Free «Mountain West Health Plans» Essay Sample

A gap exists between transitions within an organization. This occurs when one quits an organization and when one comes in. The scenario is well illustrated in the style of leadership exhibited by two different and distinct chief executive officers employed at the Mountain West health Plans incorporated. Martin Quinn is an employee in this organization who has greatly faced this phase of transition controlled by the both managers. Leadership issues must be handled with a lot of care (Richard, 2009). Before a viable transition is effected in an organization, there is a need for the entire business premise to try and deal with the effects and consequences with a lot of care. This is because the very practice may lead to demoralization or improvement in the attitudes of the workers therein. The risks must be dealt with in details.

In order to understand the issues in this paper in a much better way, it is important to consider the types of leadership available in most organizations. Leadership is the dynamic association which is based on mutual influence and common purpose between collaborators and leaders. Consequently, leadership style is the manner and approach of the provision of plans, direction and motivating individuals (Ruy, 2012). There are three different types of leadership. These are authoritarian or autocratic, participative or democratic and delegate or free reign. A good leader should use all the three styles, but some bad leaders tend to incline to one style. The autocratic style is a case whereby the leader tells his employers what is to be done and how it should be done. He does not consider any possibility of getting some advice from the juniors. It best works when there is limited time and the employers are also willing to work.

Participative leader includes the ideas of some of his/her employees in the decision making process. He, however, maintains the final decision, thus making authority. It is used in the cases where the leader has some information and the other workers too. Better decisions can be drawn from this style of leadership. The delegative style is where the employees are allowed to make decisions though the leader is still responsible for the decisions made. It is used when the leader has full confidence in the workers. For the purposes of this paper I will only deal with the authoritarian and the democratic styles. This is because the two have been extensively dealt with in the cases of Rasmussen and Evelyn as experienced by Martin Quinn, an employee at the organization (Ruy, 2012).

There are some forces that control the type of leadership to be implemented. The issue of what amount of time is available. Are the relationships based on respect, trust or on disrespect? Who can be the leader: the one who has the information, employees or both? How well are the employees trained and how well does the leader know the task? Internal conflicts also determine the type of leadership in an organization. High stress levels may force the leader to use certain style of leadership. The type of task to be performed also plays a role in this arena. Whether it is a structured, unstructured, complicated or simple job.

Martin Quinn has faced several challenges at the hands of these two leaders in the organization in question. He is faced with upheavals caused by the resignation of Evelyn Gustafson. The resignation created a vacant position of director at the customer service department. Finding a fitting replacement became difficult for Martin (Robert, 2007). The costs in the organization are skyrocketing and thus the new director should bring this vice down at the betterment of the organization. He decides to recruit Rasmussen with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. The new director must fit into the shoes of Evelyn and transform the organization in a much better one than it was before.

The two sets of leadership are very different in that Evelyn has many desirable traits of character, such as a personal interest in her coworkers. These endeared her as a chief of the customer service at the organization. Evelyn is warm and is much concerned about her subordinates. Most employees took this as her weakness and thus embarked on to other activities. On the contrary, Rasmussen is a hard worker. He is very serious to every bit of the business affairs. As he enters the organization he immediately increases the number of calls that a single representative is expected to make . He brings in the issue of performance measurement to the organization. He, therefore, increases the speed and efficiency at the expense of workers welfare.

Each leader has a number of strengths and weaknesses. Evelyn is very kind to the employees. This makes them very loyal to the organization. Maximum retention of employees is observed during her tenure. However, she cannot reduce costs, efficiency and several subscribers are usually put on hold. On the other hand, Rasmussen style is result oriented. He analyzes the situation and then looks for ways to improve the services geared towards the production of some viable products. However, he has no experience in such a top managerial post (Richard, 2009).

For resolution matters, it is important to undertake the following transformations. Aggressive and qualified employees should be recruited in the work force. This would help counteract the problem created by the massive number of employees leaving the organization. Qualified employees will will contribute to the customer satisfaction in the facility. The issue of compensation should also come into the picture to help alleviate the problem of high costs incurred while running the operations of the firm. With all these factors placed together with the good qualities obtained from the two managers, Mountain West Health Plan corporation would be a haven of opportunities both to the customers and the workers (Richard, 2009).