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CASE Study #1 Leadership AND Management

Business Administration (Aklan State University)

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CASE STUDY NO. 1 – LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

Laura is the associate director of a nonprofit agency that provides

assistance to children and families. She is the head of a department
that focuses on evaluating the skill-building programs the agency
provides to families. She reports directly to the agency leadership. As a
whole, the agency has been cautious in hiring this year because of
increased competition for federal grant funding. However, they have
also suffered high staff turnover. Two directors, three key research
staff, and one staff person from the finance department have left.

Laura has a demanding schedule that requires frequent travel;

however, she supervises two managers who in turn are responsible for
five staff members each. Both managers have been appointed within
the last six months.

Manager 1: Kelly has a specific background in research. She

manages staff who provide research support to another
department that delivers behavioral health services to youth.
Kelly supports her staff and is very organized; however, she often
takes a very black and white view of issues. Upper level
leadership values Kelly’s latest research on the therapeutic
division’s services. Kelly is very motivated and driven and expects
the same from her staff.

Manager 2: Linda has a strong background in social science

research and evaluation. She manages staff that work on different
projects within the agency. She is known as a problem solver and
is extremely supportive of her staff. She is very organized and has
a wealth of experience in evaluation of family services. Linda is
very capable and can sometimes take on too much.

The managers are sensing that staff are becoming overworked as

everyone takes on increased responsibilities due to high staff turnover.
Staff have also mentioned that Laura’s "glass half-empty" conversation
style leaves them feeling dejected. In addition, Laura has not shared
budgets with her managers, so they are having difficulty appropriately
allocating work to staff. Laura said she has not received sufficient
information from the finance department to complete the budgets. The
finance department said they have sent her all the information they
have available.

As staff become distressed, the managers are becoming frustrated.

They feel like they are unable to advocate for their staff or solve
problems without key information like the departmental budget.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

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1. How can Laura most effectively use both management

and leadership skills in her role as associate director?
What combination of the two do you think would work
best in this setting?

Laura’s position as an associate director could be both a leader

and a manager. However, in this case, Laura should be more of a
leader. As described in the problem, the two managers, Kelly and
Linda are very capable with their job and they can directly
manage all the staff that is under them. With this, Laura could
just delegate the managerial responsibilities to these two
managers. This strategy can help the managers build their
confidence and their skills and will also allow them to solve
problems for their staff. It can also help Laura reduce the load of
responsibilities given to her and she can focus on other
important matters.

As Laura delegate the managerial responsibilities to the two

managers, she should also work on her communication with
them so that she can be a leader to them. As mentioned in the
problem, Laura seems not communicate properly with the
managers. She did not share the budgets to the managers and
even lied to them about not receiving sufficient data to complete
the budget details. Laura should learn to trust the two managers
and inform them about anything they should know to help them
manage their staff. Afterall, they are the ones next in line to
Laura. She should start training them by leading them properly.

Laura should also address the concerns on the high employee

turnover. It is not healthy for an organization to let your
employees become overworked because of lack of manpower. It
will just increase the number of people leaving the organization.
She should learn to listen to the concerns of the employees
through the managers assigned and resolve the issue by
collaborating their ideas so that they can prevent the employees
from leaving.

2. What steps could be taken to build staff confidence?

The staff seems to be overworked and is uncertain about their

future in the organization because of the high employee turnover
and also due to Laura’s negative communication style. To build
the staff confidence, they can do the following:

 Give the managers more authority towards the staff under

them ang give them the needed information to help them
manage their staff.

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 Regularly communicate changes with the staff including

the changes in management and policies.
 Provide the staff with time to learn and encourage them to
pursue professional development and learning
opportunities
 Engage them in team-building activities that could help
build relationship and harmony within the team.
 Affirm staff with their contributions and performance and
also provide incentives to motivate them more
 Address the issue on Laura’s conversation style
 Make time to directly talk to the staff and listen to them
without retribution so that the issues may be identified
and resolved as early as possible.

It is important to bring back the confidence in the staff to

motivate them in doing a good job with their performance and
prevent resignations.

3. What advice would you give Laura on improving her

leadership skills and to the managers on improving their
management skills?

To improve Laura’s leadership skills, I would advise her to

delegate her managerial responsibilities to the two managers to
reduce her work load. She should also review her schedules and
see if there is anything, she can delegate to others so that she
can rest at least for a while and not having a demanding
schedule. She should also work with her communication skills to
avoid any miscommunication within the organization and also for
people, especially the managers, to obtain their needed
information in managing the tasks as well as the staff.

As for the managers, it might help if they work together. They

can have a leadership or management assessment to know in
what aspects or skills they are strong and figure out how they
can use their skills and strengths to run the department. They
can also learn how they can best support their employees. As
described, Kelly is tasked-oriented while Linda demonstrates a
relationship-oriented style. These two orientations could be
structured so that they can support one another.

Also, as managers, since they can directly see what is happening

with their staff, they should initiate actions to resolve the issues.
They should regularly talk to their staff, ask what they need,

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encourage them, involve them, and motivate them. For concerns

they can’t handle, they can inform Laura, so that she can lead
them on how to manage it.

4. Which leadership style do you think a leader would need

to be effective in this situation?

I think the democratic style of leadership as well as

transformational leadership can help in this situation.

Democratic leaders are more likely to ask “What do you think?”.

They share information with employees about anything that
affects their work responsibilities. They also seek employees'
opinions before approving a final decision. In the case, poor
communication is one of the problems. I believe that the
democratic style of leadership can resolve this issue because it
encourages more on communicating with the employees and it
also allows their involvement in organization related topics that
could help them with their professional development.

The staff, being uncertain of their future due to the trend of

employee turnover, needs encouragement and motivation. They
should be given a reason why they should continue working in
the organization and be inspired to pursue the vision and mission
of the company. Transformational leadership is a leadership style
in which leaders encourage, inspire and motivate employees to
innovate and create change that will help grow and shape the
future success of the company. Transformational leaders allow
the staff to speak and to suggest changes that could help the
organization towards reaching its goals. At the same time,
transformational leaders know how to be of an encouragement to
the staff to motivate them which could resolve the issue on high
employee turnover of Laura’s organization.

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