Leadership in Human Resource Management
Jiahao Yang
April 8, 2017
Executive Summary
CASE 1: BIGGEST MISTAKE
We talked about the biggest mistake that he has ever made in work and how he dealt with it.
CASE 2: TEA HOURS
This is a special approach that Lu uses to develop a good relationship between he and his followers.
CASE 3: HIRING CREATIVITY
HR also plays an important role in encouraging innovation, here’s what Lu did from personnel to changing environment.
Recommendations
1. Delegation. Share the power and responsibilities to fellow subordinates.
2. Emphasize more on transformational leadership.
Environment
Junkai Lu is the human resource manager in Juchao Investment Fund company. Juchao is a company that makes profit through transactions of private funds. There’re many private funds that do not go public, and need this kind of company to help them reach more people to buy it. Compared with other funds, the private funds they are selling usually have much higher return rate than the public ones. But the disadvantage is that private funds also have the attributes of higher risks and longer return time on investment. The one that Junkai Lu works at is the new branch company of Juchao. There are approximately 70 staffs here. Most of the staffs are sales person whose job is to contact and sell those private funds to customers.
As for Junkai Lu, he has been working for this company for 6 years. He has a master diploma in human resource management in Australia and some work experience there. Because he’s a returnee with foreign education background and work experience, his career path goes quite well here. Now he’s the head of human resource department. There are 2 human resource coordinators under him and several human resource assisstants. Although it’s the smallest department in the whole company, his job is really important. His responsibilities include composing all the job qualifications and responsibilities in the company, conducting interviews for new employees or current employees that apply for promotion, dealing with unqualified employee issues, training subordinates, producing the key performance index for all the staffs, communicating all the messages between subordinates and managers and so on. There’s one special thing in this company that they don’t have an administration department here. So people in human resource department also do the administrative jobs. That means they are also in charge of holding meetings, summarizing meeting records, helping organize promotional activities, buying and distributing office supplies and so on. However, according to Lu, he usually assigns these administrative works to his followers so that he can have more time and concentrate on human resource jobs.
When I asked about his daily activities, he told me that because he’s now in the new branch office of Juchao, recruiting new employees is his major job right now. Subordinates handle the job of putting up hiring information on the internet and conducting phone interviews while setting up on site interviews. And he will be interviewing those who come to the company before sending them to their final round with sales managers. Holding meetings is a culture of the company, there’s monthly strategic meetings, weekly summarizing meetings and daily meetings. Lu’s the host of all the meetings. So he also need to spent some of his time in preparing for the meetings. He also work with the sales teams to participate in planning, implementing and summarizing the promotional activities that take place every week, as this is the major event that can get a large number of customers at the same time.
Behavior Analysis
An interesting question is asked about the biggest mistake he had made during his work and how did he fix it. He told me that, once he was in charge of making new business cards for all the staffs in company. He let his subordinates gather the latest information of every staff and record them in an excel file. When his subordinates sent the file to him, he took a quick look at all the information and there didn’t seem to be a problem. So he then went to the factory to print out all the business cards. However, when he distributed the business cards to all the staffs, half of the people reported that they had the wrong mobile phone number on the card. He was surprised and checked on where did the problem take place. It turned out that it’s the excel file. In the file, one phone number in the middle of the list was repeated for one time by mistake, so the numbers above this cell was fine. But all the numbers beneath this cell was wrong because of that repeated number took up one cell, other numbers all move to the next cell and can’t correspond to the original row.
The action he took was reported this immediately to his superior, got back all the invalid business cards and apologized to everyone. He took full responsibility of this mistake. Although it’s his subordinates who submitted the excel file with mistakes to him without double-checking it, he’s the one who did the final inspection. It’s hard for him to skim through all the information in the file to find out one repeated cell, this can hardly be blamed. But he still chose to apologize and took full responsibility of this. Here’s where he showed his leadership. Regehr and Gutheil (2002) have found that when there’s an error, apology is the one strategy that takes highest leader responsibilities. Lu can justify by telling others that it’s his subordinates who carelessly made the mistake and loosen some responsibility on his shoulder but he didn’t. This is an important move he made that earn other’s forgiveness. According to Hunter, Hetrick, Fairchild, Cushenbery(2014), “Apology may be especially important for leaders, who must continue to work with followers despite the damage that mistakes can cause for their relationships”. If he didn’t take that responsibility and push them all to his subordinates, although it was his subordinates who caused the trouble, others will still blame him for not shouldering the responsibility because he was the leader. In that case, his subordinates would not have a good relationship with him anymore, neither would other staffs who witnessed this still respect him as a good leader. Lu’s boss also forgiven Lu’s error when he apologize, which made Lu a little surprise and thankful. Caldwell and Dixon(2010) , “Love, forgiveness, and trust are critical values of today’s organization leaders who are committed to maximizing value for organizations while helping organization members to become their best.” Lu’s boss’s forgiveness earned Lu’s gratefulness and help Lu becoming more careful at everything at work, which is good for them and also the company. So the behavior of Lu’s boss is also a great demonstration of leadership that Lu would remember and learn from according to him. The good side of apologizing is that you demonstrate to others that you are brave enough to admit your own mistakes and take full responsibility. This is extremely useful when it’s a competence based error. Because Kim et al. (2004) pointed out that for a competence based error, it is better to admit responsibility since people believe that you learn best from your mistakes when you admit them.
Also he mentioned to me that he has the hobby of drinking tea. He usually makes tea in his office every day, and he would invite others to chat with him in his office while drinking tea. Everyday he spends about one hour in doing so. This is a very unique tactic of him. While drinking tea is an old Chinese culture, most of the people love to do it. In-office talks with leaders might seem to be tense moments for many staffs, but with the tea there, the atmosphere can be eased a lot. It would feel more like a casual chat between two friends while they enjoy some good tea together, instead of serious reporting talks between one subordinate and one superior. Many articles have already proved that this kind of relationship would be better relationship between leaders and followers than the old ones. According to Graen and Uhl-Bien, LMX theory makes the dyadic relationship between leaders and followers the focal point of the leadership process. In the past leader may convey message to a group of followers. But there are differences between individuals. LMX directed attention to the differences that might exist between the leader and each follower, and this is exactly what Lu does in his tea hour at office. The outcome is obvious. It’s an effective way to get his relationship between him and followers change from stranger, acquaintance to partners. Staffs who talked with him get to know more about him and get to realize his charm in leadership, which is also a benefit because Rendell(1998) argued that charm is one of the most effective leadership trait that gets people to work for you more dedicatedly. Without this tea hour, the relationship between Lu and his subordinates would not have developed so fast. This can also be explained by Raven(1993). He pointed out that the five sources of power in leadership. Lu has changed his main demonstration of leadership power from legitimate power to referent power because from then on people who got to know more about him also began to like him, so they were willing to refer to him when they got problems at work.
Although much of the salary of most of the staffs in the company is bonus-based, which is like transactional leadership stated in Judge and Piccolo(2004)’s articles that would offer them great reward if they have good performance in that month that surpass the established expectation, Lu thinks that these physical awards are contingent but there’s still great need for mental encouragement. What Lu talked about here is Transformational Leadership, which is a process of engaging with others to create a connection that increases motivation and morality in both the leader and the follower. That’s the benefit during the tea time. Leader can have idealized influence on followers, share a common vision, inspire or motivate followers and so on.
When I ask him about his hiring standards and what kind of people he like to work with, he said one of the trait he value the most is innovative. According to Root-Bernstein (2004), there are two types of creative people, artistic or scientific. Human Resource also plays an important role in preparation for developing new concepts. As Collier and Floyd(2004) mentioned in their findings, there’re many management jobs relative to creativity. Like getting people involve in top management, give people proper training, create an environment that encourages creativity and remove the obstacle. Lu said that because there are so many marketing activities of their private funds, each time they reflect on it , they wat to make some changes and improve it. Because most of the staffs would participate in these events, they are there witnessing all the things, so their suggestions and feedbacks are being highly valued. Every staff’s opinion is highly welcome and would be presented to the reflection meetings. This help improve a lot. Because Lu told me that one time they have a new intern that just came to the company for one week, but because he’s not familiar with the established procedure of the whole marketing event, when he participated in one of the events, he actually came up with some really valuable suggestions from another perspective that help improve the event. So this is a good side of encouraging creativity without roadblocks. According to Galia and Legros(2004), middle level management is one of the most detrimental roadblock in innovation, because many middle level managers would steal the creative ideas from followers and claim to own that novel idea so that he get the praise or promotion by higher superiors. And subordinates would not have the chance to claim their originality of the ideas because of the suppress of middle level managements and lack of valid channels to communicate directly to higher level management.
What Lu did was praise the new intern for his great idea in the meeting in front of everyone. This is a good example of leadership in encouraging creativity. Also it matches what Hunter and Cushenbery(2011) found in their article, leaders can use intrinsic motivation to engage your team with a shared vision and develop an environment for psychological safety that encourages people to share ideas and build on each others’ ideas.
According to Goncalo and Staw(2006), a safer environment may make them more likely to share their ideas and build on each others’ work. People who are actually innovative and creative gets awarded for it, and others see it. This is an environment that creativity is welcome and valued, so people with unique ideas would not hide them but would willing to share them with others for the good of the whole company. Consequently the role of human resource is also important in innovation. They have to identified the creative people, recruit them, build a creativity encouraging environment and remove all the roadblocks in the company culture that stand in the way of innovation.
Recommendations
My first recommendation for Lu is to execute delegation. According to Ward and Macphail-Wilcox(1999), “Delegation is a power-sharing process that occurs when a manager gives subordinates the responsibility and authority for making some types of decisions formerly made by the manager”. As one kind of participative leadership, delegation is the one that allows the most participation of others compared with autocratic decision, consultation and joint decision. Because from the interview it’s easy the perceive that Lu is very busy at work, he handles issues from multiple aspects which seems far exceed the original duties of a human resource manager’s role. The reason may be that Lu is a workaholic, he doesn’t like to share power with others or he hasn’t find a way to delegate his jobs to some of the followers. This is going to bring much trouble if he keep doing all the things by his own. The efficiency may gradually fall and the precision may gradually fall either because he’s the only one making all the decisions for his department. So I would highly recommend Lu to encourage and facilitate participations of others in making important decisions and doing some important works. In general delegating can help him improve the decision quality, get greater subordinate commitment, make subordinate’s work more interesting meaningful, help with manager’s own time management and lead to developing managers from subordinates. To do this, firstly he has to list out all his jobs clearly and specify the responsibility that he’s willing to delegate, then provide adequate authority and specify limits of discretion, specify reporting requirements, ensure subordinate acceptance of responsibilities, inform others who need to know, arrange for the subordinate to receive necessary information, provide support and assistance, but avoid reverse delegation and make mistakes a learning experience.
As for why Lu hadn’t delegate in those past years, maybe he enjoys having the power of making all the decisions by himself or he’s not confident that if his subordinates’ capability is enough to handle some of his important jobs or make those important decisions. This is also a risk in delegating, not all the followers that are willing to share the responsibility is good enough to do everything right. If something goes wrong, Lu would still be the one who need to step out and shoulder all the responsibility.
My second recommendation would be emphasize more on the common vision of the whole company. Because from the information in the interview, we can see that there’s still a problem in company that most of the staff’s salary is bonus-based. This is absolutely not a good approach for the long-term development for the future of the company. When people work for money, they may left anytime when there’s a higher paid offer awaiting them. However, if people work for the future vision, they may be more energetic and loyal. According to Nanus(1992), visionary leadership is about creating a compelling sense of direction for the organization. This approach may not seem effective in the short term, because real benefit is what attracts people at the first place, not some vague vision. But it’s important for a company that wants to develop into a great enterprise. This hasn’t been stressed too much maybe because that the hiring threshold for sales is not that high and people on these positions change frequently. It’s more effective to implement transactional leadership here.
Reference
1. Regehr, C., & Gutheil, T. (2002). Apology, justice, and trauma recovery. JOURNAL-AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PSYCHIATRY AND THE LAW, 30, 425-430.
2. Cushenbery, L., Hetrick, A., Fairchild, J., & Hunter, S. (2014, January). Recovery From Public And Private Mistakes: Apology Reduces Leader Avoidance Of Followers. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2014, No. 1, p. 17460). Academy of Management.
3. Caldwell, C., & Dixon, R. D. (2010). Love, forgiveness, and trust: Critical values of the modern leader. Journal of Business Ethics, 93(1), 91-101.
4. Kim, P. H., Ferrin, D. L., Cooper, C. D., & Dirks, K. T. (2004). Removing the shadow of suspicion: the effects of apology versus denial for repairing competence-versus integrity-based trust violations. Journal of applied psychology, 89(1), 104.
5. Graen, G. B., & Uhl-Bien, M. (1995). Relationship-based approach to leadership: Development of leader-member exchange (LMX) theory of leadership over.
6. Rendell, E., & Rendell, M. O. (1998). Leadership, Charm and Dedication. Vill. L. Rev., 43, 15.
7. Raven, B. H. (1993). The bases of power: Origins and recent developments. Journal of social issues, 49(4), 227-251.
8. Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: a meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of applied psychology, 89(5), 755.
9. Root-Bernstein, R., & Root-Bernstein, M. (2004). Artistic Scientists and Scientific Artists: The Link Between Polymathy and Creativity.
10. Collier, N., Fishwick, F., & Floyd, S. W. (2004). Managerial involvement and perceptions of strategy process. Long Range Planning, 37(1), 67-83.
11. Galia, F., & Legros, D. (2004). Complementarities between obstacles to innovation: evidence from France. Research policy, 33(8), 1185-1199.
12. Hunter, S. T., & Cushenbery, L. (2011). Leading for innovation: Direct and indirect influences. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 13(3), 248-265.
13. Goncalo, J. A., & Staw, B. M. (2006). Individualism–collectivism and group creativity. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 100(1), 96-109.
14. Ward, M. E., & MacPhail-Wilcox, B. (1999). Delegation and empowerment: leading with and through others. Eye on Education.
15. Nanus, B. (1992). Visionary Leadership: Creating a Compelling Sense of Direction for Your Organization. Jossey-Bass Inc., 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, CA 94104-1310.
Questions
1. Could you tell me about your educational background?
2. Could you tell me about your work experience before this job?
3. Can you introduce your company to me?
4. Can you tell me what do you do in your daily work?
5. Can you introduce the company structure to me? Like how many departments are there, how many staffs in every level?
6. Why do you choose this company and this occupation?
7. What’s the biggest event in your company that you recently participated in?
8. How do you think you are in your followers’ eyes?
9. What do you think of your boss?
10. What’s the biggest mistake you ever made at work?
11. How did you fix that mistake?
12. How do you maintain your relationship with your subordinates?
13. How do you deal with the relationship between you and your boss?
14. What’s your best trait that makes you a leader?
15. What do you think that you can improve at work?