2.

Q) Write about any new challenge that would be most prominent in the next five years
for any middle level manager related to the industry which you are associated with and
prescribe a leadership style which you would be suitable to deal with it.

Ans.) I work for HPE, and while working with my company, I have witnessed the below
stated are the most prominent challenges facing by middle level managers

As middle level manager is bridge between Leadership and entry level staff he carries
lots of responsibilities and entire operational functions depends on his communication
and leadership style

However they have their own challenge which keeps on coming out in leadership forums
some of them are lack of communication, Less decision making authority and handling
difficult people without a right to take actions.

As middle level manager is expected to drive decisions taken by leadership he should be

taken into confidence before taking any decision however generally it is seen that MLM
are not consulted in decision making process and they are expected to handle change
management end to end. In this situation sometimes they are themselves not convinced
with the decision how can they are expected to convince others and keep them
motivated and handle change without impacting business. I would like to share an
example

As my industry is customer based and customer feedback is very important for us which
gives us direction to go ahead and end the end of the day we want to see no customer
dissatisfied. To measure the same we have internal quality department in this team they
pick up random cases we do and they ensure if we have done work right or if there are
some errors they report it out. Till now only 5% of the sample they used to pick. This was
a sampling mythology we were following however we were seeing lots of customer
complain in our customer care department. As leaders say customer comes back to us in
only case when he is not satisfied if he is satisfied he will not come back to just say thank
you.

Hence leadership did analysis and got to know that the QA sampling mythology is not
right way to judge any customer feedback because there may be customer dissatisfied
who are sitting under 95% population which was not audited. Hence they have decided
to measure our performance based on customer’s feedback. Till now everything was
acceptable however when this communication came to middle level manager that we
are changing quality process and from now onwards it will be based on customer
feedback. If customer is not satisfied your team will take the feedback inform of error
and same will go to performance review at the end of the year.

The next surprising fact was whether it’s your team’s mistake or not your team will take
an error. This was not at all convincing and every MLM stating raising question on this if
this is not out mistake why we should take it. They explained that everyone of us is
running towards a common goal which is customer satisfaction. If you got an error which
was not your mistake you will ensure that you bring it to other team’s notice and get the
solution so that this team will never make mistake. This way we will internally drive
feedback mechanism and we all will achieve a common goal

To download this communication I opted for visionary leadership style where I took my
team into confidence and discussed with them about industry trend and importance of
customer feedback. Then I told them company vision and how will it help customers
which will ensure company growth. If company will grow definitely employee will get the
chance to move on to the ladder.

Then I explained how to get the common problem fixed inter department and to ensure
we are not getting repeated customer complaints. With this open communication I win
confidence of team and was able to implement the change.

However if MLM is involved into decision making process this should have been more
practical and implementable solution.