Today, my university is overall successful and continues to make a positive growth on delivering far-distance education to students across the globe. Despite the overall success, the challenge the university currently face is making close examination and communication between all 100 plus physical campuses. Since it is overwhelming to memorize and consider all physical campuses', I believe the university takes the more convenient approach by thinking that all physical locations are exactly the same. As a result, my university strongly follows the traditional top-down style of leadership.
Whether we're examining Obolensky's Circle for Leaders from the top-down or bottom-up perspectives, the circle often times become rigid when employees on the lower level (outside headquarters) becomes involved. One of the most common topic and problem my university face is the low enrollments for on-campus courses. From the top-down style, the circle likely starts from the statistics the university received. Noticing the low numbers, they then send all campuses effected an email notifying us about the low enrollments in addition to encouraging us to enroll more students. From this point, the circle almost always becomes rigid. When employees notice something is not working or have any information that can be beneficial to a company, it is encouraged for top leaders to hear out to make effective decision-making ("Feedback is Critical to Improving Performance", n.d.). Whenever low-level employees like myself provide feedback, it is usually read by someone but ends without taking any form of action.
The bottom-up style of leadership goes exactly the same way as the circle became rigid in the top-down style of leadership. Whether it's a problem or a suggestion that we may find helpful for the entire university, we either get a very broad, short response or the email becomes lost. In either case, there is almost always no further action taken after mentioning something to those at the top of the organization. While I understand the difficulties as top department receives hundreds of emails from all other campuses daily, being ignored or receiving very short responses often makes me think that I have no meaning or ownership of the organization. This then results in lower job satisfaction, that may lead to a domino effect of problems for the organization (Whetten & Cameron, 2016).
Personally, I believe there's a large gap between top leaders and bottom employees in my organization. Obolensky (2014) states that if ones are working "blindly" within the organization, it can eventually lead to chaos. To avoid this, I believe that the organization should implement some "regional departments" to bring the gaps closer together. Rather than having the top leaders look at each individual campus, they can have employees work in-between to provide "summaries" of their region. For instance, the United States may have an employee or two focusing on all campuses on the Pacific Northwest. While this help ease top employees, employees in this department can likely obtain more information that top organizations had no time to examine. By summarizing all campuses, it reduces the complexity and establishes clarity for top employees. By understanding the situation better, they can then make more effective decision making for the entire university.
References:
"Feedback is Critical to Improving Performance". (n.d.). Office of Personnel Management. Retrieved from https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/performance-management/performance-management-cycle/monitoring/feedback-is-critical-to-improving-performance/
Obolensky, N. (2014). Complex Adaptive Leadership: Embracing Paradox and Uncertainty (2nd ed.). UK: Gower Publishing.
Whetten, D. A., & Cameron, K. S. (2016). Developing management skills. Boston: Pearson Education.
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