We will elaborate leadership practices required at Weald Leisure center to tackle decline of memberships

Executive Summary

In this report, we are going to analyze the reasons behind the decline of memberships at the Weald Leisure Center and provide recommendations to improve it through effective leadership practices. One of the most concerning issues raised by the employees working at Weald Leisure Center has been about the lack of leadership by the previous managers. Nicola has the challenge to develop a clear vision for Weald Leisure Center, identify leadership styles that would be effective in handling day to day operations, developing an extensive staff development programme and providing the evaluation & monitoring methods for this whole process. In short, we will enable Nicola to build an effective leadership programme and implement it.

Establish a clear vision for the Leisure Centre to base a new Culture:

Before arguing about various leadership theories and their implementation, the first and foremost thing is to provide a clear vision to the employees. As we’ve seen earlier there was no clear vision provided earlier to the employees about the scope of organization and how it can be a role model for other community centers working around the country. It was all due to lack of effective leadership practices. We are going to provide a clear vision to Weald Leisure Center’ employees which will ultimately change the attitude of employees and create a new organizational culture. We must also understand that people engage in leisure activities for three core reasons. The first reason is to increase quality of life, the second is to socialize and the third reason is to have fun (Ustun, 2018). Weald Leisure Center is not just a center having pool and other facilities rather we are here to improve public health, ensure an active lifestyle of people, deliver innovative recreational activities and reduce burden on other public health organizations.

Our mission is “Keep active, Live contended”. Our vision for Weald Leisure Center is to build a community that works collectively for active, healthy and safe lifestyle through sustainable efforts and continuous improvement.

Leadership theories that will help to integrate changes

Now as we’ve developed a broad vision for Weald Leisure Center, the next step is to make changes which will ultimately lead us to the achievement of this vision. For this purpose, we must identify the leadership styles that would be effective in the integration of such changes. Through literature we can identify these three leadership theories which might help us achieving our objective (Tran and Vu, 2021).

· Transformational Leadership

Leadership categories can be divided into two broader categories. The first category is classical and the second one is known as postmodern. In postmodern category, transformational leadership is one of the most researched leadership theories. Initially developed by (Burns and Leadership, 1978) and later expanded by Bass (1985), transformational leadership covers leadership behaviors oriented towards innovation, future, reformation and change.

· Servant Leadership

Servant leadership was originally introduced by Greenleaf (Leadership, 1977). It is defined as a “leader’s desire to motivate and guide followers, offer hope and offer a more caring experience through established quality relationships”. Graveling et al. (2014) argues that youth projects require trust and respect which are core components of servant leaderships. Hence adopting servant leadership can be an effective strategy for Weald leisure center.

· Shared Leadership

Shared leadership is defined as a dynamic interactive influence process for which the objective is to lead one another for the achievement of group or organizational goals or both (Künzle et al., 2010). Basically, in shared leadership the traditional hierarchical leadership practices are not followed and leadership responsibilities are assigned based on the expertise and knowledge of individuals. It can be referred as distributed influence from within the team.

How to improve and implement leadership development

Through recent studies and management literature we’ve identified three major leadership styles that would help us to transform our team and achieve our desired goals (Choi et al., 2017). Now the challenge is how to practically implement these leadership styles in a way that existing issues might get resolved and employees are motivated to give their best for the organization. For this purpose, we have to design a staff development programme and discuss the day-to-day operations which might get influenced with the contemporary leadership practices being introduced in Weald Leisure Center. In the end, we will also provide some personal recommendation and implement a monitoring or evaluation procedure to keep the progress on track and avoid deviation.

Practical implementation of leadership theories at workplace:

Understanding and build relationships with her staff:

The manager has to understand the potential of each staff member and build a friendly relationship with them. It will help Nicola to understand the ground realities of the center in a better way. Servant leadership style would help Nicola to facilitate his staff in achieving the organizational goals. As Bowen (2020) suggests servant leadership engagements creates a healthy organization in which the status and power are shared among employees and their supervisors.

Create an effective day-to-day management policy for the facility

Day to day management can be classified into three broad practices. Earlier, most of the organizations were using Classic hierarchy is day to day management but in the last two decades we’ve seen a huge change. Now most of the organizations are engaged in Democratic hierarchy and most recently Collaborative management (Siebens, 2019). We will discuss all of them briefly.

Classic Hierarchy:

In Classic Hierarchy the authority and power are top down. In current times we can observe it in military where a chain of command has the authority from top levels to bottom. In such system we have less innovation and strict control and policies. Classic hierarchy can be too frustrating in day to day management (Costache and Pintilei).

Democratic Hierarchy:

In democratic hierarchy the power and authority is still in the hands of higher management but before taking major decisions all the stakeholders are informed and their suggestions are taken before final decisions. Mostly non-profit organizations still adopt this model. Democratic hierarchal models have been considered crucial for the organizations (Viggiani, 1997).

Collaborative management:

This is the most effective way of management according to research. In day-to-day management, whole group which includes staff as well as participants is included in the decision-making process. Each member is empowered to make decisions for the betterment of the organization. Basically, this model brings a sense of ownership in employees and members which ultimately increases the overall productivity. Collaborative management has been vastly studied in healthcare sector (VanVactor, 2012). However, some basic things must be kept in mind before implementing collaborative management model. Each employee will have some limits better known as limits of authority, modern lines of communication such as social media apps will be used between employees and participants and an effective conflict management policy will be devised to ensure smooth operations.

Raise staff motivation

Employees will be kept motivated through envisioning the higher purpose of our center which is obviously to improve the quality of live our community. High performers will also be motivated through monetary and non-monetary benefits and rewards. The chance to be included in high performer has positive impact on employees. (Fukushige and Spicer, 2011).

Managerial processes to embed culture of respect and social responsibility

Social identity theory and CSR:

Corporate Social Responsibility or better known as CSR is the ethical and moral obligation of businesses to pay back to the society. It can be in various forms whether they pay back to public education, health, environment or any other issue. Social Identity theory suggests that employees have higher self-images when they work for any organization that is involved in CSR activities (Greening and Turban, 2000). Hence, they stay loyal to the organizations and put maximum efforts. Weald Leisure Center by default serves the public through improving quality of life so we must communicate this to our staff.

Promoting diversity:

Studies shows that promoting diversity at workplace can help increase the overall productivity of employees (Gomez and Bernet, 2019).

Proposed a staff development program

(Leadership Development Plan)

· Self-improvement

Employees who strive to develop themselves according to current and future needs can be referred as having effective leadership qualities. Such leaders consistently update themselves and ensure their followers are on the same path. For this purpose, Personal coaching is an effective movement which has been widely accepted by Fortune 500 companies (Nunes and Baker, 2001).

· Modelling and Benchmarking

Next step is to identify some ideal practices from strongest competitors, leading organizations or in simple words best in the business. Modelling and Benchmarking refers to identifying such practices and replicating or comparing our practices to them. Nicola must identify such centers and replicate their best practices. Doumeingts and Browne (1997) suggests that Modelling and Benchmarking proves to be a basic building block for emerging organizations.

· Personal relationships and Power

As we’ve mentioned earlier when leaders are aware of their employees’ hobbies and interests, they can build a strong relationship with their employees. “People do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care” (Graham et al., 2019). Once the relationship of a leader with his follower is good, he can convince them to do better. Communication

· Communication

Research shows that leaders spend almost three quarter of their time in communication (Nunes and Baker, 2001). It shows how crucial effective communication is for the organization. Nicola can improve communication practices through clear and short messages, regular feedback and selecting the correct channel for both herself and employees.

· Change and Conflict Resolution

As it’s famously quoted that “The greatest difficulty in the world is not for people to accept new ideas, but to make them forget about old ideas”. Nicola must identify best conflict management practices through modelling and bench making and implement it to avoid conflict when change occurs. Yang (2014) suggests transformational leadership practices positively influence conflict management.

· Collaboration

Weald Leisure Centers’ employees must collaborate to achieve the organizational goals together. Contemporary leadership styles increase collaborations efforts which ultimately increase motivation (Yang, 2012). The concept of Synergy helps teams to achieve impossible through team work and collaboration.

· Motivation

The final and most important technique is to keep employees motivated through effective leadership practices. Nicola must identify individual needs of employees and try our best to fulfill them. Furthermore, employee motivation level should be measured time to time using various techniques available in modern times. Literature shows that leadership and strong organizational culture is directly linked with employee motivation levels (Sa'adah et al., 2020)

Recommendation

Here are some personal recommendations for Weald Leisure Center:

Guide staff about the value of their work:

Nicola must ensure that each member is aware of that their job is not an ordinary job and that each member is responsible for improving or worsening the community’s health and quality of life.

Quality of life improvement through flexitime:

When employees are given the relaxation to work on their flexibility, they perform better. Modern organizations like Google use such techniques to keep employees motivated and increase productivity.

Empowerment through shared leadership practices:

When leadership responsibility and authority distributed among employees, they feel empowered and work even harder for the achievement of organizational goals. We must ensure shared leadership practices at Weald Leisure Center.

Individual level consideration and developmental plans:

Nicola must informally interview each employee to understand their deficiencies and develop a personalized developmental plan for each of them.

Adopt innovative and sustainable compensation techniques:

Through using rewards and compensation, employees can be encouraged to perform better. Weald Leisure Center’s resources can be utilized to reward the high performers and motivate others to do the same.

Succession Planning:

One of the most important things that Nicola must do is to develop a leader who can handle the operations even when Nicola is not at the job. Moreover, there must be someone who can continue the vision provided by Nicola even if she resigns.

Evaluation and measurement of our recommendation

Effective monitoring and evaluation plans helps the organizations in achieving goals and restrains from deviating. Here are some of the monitoring and evaluation techniques that would be implemented in Weald Leisure Center:

Monthly feedback by employees and members:

Employees would be required to provide monthly feedback about the new changes implemented in the organization. Moreover, members of the Weald Leisure Center would be also requested to provide feedback and their satisfaction level would be measured.

Tracking the inflow of new members:

One of the most common techniques is to measure the inflow of new members. As we know word of mouth marketing is still one of the most effective marketing tools as it is authentic. By measuring the inflow of new members, we will be able to identify and monitor the effectiveness of our programme.

Tracking the retention of existing members:

We will also measure the turnover rate of employees to know if they are satisfied with the changes and if not, what could be improved.

Surveys from locals about the perception after program implementation:

Time to time surveys would be conducted from non-members to understand what perception is being developed among them about the Weald Leisure Center. In this way, our mangers would be able to identify the actual needs of community.

Action Plan:

Task

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