Leadership Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Leadership - Case Study Example Question 1 Dominant Leadership Styles That Ben and Phil Demonstrated Among the two leadership styles revealed by Ben Samuels and Phil Jones, the style adopted by the Phil reflects more dominant nature during his tenure as plant manager in Consolidated Products. Contrarily, the leadership style adopted by Ben can be identified to be soft. Indeed, it can be identified that both the leaders depicted radically different leadership approaches. It can be ascertained from the case that Ben had decided to pick a soft approach towards the employees. He believed that â€Å"if you treat people right, they will do a good job for you without supervision or pushing†. Ben used to treat the employees in the organization as partners. He can be identified to be very much cautious about his employees’ health and problems. Owing to his deep concern for the employees in the organization, he had set-up fitness centers. In addition, Ben also undertook social activities sponsored by the plants such as company picnics and holiday parties for his employees several times a year. Ben believed that treating employees properly and correctly would increase their loyalty towards organization. He used to spend a lot of time with his employees discussing about their health, families and problems faced by the employees along with trying to resolve their problems. Even in the slack times encountered by the organization, he avoided employee lay-offs. Ben believed that it is often very difficult to find and replace skilled and talented workers. However, it is worth mentioning that his benevolent behavior does not make him a good leader. His leadership style strongly revealed empathic, compassionate, respectful and humble characteristics. Thus, it can be identified that Ben has adopted supportive leadership style. Although he revealed his care and respect for the employees in the organization and has been greatly liked by the employees but the productivity of the organization during hi s tenure was badly suffering. Moreover, he did not set any objectives or standards for his supervisors which can be attributed to the dismal performance of organization. Consequently, the company’s turnover was found to be the lowest among it’s five other plants. It can be stated that in the present day organizational purview, benevolent leadership approach hardly enables to derive long-term sustainability of the organization as it is apparent that without proper set goals and objectives employees find it quite difficult to drive home the advantage (Civil Air Patrol National Headquarters, 2013). Subsequently, it is observed that Phil started trimming the number of activities starting from removal of fitness centre from the plant, stopping funding for picnic and parties and human relation training programs for the supervisors. Phil Believed that â€Å"if employees don’t want to do the work, get rid of them and find somebody else who does†. He also establis hed demanding goals and objectives and strict employee performance appraisal was also conducted in order to measure the productivity of each employees. He also went for employee layoff in order to ensure stable production within the plant. He demonstrated committed, passionate, accountable, and enthusiastic along with optimistic characteristics. Correspondingly, leadership style revealed by Phil can be firmly correlated with directive leadership st