What role does leadership have in transforming workplace culture to promote a healthy organization?

Question

The final project includes both a 10 ? 12 page paper (not including title page or references section) and a PowerPoint presentation with 8 slides of content. Utilizing independent research and course materials, compose a 10 – 12 page paper. The first section (5-6 pages) is to be a compare/contrast essay where you illustrate the similarities and differences in organizational components, actions, and attributes promoting a healthy culture and organizational components, actions, and attributes not promoting a healthy culture.

What role does leadership have in transforming workplace culture to promote a healthy organization?

Even though leadership has brought a heightened awareness of how to deal with mental health issues in the workplace and set the stage for a healthy organizational culture, disorders and problems will still occur. For the second section of your paper (5-6 pages), provide a reflective portion. This section should contain a synopsis of five of the following issues or disorders. Include ethical and legal considerations leaders may need to consider during transformation of organizational culture.

?              Job Stress and Health

?              Work/Family Conflict

?              Depression

?              Bipolar Disorder

?              Generalized Anxiety Disorder

?              Social Anxiety Disorder

?              Specific Phobias

?              Panic Disorder

?              PTSD

?              Schizophrenia

?              Antisocial Personality Disorder

?              Borderline Personality Disorder

?              Eating Disorder

?              Traumatic Brain Injury

?              Insomnia

?              Substance Abuse

?              Social Dysfunction

?              Violence

?              Passive-aggressive Behavior

For each issue/disorder you selected, indicate what behaviors call attention to the potential disorder or issue, as well as possible interventions and treatments for each disorder/issue. Explain how you, personally, will deal differently with these issues in the workplace than you would have before this class. At least one scholarly source for each disorder or issue should be used to support your ideas.

Next, imagine that you are presenting the results of your paper to a class of college students who are learning about psychopathology in the workplace. Create an 8-slide PowerPoint presentation (not including title slide or references slide) that highlights the key concepts of your paper. Incorporate at least 100 words of speaker notes for each content slide.

Sample paper

Disorders

Introduction

In recent years, employees and employers are increasingly becoming aware of the need and the necessity to study and understand human and employee psychology. The study of human psychology further helps the organization to understand the psychology of its customers thus giving them a competitive edge through understanding what their customers’ needs and desires and thus offering them the same as well as the employee’s needs and desires.  On the same note, anthropology, and cultural sciences helps the organization to analyze the behavior of a specific group of people thus shedding light on the culture of that particular group. However, culture comprises the study of a group behavior leading to the necessity of a healthy culture in an organization. A healthy culture dwells more on the psyche of a person which in turn affects his actions and activities. A healthy culture prompts an organization to do what it is supposed to do and on top of that, the organization can hide its internal conflicts from the outside world to see and witness.  However, there are those identifiable inputs, parts, pieces, and systems that are necessary for the completion of certain task and functions of an organization usually referred to as organization components. At times, an organization may adopt components and attributes that promote a healthy culture of an organization and on other occasions, these components may promote unhealthy culture in other organizations. This essay attempts to compare and contrast organization, activities, components and attributes that promote healthy and unhealthy culture.

Part 1

Maintaining healthy working relations is the dream of every senior management of an organization. Moreover, getting and staying healthy comprises of tending to the people-oriented aspects of leading an organization, and it is usually associated with the exemplary performance of the workforce. Thus, the health of the culture surrounding an organization highly contributes to the performance of that particular organization. Below are some of the components of a healthy culture:

1. Vision

A company or an organization that is intending to create, develop and maintain a healthy culture, will always have a vision and a mission statement that provides value, provides purpose and gives a sense of direction to the senior management and the employees in general. With a vision, the company can make fully informed decisions that are associated and are in line with the vision and mission of the company. Moreover, a company that upholds their vision and mission statements can put aside their personal vision and mission in the organization and give priority to the mission and vision of the organization thus creating the paste that holds the organization together. On the other hand, some organizations have no effective vision and mission statement making them blind making them sightless. Such organizations have no purpose, have no hope for the future, have no source of inspiration and to make matters worse, they have no sense of direction and lack a foundation to base their decision making (Shirey, 2009). The probabilities of such organization to succeed and flourish are minimal compared to an organization that has clear mission and vision statements.

2. People

Of the recent past, organizations have realized the importance of human input in all their activities thus making them one of the treasured and valued assets of an organization. There is no enterprise or a company that can build and create a healthy and coherent culture without the people who share the same determination, sentiments, core values and who are willing to go an extra mile to uphold the values of an organization.  Thus, for a company to have a healthy culture, it has to have the best, determined and dedicated individuals. As a result, the firms formulate and puts in place stringent recruiting policies to ensure that they get personnel of their kind. These firms go an extra mile of getting employees who are fitted or who can easily adapt to a particular organization culture. On the other hand, a company that experiences unhealthy culture also contains people who work for them. However, these individuals are different from those in an organization that has a healthy culture. People from unhealthy culture lack determination, lacks dedication and lacks the inspiration to take their organization to the next level.  However, these people can only be associated with the recruitment policies of an organization.

3. Place

A company that wants to cultivate a healthy culture may have the vision and mission statements; they may have the right kind of people, but the workplace significantly contributes to the culture of an organization. Making organizations workers as comfortable as possible increases their chances of increasing their performance and a good performance is usually associated with a healthy culture. However, the different organization may adopt different workplace structures ranging from close floor to open floors. However, most of the successful companies adopt open floors giving their workers to interact informally and thus promoting unity among them. Often, open architecture is more conducive to promoting certain office behaviors such as collaboration thus shaping the culture of the parent organization (Ofori, 2009). On the other hand, a company that is not concerned about their performances is likely to dwell in an unhealthy culture. Such companies are not concerned with the working places and working conditions in which their workers have to put up with in their daily operations and thus demoralizing them. In most cases, such companies are associated with closed architecture with sound proof walls thus preventing any kind of informal instructions among the workers. Such structure makes it difficult for the workers to seek help from others as well as restricts the unity that may exist between workers through the weakening of the paste that holds an organization together and that is interactions.

An organization’s culture consists of the values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviors that an organization personnel share and use on their daily basis as they go about the operation of the organization. An organization culture helps in determining how employees describe where they work, how they understand their business and how they see and feel themselves as part of the organization. Thus, attributes that are adopted by the organization helps in determining and establishing the culture of the organization whether healthy or unhealthy.  Below are some of the attributes adopted by organization:

1. Trust/Integrity

Trust and integrity is a process and can be described as a learned skill that involves an ongoing process of relationship building, communication, and action. Moreover, trust can also be a choice where employees decide whether to extend trust or not. When there are trust and integrity in an organization, there is a minimal chance of occurrence of corruption, nepotism or favoritism. With trust, the organization stands a better chance of improving competing at the highest level considering that all business transactions are clear, and workers are accountable off their work and actions (Tsai, 2011). On the other hand, an organization that practices unhealthy culture has an attribute of dishonesty where workers have the notion of every worker to himself and thus, there is no unity among them. Dishonesty in an organization brings adverse effects to the parent organization such as corruption and favoritism. Such qualities significantly affect the business operations, and the likelihood of failure of such a business is very high. Dishonesty further divides employees rather than bringing them together to the worker under the common goal of achieving the goals and objectives of the organization.

2. Clear lines of communication

Communication is a two-way process between the sender and the recipient of the information that helps all the parties to reach a mutual understanding through encoding, decoding, attaching meaning to a piece of information and then giving feedback. Considering that an organization is made up of more than one component, departments and people, clear and effective communication are paramount in ensuring all these departments and parts functions as a unit. A healthy organization culture will always ensure that it has clear communication lines to relay information back and forth as intended by the sender to the recipient. A healthy culture uses horizontal communication, vertical communication as well as flat organization structure to ensure that information gets to the recipient as quickly and as clear as possible.  Confusion in communication can lead to confusion in operations of an organization.  On the other hand, an unhealthy culture will always have broken communication mediums and channels where the junior staffs feel threatened by the senior management (San Park, 2009). Often, unhealthy culture adopts hierarchical organization structure creating an atmosphere of fear to the junior staff and thus making it very difficult for the junior staffs to reach to the senior management for suggestions and clarification of orders. At times, this unhealthy culture may begin to shape an individual’s personal life making it difficult for them to communicate even in an informal scenario.

3. Teamwork

A healthy culture encourages and inspires people to work together cohesively towards a common goal, and that is to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization. Teamwork helps to create a positive and conducive working atmosphere making the staff work in a collaborative manner. Staffs and personnel working in this atmosphere are readily available to support each other and to combine their individual expertise, skills, strengths and knowledge to enhance the performance of the team and the organization in general. A successful organization that dwells in a healthy organization culture encourages a process of working collaboratively with each other in order to take the organization to the next level.  On the other hand, there is no teamwork in unhealthy culture since the senior management or the investor uses his workers rather than valuing them.  Leaders of such organization make unrealistic demands on their workers as well as blaming them for the challenges and difficulties that the organization may face on the way. Moreover, an organization that has no teamwork spirit is likely to experience power struggles as each individual wants to outdo the other rather than working together as a unit for the greater good.

Roles of leadership in creating a healthy culture

Organizational culture comprises a set of rules and standards which can lead to behavior of its members through words, interpersonal relationship and shows that the effective leadership can aid in predicting the future as well as fostering their followers to change (Casida, 2008). Moreover, leadership is about coping with changes in a workplace and thus, a leader should choose and adopt a leadership style that is flexible enough to allow changes. Leadership and organization culture works hand in hand to improve and boost the performances of an organization and thus, a healthy leader will create a healthy organization culture and in turn, the organization will be healthy. Below are some of the roles of leadership in creating a healthy culture.

1. Provision of psychological structure and support – effective leadership and good leaders should inspire their workers as well as motivation and psyche to ensure that they are not down despite the difficulties they have to face in their daily operations. Moreover, the leadership has the duty to give the subordinates a clear scope of work, scheduling, and coordination of work, giving guidance and clarifying organization policies.
2. Satisfying the needs and preferences of his worker – despite employees having to work towards the overall objective of the organization, they have their personal issues and needs that have to be satisfied in their workplaces. Most of the times workers in an organization are after monetary reward, but an effective leadership will ensure emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of the workers are satisfied through the creation of friendly and psychologically supportive work environment(Ofori, 2009).
3. Encouraging performance excellence – a leadership that promotes a healthy organizational culture will always encourage excellent performances from its workers by rewarding them accordingly both monetary and through other means such as promotion and shopping gifts. Moreover, leaders in such organizations always encourage their workers to challenge the set goals, seek improvements as well as encouraging their workers that they will achieve the best and high standard performance.

Part 2

What role does leadership have in transforming workplace culture to promote a healthy organization?

Leadership in an organization plays a vital role in determining the work performance of individual staffs and work related issues. As a result, there is the need for all leaders to be conversant with the legal and psychological issues of their workers and the workforce in order for them to understand what the workers feel and go through in their lines of duty. This part of the essay seeks to elaborate on five disorders and problems in the workplace and how to deal with them.

• Job stress and health – job and careers are important in our lives apart from providing a source of income. However, even dream jobs have a stressful deadline, performance expectations, and other responsibilities. Examples of causes of job stress include career concerns, management styles, and interpersonal relationships. Some of the behaviors of workers suffering from work stress include anxiety, irritability, social withdrawal and difficulty in concentrating(Tsai, 2011). In other cases, workers may lose their confidence and turn to alcohol and drugs.  To deal with such situations, I would encourage workers to make the most of their workday breaks to socialize and ease job tension. Moreover, walking away when feeling angry can help fight anxiety and irritability while at work.
• Work/family conflict – nothing is easy in life, and work-life conflicts occur when there are incompatible demands between work and family chores making it difficult for an individual to participate effectively in both work and family roles. Often, ladies are the victims of this disorder due to giving birth forcing them to take maternity leave thus stalling their careers. Some of the outright signs and symptoms of a worker undergoing through this disorder include lack of concentration, tiredness, fatigue and at times missing to report to work. However, an individual worker can worker in conjunction with the leadership and management to solve this problem. The most viable solution I would go is telecommuting. I can work from the comfort of my house and attend to my family chores as well as long as I meet job and work deadline and quality (San Park, 2009).
• Depression – continued and untreated stress can develop into depression which persistent state of feeling very sad, hopeless and unimportant thus prompting an individual to live in an abnormal way. Depression involves all areas of an employee’s life apart from work like ranging from employees thoughts, emotions, and physical state. Some of the causes of low mood and depression in an employee’s life include loss, isolations, and conflicts both at home and at the workplace and job-related stress(Shirey, 2009). Some of the behaviors displayed by workers include lack of concentration, loss of confidence, loss of interest in everything and withdrawal of an individual from all activities of a social life. The most viable solution I would take in such a situation will be identifying the sub-threshold of the depression and seeking professional assistance from psychologists.
• Insomnia – Insomnia is a condition that an individual develops and makes it difficult for that person to fall asleep or staying asleep even when an individual has a chance to sleep. Some of the visible signs and behaviors of individuals suffering from this condition include fatigue, low energy, difficulty concentrating and mood disturbances. Some of the widely known causes of insomnia include changes in the human body, noise, and environmental disturbances. Everybody is prone to suffering from this condition both employees and workers irrespective of their ages(Ofori, 2009). To cope with this condition, I would visit a professional for assistance as well as be engaging more in both physical and social activities such as taking a walk, jogging or playing football.
• Substance abuse – substance abuse is a long –term pathological use of alcohol or drugs, characterized by daily intoxication. Some of the famous causes of substance abuse include work stress, depression at the workplace and increased workload. An employee who is suffering from this condition is likely to come to work late, have extra sick off days, have low concentration, become unorganized and become untidy and dirty. The most viable solution that I can take or suggest to an individual to change his behavior is to seek medical advice(Casida, 2008). Moreover, such individual can participate in employee assistance programs and participate in the therapeutic work environment.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can say that after a detailed research it is evident that it is not easy to create and develop a healthy organization culture, and it calls for individual efforts as well as that of the whole team. Moreover, the leadership of an organization provides the direction towards a healthy organization culture and thus, there a necessity to have a healthy leader. On the same note, it is prudent to realize that no matter how good and healthy organization culture may be, it still faces disorder problems but what matters most it is how an organization deals with such conditions. Moreover, a company should strive to adopt and implement valuable and useful components and attributes that positively contribute to the success and realization of the goals and objectives of the organization.

References

Casida, J. J.-Z. (2008). Leadership-organizational culture relationship in nursing units of acute care hospitals. Nursing Economics, 26(1),, 7.

Ofori, G. (2009). Ethical leadership: Examining the relationships with full range leadership model, employee outcomes, and organizational culture. . Journal of Business Ethics, 90(4),, 533-547.

San Park, J. &. (2009). Do types of organizational culture matter in nurse job satisfaction and turnover intention?. Leadership in Health Services, 22(1), , 20-38.

Shirey, M. R. (2009). Authentic leadership, organizational culture, and healthy work environments. Critical Care Nursing Quarterly, 32(3), , 189-198.

Tsai, Y. (2011). Relationship between organizational culture, leadership behavior and job satisfaction. . BMC health services research, 11(1),, 1.

Powerpoint speaker notes

• The study of human psychology helps an organization to understand the psychology of the employee’s needs and desires so that they can work towards satisfying them.
• A healthy culture dwells more on the psyche of a person which in turn affects his actions and activities and prompts an organization to do what it is supposed to do and as well as making the group hide its internal conflicts from the outside world.
• Most of the disorders in a workplace are brought about by work stress and interpersonal relations in the workplace, and they include work stress, depression, and work-family conflicts.
• A healthy vision and a mission statement provides value, purpose and gives a sense of direction to the senior management and the employees in general. The company can make fully informed decisions that are associated and are in line with the vision and mission of the enterprise.
• The workplace significantly contributes to the culture of an organization. Making organizations workers as comfortable as possible increases their chances of improving their performance and a good performance is usually associated with a healthy culture.
• People are valued assets of in any organization. No enterprise can build and create a healthy and coherent culture without the individuals who share the same determination, sentiments, core values and who are willing to go an extra mile to uphold the values of an organization.
• Sightless organizations have no purpose, have no hope for the future, have no source of inspiration, and they have no sense of direction and lacks a foundation to base their decision making.
• Uninspired and Undetermined people are different from those in an organization that has a healthy culture. People from unhealthy culture lack determination lacks dedication and lacks the inspiration to take their team to the next level.
• Unfavorable working conditions in most cases are associated with closed architecture thus preventing any informal instructions and interaction among the workers. Such structure makes it difficult for the workers to seek help from others as well as restricts the unity that may exist between employees.
• When there are trust and integrity in an organization, there is no occurrence of corruption, nepotism or favoritism. With trust, the organization stands a better chance of improving thus competing at the highest level.
• Clear and effective communication are paramount in ensuring all organization departments and parts functions as a unit. A healthy organization culture ensures that it has clear communication lines to relay information back and forth as intended by the sender to the recipient.
• A healthy culture encourages and inspires people to work together cohesively towards a common goal, and that is to achieve the goals and objectives of the organization. Teamwork helps to create a positive and conducive working atmosphere.
• Unhealthy culture has an attribute of dishonesty where workers have the notion of every worker to himself and thus, creating an individualism atmosphere. Dishonesty in an organization brings adverse effects to the parent organization such as corruption and favoritism.
• An unhealthy culture has broken communication mediums and channels where the junior staffs feel threatened by the senior management. Moreover, it adopts hierarchical organization structure creating an atmosphere of fear to the junior staff.
• There is no teamwork in unhealthy culture, but individualism is the dominant attribute where the senior management or the investor uses their workers rather than valuing them.
• Effective leadership and good leaders should strive to inspire their workers as well as motivating them and raising their psyche to ensure that they are not down despite the difficulties they have to face in their daily operations.
• Workers have their personal issues and needs that have to be satisfied in their workplaces. Most of the times workers in an organization are after monetary reward, but an effective leadership will ensure that emotional, psychological and spiritual needs of workers are satisfied.
• A healthy organizational culture will always encourage excellent performances from its workers by rewarding them accordingly both monetary and through other means such as promotion and shopping gifts.
• Even dream jobs have a stressful deadline, performance expectations, and other responsibilities thus causing stress to workers. Career concerns, management styles, and interpersonal relationships are some of the causes of stress and can be avoided through maximizing daybreaks.
• Work-Life Conflicts occur when there are incompatible demands between work and family. Often, ladies are the victims of this disorder due to giving birth forcing them to take maternity leave thus stalling their careers, but telecommuting can help reignite their careers.
• Depression is a state of feeling very sad, hopeless and unimportant thus prompting an individual to live in an abnormal way. Some of the causes of low mood and depression include loss, isolations, and conflicts both at home and at the workplace and job-related stress.
• Insomnia makes it difficult for a person to fall asleep. Some of the behaviors of individuals suffering from this condition include fatigue, low energy, difficulty concentrating and mood disturbances. Some of the causes of insomnia include changes in the human body, noise, and environmental disturbances.
• Substance abuse is characterized by daily intoxication. Some of the causes of substance abuse include work stress, depression at the workplace and increased workload. An employee who is suffering from this condition is likely to come to work late, have extra sick off days, have low concentration, become unorganized and become untidy and dirty.
• It is not easy to create and develop a healthy organization culture, and it calls for individual efforts as well as that of the whole team. Moreover, the leadership of an organization provides the direction towards a healthy organization culture and thus, there a necessity to have a healthy leader.