The Role of Leadership in Org Culture

Leadership and Performance in the Workplace

The problems at Woody's Veneer are fundamental in nature. They speak to a completely toxic organization, so in that sense a diagnosis of minor issues of motivation is actually insufficient to describe this work environment. At the most basic level, there is no respect between workers, management and ownership. None of these levels are working together towards a common goal; instead they are working against each other at every turn. It has been theorized that participative management results in the highest level of motivation among workers, but this organization does not involve the workers in any way, and they are lashing out (Magloff, 2016).

Leadership is also responsible for setting the tone in an organization, both respect to organizational culture and with respect to organizational norms. In this case, it is clear that leaders are setting very poor norms, and the followers within the organization are acting in ways that reflect this. Group norms influence individual behavior, and in this group when you have two managers getting into a fist fight, that sort of antisocial workplace behavior then is adopted by everybody else in the organization. It is not an excuse that the managers in question are high school buddies because others in the organization do not know that, and therefore they do not understand any of that context. Rather, the workers just think they can do anything they want (Wengrzyn, 2016).

Communication is clearly an issue in this workplace. There is none, and if there is communication it is negative. Again, this tone is set by leadership, and the managers have taken this tone with the workers, creating an environment where nobody wants to talk to each other. Such an environment invites the escalation of grievances, resulting in destructive behavior and in fistfights, among other issues. This communication problem must have been festering for a long time. It is up to the leaders of an organization to build trust through communication. That means being honest and transparent in communication. When management refuses to communicate, the workforce starts to mistrust management, and then the feeling becomes mutual. Communication is therefore a critical issue for the leadership of the organization (Beslin & Reddin, 2004).

Ownership is also implicated here, because of the fact that this situation has gone on long enough that the employees are actively sabotaging the company, and that managers getting into fistfights has become normative behavior within this organization. Ownership cannot claim any high ground on this -- it needed to be aware of the problems within the company, as part of its duty to protect its own investment.

Plan for Improvement

The first thing that has to happen with this company is that the toxic people -- those who willingly engage in destructive behavior -- need to be removed. The managers who fought, and the workers who participated in the destruction of company inventory all need to be fired. The organization cannot reconcile with the same players in place, and none of the above-mentioned individuals can be trusted with company resources. That is a higher level of betrayal of trust than is reasonable for any leadership team to tolerate.

The second component of the plan is to instill a new leader at the head of the organization, one who can communicate effectively. There is likely a crisis that will engage the parties to participate in the organizational change process -- poor financial performance will put many more jobs at risk than the ones already removed. However, making a change in this organization will require a master communication with a strong vision for the organization. This is someone who embodies the transformational leadership style, which is defined as somebody who can institute positive changes for others to follow (Cherry, 2016). The present leadership may not be suited for this task. Plus, if the present leadership cannot be trusted and has done a poor job with communication to this point, there is no reason to think that that person will suddenly improve their ability to communication effectively and openly. A new leader will come from the outside, but preferably have experience dealing in this sort of work environment. The current management are not demonstrating either leadership skills -- they lead nobody -- nor management skills as evidenced by the destruction of company property and negative financial results.