Work Groups & Teams

Work Groups and Teams

Being a leader at Aberdeen requires a set of skills that is in many ways different from the skills required at Green River . The main difference lies in the scope of delegation . Ability to delegate is one of the crucial managerial skills and one that is with great difficulty acquired by younger and less experienced managers . As a result employees at Aberdeen feel more empowered and more interested in what is going on at the plant . They also have a chance to participate in decision-making , not just serve

as individuals carrying out someone else 's commands , which raises their own significance and allows them to demonstrate their abilities . The idea of management at Aberdeen is consonant with Lauren Appley 's saying "Management means helping people to get the best out of themselves , not organising things (`Leadership , n .d

The connection between skills leadership and the peculiarities of management style at Aberdeen is straightforward . Aberdeen management style is highly participative , which imposes great demands on the leaders ' communication abilities , delegation skills and emotional intelligence . A 2001 study by Center for Creative Leadership has arrived at the conclusion that participative management has the largest number of meaningful correlations with measures of emotional intelligence (Center for Creative Leadership , 2001 . Being emotionally intelligent means the ability to listen mindfully , to adequately assess the emotional state and ideas of the interlocutor , and to receive adequate input from team members and other colleagues . A leader at Aberdeen has to be especially receptive to workers , although emotional intelligence is an undeniable asset in any environment

The manager at a participative facility such as Aberdeen also has to have superb abilities for team building since the plant functioning is grounded in the team work . Amalgamating a disparate group of workers into a coherent whole capable of autonomous decision-making is not as easy as it seems , since it is the managerial role to assist in team formation and functioning . Thus , managers have to possess strong ability in team building that was named among top qualities necessary for participative management in the survey performed by James E . Smallwood (1991 . Since teams are not as popular at Green River , the emphasis on team building is less at Green River

To make the management process at Green River more akin to the Aberdeen model , managers need to develop the missing skills . Their significant role in decision-making hitherto has undoubtedly fostered in them strong organisation abilities . Now they have to teach these abilities to other people in the process of empowerment , a challenge perhaps exceeding that of authoritative decision-making . This does not mean that Green River managers have to change overnight . They are likely to have a set of skills that has been developed over years of centralised decision-making , such as straightforwardness , composure , emotional maturity , ability to deal with problem employees , etc . To make full use of this expertise , the decision-making at Green River can be modified as compared to Aberdeen to give greater weight to managers ' role , for...