Leadership and Groups

Motivating an employee to work hard for any organization is difficult without the necessary encouragement and plan to foster those motivations. Culture is not something executives hand to employees; it is something for which each of us has ownership. It is in the way we treat each other and how we perform, communicate, manage and work together. Organizational systems such as job design and goal setting, performance appraisals, base pay, and career development are reliable ways of establishing an atmosphere of efficiency.

Work groups and teams will work at FMC Green River with the right implementation and a stable timeline. The crossover will take time and considerable frustration as many employees are opposed to change. There will be a better chance of success starting from scratch with the plants that are currently in the planning and development phases.

Green River management should consider creating self-managed work teams. These teams should operate as self contained organizations with an appointed manager to lead and facilitate when needed. The level of difficulty of the tasks assigned to the team should be complex enough to result in final products where job satisfaction and motivation are kept at a high level. Team members should be carefully selected so that skill levels and expertise. The team will need to be made up of individuals that are willing to work together toward common group and organizational goals.

The self-managed work teams should use pooled task interdependence so that motivation and performance of each individual is maximized. By using pooled task interdependence, each group member will make a separate and independent contribution to the overall performance of the group. Each contribution is separate and easily recognized so that rewards can be distributed to each employee based on their performance (George & Jones, p. 349). Process losses can occasionally occur when using pooled task interdependence when work is duplicated. This can be circumvented by tasks being clearly and carefully assigned to each team member. The potential for process losses due to team member's lack of motivation is very low, however, because each member's contribution can be identified and measured (George & Jones, p. 350).

The majority of leadership at FMC Aberdeen is informal and characterized by trust. The employees are divided into self-managed work teams with a selected leader to facilitate. The team leader is not there to take responsibility, they are to step back and work with the team on a solution when an issue arises. Every so often that leader steps down and becomes a team member while a team member gets the opportunity to be a leader.

They pursue the model developed by Satish Kumar that Fear and Trust cannot reside in the same dwelling. One must overcome for the other to thrive. The plant was developed on the basis of trust and the communication of information between employees. Aberdeen eliminated fear in the workplace by giving the employees responsibility for their own actions and by letting them know that they would not be fired for making a mistake (Clawson, p25). The fundamental rules for joining the company is that they are expected "not to lie, cheat or steal and to be responsible for their own behavior". This eases the pressure of making suggestions and honest mistakes. This increases job satisfaction and performance levels, along with motivation.

In order to match the leadership skills of FMC Aberdeen, the Green River facility will need to implement quite a few changes. As stated above, self-managed work teams must first be introduced to increase employee's job performance. However, to aid employees who wish to rise in the corporate hierarchy, a manager will be assigned to each team to facilitate when needed. The biggest hurdle to overcome will be the issue of trust. Due to the union, it might be difficult to dispel the notion of fear in the facility, but even decreasing it will have profound effects on the motivation and job satisfaction of the workforce. By letting employees know that they are responsible for their own actions, but that they can make mistakes, they will eventually become more confident and trusting