, rather than working as a team. This further
creates a negative impact on the efficiency of team work
Excessive Criticism on other’s opinion

Randy often criticizeson others’ opinions; this decreases the

motivational level of the member providing opinion. Thus,
this decreases the willingness of participation among the
team members, which further reduces the efficiency of the
performance of the team.
Question IV a. Analyse Jack Derry as an inspirational leader of his
organisation under the following headers

I) Sensing
• Jack Derry the CEO of FineArt was quick to
realize that moving forward growth can only
be achieved with the improvement in
working of the organization, hence creating a
team to solve this problem.
• He sensed the changes happening in the
market, his competitor entering his niche
market. So he set up a team by led Eric.
• He had no idea what are the problems which
were going on with team he created with the
help of Eri
II) Relating
• Jack Derry was low on the relating aspect of
the leadership. He didn’t reach out to the
employees of FineArt, and he didn’t address
them or reassure them in time of crises,
• There was lack of strategical and operational
networking between the leaders of different
departments in the organization as it is quite
 evident as the leaders didn’t get along well in
Eric’s team.
III) Visioning
• Jack Derry lacked vision, as he created a
team without any mission statement and
vision statement. As there was no clear
direction, guidelines or agenda set by him to
ensure company’s strategic realignment.
• There was lack of problem statement,
timelines, and expectations from employees.
• He appointed Eric, foreseeing the challenges
that the company would face due to increase
in competition.
IV) Executing
• Jack Derry was satisfactory when it came to
execution part of leadership qualities. He
mobilized a team to work on issue to achieve
positive growth for the company and to
handle the competition from it’s competitors.
• He was not proactive in being part of team’s
meeting and discuss different perspective of
their employees.
• There was lack of process to measure
performance metrics of the employees.
 • There was lack of networking platforms for
employees to discuss about issues.

B. Recommend any changes/ alternative steps Jack Derry

could have taken to be a more effective leader

• Jack should set a clear objective for the team.

He should clear the agenda what are the
main objectives they are looking to achieve
and what is the problem statement.
• He should implement proper structure and
step analysis for the meeting.
• He should implement conflict resolution
methods with the help of Eric between
Randy and other team members. .
• He should keep a check on minutes -of-
meetings of progress from Eric.
• He should reward employees for their ideas
and incentives employees who complete
their objective with in given timeline.