What is the difference between managers and leaders? Is it possible to be an effective manager without being a leader? Provide examples to support your answer.

The difference between managers and leaders are their pathway to job completion. I believe that managers deal more with processes and procedure. A manager is thought to be more structured, controlled, analytical, and rule-oriented. A manager might purely look at deadlines and outcome achievement. I think managers that are not leaders may look at projects more as a project manager. Leaders create environments where workers can achieve success through collaboration and team building. Leaders tend to be experimental, visionary, unstructured, and flexible. Leaders create goals with their team members. I believe that workers tend to work more diligently for leaders than managers because they feel as though the goals set have included their outcome as well. I believe a manager can get the job done, but not necessarily the best job possible. I also believe a strong leader on a team is not always the manager. I believe in today’s workforce that members of a team that specialize in specific areas can be a leader and have it be acceptable by all members of the team including management. According to Seth Godin in the book Triibes people want to be led and motivated they don’t want to be managed. Leaders create movements in which people want to join and be a part of.

What is a significant employee behavior issue that managers confront in the workplace? According to organizational behavior theories, how do you think it should be addressed?

There are many significant employee issues that managers must confront in the workplace some of these are Productivity, Absenteeism, Turnover, Deviant Workplace Behavior, Organizational Citizenship Behavior, and Job Satisfaction. I think the most significant of these behavior issues are Organizational Citizenship Behavior. These are the behaviors that allow the workplace to be a civilized community that works positively together.

Successful organizations need employees who will do more than their usual
job duties—who will provide performance that is beyond expectations. In today’s
dynamic workplace, where tasks are increasingly done in teams and where flexibility
is critical, organizations need employees who will engage in “good citizenship”
behaviors such as helping others on their team, volunteering for extra
work, avoiding unnecessary conflicts, respecting the spirit as well as the letter of
rules and regulations, and gracefully tolerating the occasional work-related
impositions and nuisances (Robbins & Judge, p. 30)

It is important that everyone is willing to go above and beyond to create a successful outcome in the department or organization. Good leadership can create this community. Leaders that lead from within can exemplify these characteristics for their employees to follow. They can create an environment where employees feel comfortable to be flexible, and feel that their above and beyond attitude is appreciated by leadership and team members. This allows the department to work more as a team.


Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2007). Organizational behavior (12th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

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In what specific ways can an individual influence an organization through the quality of his or her management and leadership skills?

I have found that the three most important leadership skills an effective manager can bring to a management position are attitude management, procedure management and goal setting.

I believe that attitudes are as contagious as the common cold. A manager that keeps a positive attitude can affect the entire team in a encouraging manner; in that same vein a manager with a negative attitude can cause the entire team to be pessimistic.

Procedure Management is important for a team in order to have a consistent way of approaching projects. If a team feels like they need to recreate the wheel every time they encounter a new project they will waste time and money. Proper procedures can keep a team organized and efficient. A manager that knows how to put these procedures in place and manage them can keep their team running smoothly.

Goal Setting is imperative for managers. Everyone on the team needs to know what the outcome of a project should look like. A manager that sets strong goals for their team and allows them to understand their role in the outcome can expect powerful results. A truly effective manager may have his team contribute to the goal creation so they have ownership in the final results.

Career Development Plan

Feedback & Performance Improvement:

Sales Team will be given feedback in three formats:

1. Weekly Sales Quota Report
2. Monthly Customer Service Report
3. Quarterly Sales Associate Performance Report

Employees will have the opportunity to set up a meeting with the training manager to work on any area that received a score of requires improvement. This will be available weekly for Sales Quota Reports, monthly for Customer Service Reports and quarterly for Performance Reports. Employees receiving scores above requires improvement will also be able to set up meetings with the Training Manager after all requires improvement meetings have been completed. We believe the ability to meet with the training manager will allow all sales associates to reach higher levels of performance. Training Manager may set up subsequent meetings with Sales Managers and Sales Customer Service Manager if additional on-the-job training is required.

Promotions and Educational Opportunities

When open positions become available in the Sales Leadership Team members of the Sales Team will be given the opportunity to submit applications and resumes for the available position. Remaining members of the Sales Leadership Team and Senior Management will then conduct interviews of the top three Sales Associates considered for the position. If a member of the Sales Associate Team is not chosen to fill the open position then the job will be flown to the public.
Educational Opportunities are available to all Sales Associates. If a Sales Associate would like to attend a conference style training (1-5 day training) approval will be required by the Sales Leadership Team. If a Sales Associate would like to receive a bachelor or masters degree and would like partial tuition support from EnviroTech approval will be required from the Sales Leadership Team and the Senior Management Team.

Family Support

We at EnviroTech realize that you have a family outside of work for this reason the following programs are offered:

Family Medical Leave Act:
FMLA requires covered employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave to ''eligible'' employees for certain family and medical reasons. Employees are eligible if they have worked for their employer for at least one year, and for 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months, and if there are at least 50 employees within 75 miles. The FMLA permits employees to take leave on an intermittent basis or to work a reduced schedule under certain circumstances.
If you feel you may have a situation that may qualify for time under the FMLA please contact Human Resources as soon as possible.

Sick Time / Personal Time:
Sick Time or Personal Time may be used for situations pertaining to the employee or members of their immediate family (spouse, partner, children, or parents)

Parental Educational Support:
Employees may take off up to 20 hours a year of unpaid time off to attend parent conferences, school meetings, or volunteer time. Employee’s immediate supervisor must be informed at least one week prior to this requested time off.

Leadership Team:
Adaptation for Sales Leadership Team Members for career advancement

Jim Martin, Vice President of Sales
Jim Martin currently has a bachelor’s degree and has expressed a desire to go back to school for his Masters in Business Administration. The Senior Management Team has agreed to pay half of Jim’s tuition since this is related to his current position.

Shane Huck, Sales Manager
Shane has requested to attend the Covey Leadership: Great Leaders, Great Teams, Great Results (3-Day Workshop) all members have agreed that this training will facilitate with the training of the Sales Associates so it has been approved.

Tom Gonzalez, Sales Manager
Tom currently feels that the Train the Trainer program is enough to handle at the moment. He has been mentoring some sales associates and feels that his home life is suffering due to extended work hours. He may be choosing to work a flex week of 4 ten hour days to support both the sales team and his home life. This has been approved by Senior Management.

Susan Burnt, Sales Customer Manager
Susan is currently mentoring many sales associates in customer management. She is currently being given a mentoring stipend because of her dedication to these associates.

Ving Hsu, Training / Product Educator Manager
Ving has requested The Brooks Group training. EnviroTech has sent sales staff to The Brooks Group training in the past and feel that the return of investment was positive. Ving has also been cross training with the sales manager and customer service manager so he can assist the sales associates more fully.

Conclusion and Budget:
The current budget for this plan is zero dollars. The trainings are allocated under a special “training” budget and must be approved by the Leadership Team and Senior Management Team. This plan is expected to be effective because of the prior “buy-in” by members of the Leadership Team and Sales Associates. The benefits for this plan are expected to be higher job satisfaction, higher customer satisfaction, and a deeper understanding of company policies and procedures. The return of investment for this project is expected to be shown in a higher volume of sales and customer retention.

What are your thoughts on evaluating an employee?s performance based on what a manager thinks he or she deserves, as opposed to what his or her work entails? Support your rationale with examples

The importance of job performance forms is imperative for this reason. It is important what a manager thinks of the employee to say the contrary would just be false, but a job performance report systematically reviews employees on consistent skills and performance. It requires the manager to evaluate the employee’s skills and outcomes and makes it more difficult to slant the entire report to their way of thinking. A manager can still give a negative report but will need to back up the report with examples of not meeting the previously agreed upon jobs and performances. If the manager has a bias for or against the employee it may be easier to prove with a consistent job performance report.

In recent years, there has been a concern of grade inflation within academia. Do you think a case could be made for performance appraisals being inflated? Why or why not.

I have been involved in the discussion as an educator of grade inflation within academia and educators having performance appraisals inflated. In the field of education I would agree with both of these statements, but in the business arena I have not experience the same inflation. As a teacher I would be evaluated every year for my first two years and then every other year after I received seniority. Being evaluated consisted of having my principal come in twice during the year and observe a lesson. My student’s grades nor their success or failure were included in my evaluation. When I joined the business world and started being evaluated it was a stark contrast. I was evaluated on my job performance and my results. It was no longer good enough to do a good job I had to accomplish something while doing a good job. My marketing metrics were taken in to account of my total job performance.

Are the intangibles, such as personality, attitude, and behavior, as important to consider when evaluating an employee as his or her work product? Provide some examples to help explain your rationale.

I believe that intangibles such as personality, attitude and behavior should be included when performing a job performance analysis. In many positions personality, attitude and behavior make the position successful or not. The three positions I think of when I think of these intangibles being imperative are nurses, sales people, and customer service.
In the frontline of the health care industries nurses need to have more than just the medical book knowledge acquired in Nursing School. Nurses must have what is known as “bedside manner”. They are required to have certain intangible qualities that make them successful dealing with patients, families and doctors. These should be and are included in many nurses’ job analysis performance forms.
Salespeople must confront constant rejection in their daily quest for leads; effectively using intangible skills will make or break a successful salesperson. They must have and outgoing personality, a positive attitude and professional behavior to represent the company they are selling for effectively. If they do not possess these skills they will be unable to successfully meet their sales quotas.
Customer Service deals mainly with customers that are not currently pleased with their company’s services or goods. Customer service representatives must positively handle negative situations to keep customers happy and coming back for more. Intangibles would be a huge part of a CSR’s job performance.
In all of these positions it is important to have goals and expectations set that exhibit what successful models of these intangibles look and sound like. If a worker knows what success looks like they will be able to attempt to duplicate it in their daily work assignments.