Case Analysis
After Hindi finish venting, Vic had nothing to say. He had thought that Carver had gotten everything under control, but he was wrong. Carver was initially a product designer and was outstanding for the length Of this time. His designs were a part Of every new product that Nub Fun launched in three years. Wooden, the Head of Product development, felt that Carver was “riding roughshod” over other team members and that behavior was discouraging them from working efficiently.
Even though, team members of product development were also complaining that they were not eating the recognition that they deserved for their work. Vic was so oblivious to seeing how Carvers’ unfavorable behavior was affecting the team. So much, so that Wooden put in a letter of resignation because he couldn’t handle working with Carver any longer, but Vic wouldn’t accept it. After, Wooden’ Alacrity skates design horribly failed, the board of Nub Fun inquired that Wooden had to be terminated.
Carver was promoted to Head of Product development after having a meeting with Vic about the urgency of sales being on time and the best quality. Carver agreed that products would be out on mime and that they would be the “best possible” standard. A couple weeks later, Carver presents to Vic two new outstanding designers, which was seemingly pleasing to Hindi, who was apprehensive about the morale of the team. However, complaints were still coming from the team members directly to Hindi about Carver not being clear in what exactly he wanted from them.
Carver is accused of stealing ideas and taking full credit for his team member’s ideas. While, on the other hand, Vic is torn between this attitude of “if it anti broke, don’t fix it’, and sales are still high with Carver being the Head f Product development. What Vic fails to realize is that Carver leadership skills are seriously broken and that it’s detrimental and needs fixing. Considering this, I perceived that the cause of the problem is Carvers leadership behavior skills. His lack of effective leadership is threatening the long-term productivity of the company.
Which, could lead to huge disadvantages of talent compared to competitors, it could weaken the company’s ability to attract new talent, and more importantly he undermines the employees’ motivation. For example, when Carver met with Vic, Vic tried o convince Carver that he was doing way too much of the work on his own. Carver stated that the team didn’t matter; that he was the only person in the team that mattered. Carver professed that if he delegated his work elsewhere, they wouldn’t get two new products out in the two years and that they would be kissing their marketing position goodbye.
The fact that Carvers attitude is this way is the reason the company is not team oriented. The team has terrible listening skills, lack of a strong team culture; ideas are suppressed, and risk lie on one individual, and employee motivation and oral is extremely low. I perceived then that Carvers lack effective leadership skills were the cause of the issue. For these reasons, my suggestion for overcoming Carver’s lack effective leadership skills would be for him to utilize transformational leadership theory.
According to Burns (as cited in Harris & Nelson, 2008) the transformational leadership theory states that transformational leadership occurs when “one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality’. For the purpose of creating ramification in the product development center, is so that Carvers team members are motivated to follow and seek company objectives; voluntarily identify with the Company standards of conduct, and to fulfill its purpose.
In order to achieve this, Carver would have to learn to give and allow products to be developed with a collaboration of ideas and not just his own. An effective leader attempts to engage members reorient these taken-for- granted perspectives towards empowerment which is enabling subordinates to make decisions, solve problems, and set work goals (Thomas Harris and Mark Nelson, p. 346, 2008). Having a direct intelligence of seeking information brings out the empowerment within every effective leader.
To put it another way, in order for Carver to be an effective leader, he has to decentralized authority to empower employees by trusting them to solve issues in the company themselves. He would have to learn how to give credit to others and understand the value of doing so. Have Carver recognize that building a team requires him to realize the goals of the team are way more important. More so, Carver should consider finding someone who has made the transition room developer to manager and understands the benefits of that move to mentor him I feel this would be the most beneficial for him.
Given these points, I don’t think that change is beyond Carver grasp, he’s highly motivated by the success of the company; which is why I chose the theory of transformational leadership. He portrays many strong attributes of a great manager such as time management, self-motivated and competence. The transformational theory will help Carver understand that his team members are beneficial and reliable to have and that sharing his strong attributes can build a better foundation for the team.
