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LEADERSHIP CASE STUDY

Leadership Case Study

Team C: Charismatic Leaders

Aijing Feng, David Weaver, Joshua Watton, Rebecca Viera, Yul Thomas

LDR: 601 Leadership Theory

Dr. John W. Fick

Siena Heights University

October 6, 2022
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Introduction

Calvin is the director of his own disaster insurance company, located in New York. He

has ten insurance representatives who are located around the world, and they are responsible for

selling insurance. Calvin’s plans are for his company to grow worldwide. Calvin held a video

conference attempting to get everyone on board, but there was an issue of the different time

zones which made it impossible for him to achieve his goal. Team C discovered there were

several other factors that Calvin faced with his team such as miscommunication, unorganization

and lack of motivation.

Communication

Communication is not happening amongst the team even though the leader is trying his

best to get in contact with them. “Open communication between company leaders and employees

helps an organization overcome problems and attain success” (Dubrin, 2016). Calvin explains

the lack in communication, and engagement from the team. Calvin is facing the problems of

teamwork, management, lack of clear mission and vision and goals, and also does not have

effective communication skills. He should try different online communication tools more

frequently to control and lead the direction of his business. A large help to Calvin would be to

promote or hire a project manager to deal with the reps and other team members. This would

designate someone and allow them to focus on communication and improving the business

model. Communication is probably the most important for Calvin and the connection with both

of his teams. In order for all these new ideas to be effective, communication begins with the top

leader first.
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Motivation

The team lacks motivation to do their work and since their leader is not there to see they

don’t see it as a priority that needs to get done. Henry Cloud stated, “if people do not have the

drive past the status quo, they do not create an increase” (Cloud, 2009). Based on the weather

climate, not enough storms are in effect. This brings the lack of motivation for the team. As

mentioned in the case, the team lead in Great Britain (Hillary) mentions to Calvin that he needs

to trigger an earthquake in order for people to be interested in the insurance being offered. When

the team sees that not many disasters are happening they lack the motivation of having to

promote their insurance company in order to make sales, especially if their leader is not in the

same office as them to be pushing them for those sales. In an article on leadership and positive

change, Hao explains that effective leadership is what is needed for an organization to improve

on trust and culture, as well as developing clear vision (Hao, 2015). In order for Calvin to fully

motivate his team, he needs to incorporate effective leadership.

Organization and Accountability

The teamwork problems that Calvin is facing is that the employees are not organized and

do not seem to be on top of their tasks. Organization and accountability are two of the major

issues that Calvin is having. Calvin can provide stronger leadership through organizational

vision. By improving culture with regional catered goals, the company can all share their

individual progress. Project management is a way for Calvin to boost innovation and

improvements for positive change. Calvin could practice online effective leadership training with

his representatives in small groups. He should organize weekly or biweekly meetings to control

the running progress and guide the strategies for sales. Calvin is having issues with teamwork
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due to the different areas as well as there is no accountability. By having a check in process and

establishing a mission and vision, it will eliminate the representatives not completing what they

are supposed to do and instead holding them accountable for their actions.

Conclusion

Calvin, the director of disaster insurance at the global insurance company, was faced with

many problems within the company. Although he had two major jobs, he struggled with team

control and managerial performance. The employees lacked company mission, vision and goals.

For his company to improve he had to come up with ways to become a more effective leader by

improving his communication skills. According to Aoki and Lennerfors “Companies should

think short-term and Long term; know their suppliers well and develop trust with them; balance

implicit and explicit communication; identify the suppliers most worth improving”. Identifying

what changes need to be made will only improve his business and help guide employees towards

a path of success.
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References

Aoki, K., & Lennerfors, T. T. (2013, September 9). Global business the new, improved Keiretsu.

DIVA. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A646646&dswid=-7797

Cloud, H. (2006). Integrity: The courage to meet the demands of reality. Harper Business.

DuBrin, A. J. (2016). Leadership: Research Findings, Practice, and Skills (8th ed.). Cengage

Learning.

Hao, M. J., & Yazdanifard, R. (2015). How effective leadership can facilitate change in

organizations through improvement and innovation. Global journal of management and

business research, 15(9), 1-6.