Please respond to the below discussion questions:
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sharing practical examples of key concepts from your professional or personal experiences
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Discussion #1
Discuss the varied challenges faced by leaders or managers concerning teams made of a diverse workforce. Include considerations such as how some team members might be from different countries or how the teams might meet virtually.
Undoubtedly, globalization has made the diversification of the workforce unavoidable. People with specialties across the world are employed to perform specific functions for organizations.
And all these people come together to work as team members. Thus, a team might be composed of employees from within and virtual, and they all perform their functions with different temperaments and attitudes. Gross (2002) described a virtual team as a group who performs its work mostly through electronic technology.
Matthews-Joy & Gladstone (2000) added that because the virtual members may be detached both geographically and organizationally, they rely on technology for task-related communication.
One of the challenges is lack of face-to-face interaction. Frequently, leaders and team members cannot depend on voice levels, smiles, and raised eyebrows to ascertain understanding because they rely on technology.
There is the need for reliable technological communication strategies to control the situation (Wilson, 2003). It is imperative for leaders to encourage members to be sensitized to the importance of this barrier and how to address it. Another issue is virtual members forming trusting working relationships via technological alone. The challenge is technology not viable in the underdeveloped and developing countries. Therefore, such virtual meetings are mostly chaotic.
For instance, in Ghana, sometimes in the course of working on your assignment, the power goes off. I had it very tough when I started the program. In fact, I had to acquire an inverter to store energy for use when the power went off.
Other times it may not be a power problem but the inability to access the Internet. According to Duarte & Snyder (2001), leaders must endeavor to watch members keenly in support of creating positive interpersonal relationships.
One other challenge is to be precise about the specialties of members to attain the goal of the organization (Anderson & Shane, 2002). The World Report on Disability (2012) indicated that there are more than one billion people who are disabled and some of them who are employed suffer from negative attitudes from other team members.
Explain how factors related to internal and external teams (participants both from within the same room and those attending virtually) may affect organizational behavior.
Communication is seen as the most crucial factor in synchronizing work among team members (André, 1995). Communication is vital for virtual teams (Baker, 2002). The internal and external participants from within and without might have different natures some may be bold, self-conscious, timid, irritable, and overconfident.
These natures come to play during discussions and interactions (Lecture notes, Argosy, 2018). For example, those who are bold and overconfident see the participants who are timid as ineffective and report them to the leaders. Likewise, the timid also sees the irritable as bad-tempered and may report to the leader.
This applies to both internal and external teams. The internal is visual and recognized by the whole team, but the external is mostly perceived by the rise and fall of the person's voice. Whenever the leader becomes adamant on these issues, it may create organizational conflicts. Because the various natures might affect the organization behavior, there is the need to employ management skills to lessen the individual differences.
How can these internal and external factors be constructively managed to enhance not only team performance but also organizational performance?
From our lecture notes (2018), we learned that leaders have realized that although diverse teams posed some challenges, managing these diverse work groups also bring in new perspectives, and these ideas help in problem-solving and innovation. As such, diversity in the workplace has made more business sense for organizations in the twenty-first century. Malhotra, Majchrzak & Rosen (2007) added that to keep the team members engaged, excited, and appreciative of each other, leaders must ensure that a clear agenda is prepared and sent to members earlier before the meeting day.
Leaders must encourage members to adhere to the agenda by making them aware of the opportunity to be creative, resourceful, and practical. Members must be urged to do their drafts, drawings, spreadsheets, and analysis into powerpoint slides. Leaders should identify common team values, build team unity, norms of collaboration, and knowledge sharing, motivate team members to overcome cross-cultural and language barriers. These might inspire them to commit to the organization's mission.
Discussion #2
Discuss the varied challenges faced by leaders or managers concerning teams made of a diverse workforce. Include considerations such as how some team members might be from different countries or how the teams might meet virtually
The challenges that leaders are forced to understand with teams of diverse workforce would be their backgrounds. Most teams that are made up of diverse background have typically more individuals with different religious backgrounds and or affiliations. Another attribute would be different time zones in terms of scheduling meetings virtually. From my personal experience working with offshore resources we had to commit to an early time frame that way the off-shore team had enough time to get their assigned task done.
Explain how factors related to internal and external teams (participants both from within the same room and those attending virtually) may affect organizational behavior
The key factors that are related for both internal and external according to research ore the different personal behaviors that are brought together within a team. People are naturally different and have different ways of thinking, but what needs to be the same is completing a task and or goal. The key factor from a leader perspective is to manage conflict within the team so that its productive and not destructive. This would eat away at a team's ability to complete a project or a goal if there's a member of that said team that's a cynic.
How can these internal and external factors be constructively managed to enhance not only team performance but also organizational performance?
To manage teams of different backgrounds, and skillsets takes an exceptional skill of leadership that is not talked in a schoalstic manner.
This is a skill that is embredded into a person's DNA and that person has a leadership quality. Greenleaf (1970) definition of servant leadership is the philospophy and seet practices that enriches the lives of individuals that builds and organization and ultimately creates a caring world.
A leader understands the pros and cons of their team and understoands what buttons to push to get their team to buy in to their philosphy. A servant leader is the attribute that can affectjivey manage a team with many differnces.
References
Arp, R. (2013). 1001 ideas that changed the way we think. New York, NY: Atria Books
Greenleaf, R. (1970) Servant Leadership. A Journery into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness.
O'Rourke, J., Thompson, L. L., & Gunther, R. E. (2008). The truth about personal performance (Collection). Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press