Leadership Team Building and Communication in The River Cafe - Case Study Example

Leadership, Team Building & Communication and Section # of This analytical assignment is based on the research conducted on The River Caf, as an article written about this caf was so amazing that it pulled the author for a definite visit. The following assignment is based on the analyses of leadership, team building and communication associated to the same. When referring to academic courses such as communication or leadership or those along similar lines, there tend to be quoted standard examples of businessmen, corporate world, banking sector, factories, sports, and so on. However, not much has been ever heard of examples such as a caf. Though such examples are always amongst the academic courses such as strategic management or marketing or entrepreneurship, where examples of Costa and Dunkin Donuts, etc are given, but not when it comes to leadership, team building and communication. This assignment specifically discusses a caf and discusses the said concepts about the same. The owners of the caf are Rose Gray and Ruth Rodgers. Prior to predicting the leadership styles that are adopted by the owners of the caf, it is critically important to discuss and analyze the prevailing environment at the caf, for which, some critical points are quoted below from the extract. In the initial portion of the article, the author clearly states there was a clear indication about the caf being a step ahead of the conventional cafes with a family like atmosphere, a spirit of community, with mutual care and support amongst people. Respect for all is the key term that has been identified as the differentiating factors, whereby respect is for all, including the chefs, the waiters, dishwashers, everyone. Respect comes from within, from the culture, ultimately yielded in the top-bottom approach, and not possible otherwise. Other than this, there are no hierarchies, every person is free to take up a job that they discover and realize that they can do it. Following the same, there are no rigid job descriptions and there flexibility to switch roles within the arena. There is appreciation of creativity and provision of self audit, with responsibilities of actions taken by the person in-charge. Despite there being more freedom and lesser control, there is absolutely no tolerance for bad service due to a bad mood, though these are also individuals and there can always be a bad day, because a good food is no guarantee of bringing the customer back but a bad service would definitely not bring him back. Equality and mutual support are the major fundamentals; the daily menu is decided by the chefs and then moved up, which shows a classical example of a bottom-up approach. The seniors are influential but in an effective and unfelt manner, with no explicit push. The key rule is: 'involve everyone equally' which defines the strategy followed by the owners. There are no uniforms like any other traditional caf, which illustrates the openness of expression and empowerment. Following these evidences, as depicted above from the analytics of the case, it is clearly visible that the leadership style adopted is participative or democratic. The clear motto of such a group is 'let us', and this is precisely how it all proceeds; as the case suggests, there is no bossing around nor there is any delegation of tasks that might be the case in autocratic or delegative style of leadership respectively. For identifying the emotional intelligence competencies used in this assignment, reference is made to the Goleman's five dimensions of emotional intelligence. Goleman identifies two fundamental categories and then the dimensions respectively i.e.: Personal Competency Self awareness Self regulation Motivation Social Competency Empathy Social work As it is wisely said that the changes that are effective, come from the topic, along the similar lines, a brief analysis of the case and as visible from the readings quoted in the previous section, it is clearly visible that the following competencies are illustrated in the case, with reference to the owners Ruth and Rose: Self awareness: Ruth & Rose have developed this respect and care not just for their customers but for their employees as well, leading to the development of care and trust in the caf. Self regulation: Ruth & Rose have reduced the levels of control but at the same time, have enhanced the adaptability and trust in the arena, and it is reflected from the reading. Motivation: Motivation is a factor that is dropped from top to bottom and has a lasting impact. The leadership of the owners has created this motivational impact on the employees. Empathy: The owners have developed this empathetic atmosphere that enhances the understanding, development and orietental approach, giving care to all ends. Social skills: The two owners have allowed freedom to socialize amongst the staff and the customers. This in itself develops bonds, sense of collaboration and communication, and enhances cooperating, and promotes a community kind of an atmosphere. These emotional intelligence tools are very much in line with the kind of leadership style that has been identified to be prevalent in the caf scenario. Another classical tool that can be utilized for analyzing the leadership profile of the owners is the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid. In this grid, the y-axis defines the concern for people, while the x-axis defines the concern for production so (low, low) defines and impoverished kind of leadership, (low, high) defines country club type, (high, low) defines the product of perish, while (high, high) define a team leader. Based on the above grid and the analytics of the extract, it can be concluded that the owners of the organization have a high concern for people as well as high concern for the production, and therefore, it ultimately boils down to the right top quadrant of the graph where it defines the owners as team leaders. The outcome in terms of theoretical values is a team environment, which is based upon trust for individuals and respect for all, and this is precisely the point that was indicated in the case. In the upcoming sections of the assignment, the kinds of teams or groups formed at this caf i.e. formal or informal. The academics define the format of team works as formal or informal. Classically, formal teams are the ones that have predefined roles, hierarchies and structures that influence the performance and presence of each member. Prime examples of such teams are sports teams, or any structure where a hierarchy is present. Another format of teams is defined as informal teams, whereby there is dynamicity not just in terms of roles but also for role players i.e. there is no one person performing the same role over and over, and the role may change over a period of time through the consideration of the team members or the respective member may himself proceed with the same. Formal and informal team work derives itself from the same concept, whereby the roles are the fundamental creators of difference. Formal teamwork has a predefined set of rather static roles, for example, a team comprising of an IT person and an accountant, would definitely distribute jobs as per the background accordingly. In informal teamwork, however, there are roles that are taken up voluntarily by members of the team depending on their interest or willingness, rather than necessarily banking on their background. Success in case of an informal type of an organization is highly dependent on the competency of the teamwork (Hellriegel, Jackson, and Slocum, 2002). A thorough analysis of the reading develops the feel that in the caf, there are two major competencies i.e. relation to communication within the organization and the emotional level of competence. The former relates to the organizational communication and how communication takes place while the later is more involved in towards the sentiments of the employees. When referring to the communicational competence within the caf, it is visible that there are no rules abiding which is mandatory to communicate as communication flows through informal means with ease and no pressures at all. The freedom to speak, experiment and initiate are what can be drawn as conclusions from the extract. Essentially, this is one basic tool that assists the flow of information in the organization and defines the culture that prevails in the same, also leading to identify the mental levels of the employees (TAMU, n.d.). The extract clearly illustrates the level of frankness and ease of communication amongst the employees. The freedom to sing, talk, chit chat, laugh, with the lack of any hesitation, openness of culture, and lack of restrictions say a lot about the culture even before it is studied in depth. The impact of the culture is strong when it is communicated from the top, and this is visible in this case. Since it comes from the top, its impact is on the higher side. Secondly, when it is referred to about the competency at the emotional level, its about the attachment that is felt amongst the employees as well as between the organization and the employees, where each of them feels responsible not just for their own actions but for the overall progress of the organization. This is depicted from the fact that there are no job descriptions and flexibility of roles is present so everyone does not just what they think they are good at but also feel free to do more or anything else that is of their interest or can add value to the organization on the whole. Such values are developed when the employees feel the ownership of the organization which in this case is on the higher side. In modern day organizations, the role of communication cannot be ignored. Gone are the days when the formal predefined notions of communications were used. Today, it is about getting the message across in the most appropriate and most effective manner, rather than following the norms always. Codification of communication is a jargon that denotes the compilation of data, information and knowledge from various sources, which is then filtered and summarized in a format, language, with reduced verbosity to enable the understanding of the end audience. Today, oral communication has surpassed the importance of written communication, though it is highly subjective to the importance and criticality of the message, because at times, though delivered oral, yet written evidence need to be retained for future reference (Cameron, 2000). This article has been very well written and effectively narrated by the author. Interestingly, the author has ample evidence for putting forth their idea, and the same is sufficient for the reader to develop their own ideas about the scenario. The point of consideration is that the effectiveness of the author is such that a reader's point of view is bound to be along the similar lines as the author; this is where writing becomes effective. The description gives the extract a realistic touch and as a reader, one would feel experiencing the same. The wordings are simple, and no jargons are used for which a reader might need some reference. The extract is pretty much to the point, and precise; no irrelevant information is added to add to the length of the extract. This simple course of action makes the article very attractive to read, comprehend and analyze, and near to perfect. However, some issues can be identified as potential lacking in the article. Firstly, there is some feel of a bias towards the caf, since the author has mainly identified the good points only without much indication towards any negativity associated. For example, there are only good things like how the employees feel, how they interact, how well the management manages, how well the menu is organized, how the shifts are changed, how happy everyone's face is but when going to the basics, there cannot be everything right. Thus, this gives an impression of exaggeration of facts. Things might just be this good in the caf, but is there nothing wrong That is the question to address. Secondly, there is no sign of any employee complaints or any grievances that any or some employees might have had. This thought keeps the extract incomplete because seemingly, it gives just one side of the picture, rather than drawing the whole of it. Other than that, the smooth flow of operations is highlighted. Often one would ask, does that actually prevail There must have been some experiences even if not very often, which should have been dug out through appropriate means while interviewing. The most amazing part comes at the initiation of the article when the author states that the article in a newspaper about this caf attracted the author towards a visit. There haven't been many authors who are attracted to visit a caf across the state, unless it's their profession to do so, i.e. move around and write about places they visit and the food that they have. The extract seems highly biased towards the restaurant and can be an approach to actually attract people to visit. Restaurants and cafes are often involved in such public relations activities in which they hire authors to write good things about their caf as a neutral visitor. Such activities generally have a positive impact on the readers because readers tend to assume these authors as casual visitors sharing experiences. Such activities have gained mass level momentum particularly with blogs coming up on the internet, where it is easy to create such web spaces and have comments posted. The way this extract is written, it is quite comfortable to assume that this can be such a scenario. Such occurrences are unethical if and when actually deployed by an organization but this has become a rather regular norm in the industry. And definitely if one reader can feel it that way when reading this extract, so can be the feeling amongst many others and then even if this extract is not written with such an intent, then it just kills the overall motive of even sharing the experience across the board. Conclusively, it can be stated that the picture seems rather incomplete, due to which a complete analysis cannot be drawn, however, the above analytical review is based on the limited information that has been provided in the extract. The picture may seem incomplete because this was the description of a single day. There could have been two solutions for this; either this one day was not planned like there was an appointment taken a day prior i.e. this visit of a day could have been abrupt rather than a planned one or the number of days could have been increased to have a generalized summary out of the experience for the author. This is again derived from the fact that the article is pretty much directive towards the good side in approach without much consideration to the other side. Yet from the given set of information, it can be concluded that this was a different place altogether - highly creative and in an attempt to apply the fundamentals of process improvement that are generally seen to be applied in traditional businesses only, applied as a case to this scenario. It was a blend of creativity and innovation because it was initiated by two people who had never been on the cooking side, rather originated from graphical designing background. They developed a place for the business community to relax and have good food with some fantastic service. The most important conclusion to be drawn from this case would be the fact that respect is one word that can take a business sky high, bring in customers and retain them. Not much is mentioned about the employee turnover in the organization, which a gut feel says would be on a higher side, but employees would have loved working with so much freedom to experiment, speak, deliver, understand and to own the place - it's a remarkable achievement by the owners of the business, because not many cafes or restaurants today can be seen applying such management rules. Finally, this section constitutes on what has been understood from the reference material. The books utilized, as noted in the reference section, illustrate how leadership changes the scenario of operations and management. There is depiction of the success stories and the failures that have been there analyzed using various tools and techniques. The best thing about the illustration is that it clearly states that failure in the application of a technique does not necessarily imply that the technique is useless, rather it indicates the fact that this technique was probably not the best fit for the situation. Another noticeable point was that leadership does not necessarily imply the management or the ownership, as it did in the conventional sense, but when talking about leadership, it can be an informal format of a cross functional team or team within a department, headed by an informally selected leader or assumed leader then a declared one. References Clegg S, Kornberger M and Pitsis T (2006) Managing and Organizations: an introduction to theory and practice Sage Grint K (2005) Leadership: Limits and Possibilities, Palgrave Macmillan Goleman D, Boyatis R and McKee A (2002) The New Leaders: transforming the art of leadership into the science of results Little, Brown Goleman D (1996) Emotional Intelligence Lewin R and Regine B (2001) Weaving Complexity and Business: Engaging the Soul at Work Texere Linstead S, Fulop L and Lilley S (2009) Management and Organization: a critical text Palgrave Northouse P G (2006) Leadership: Theory and Practice, Sage Publications Storey J (2003) Leadership in Organizations: Current Issues and Key Trends, Routledge West, M. (2004) Effective Teamwork: Practical Lessons from Organisational Research (second edition), Oxford: BPS Blackwell Read More