MSLD 635_May 2019

Following a drop in the housing market and major building damage due to a fire, owner of Gallery Furniture, Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, had to make major organizational changes (McIngvale, 2012). With help from Influencer Training, McIngvale implemented changes that positively impacted his company. For example, when contacting potential customers, McIngvale coached his employees in follow-up and prospecting practices; rather than let a customer/potential customer leave, never to be heard from again, McIngvale’s employees reached out to them (McIngvale, 2012). In addition to encouraging his employees to reach out to customers, McIngyale offered incentive and data-sharing (McIngvale, 2012). In Data-sharing, employees publicly share their client numbers and prospects won over (McIngvale, 2012). When McIngvale talked about using data-sharing to push performance, I thought about my organization’s practices. In order to create healthy competition among Worldwide campuses, our leadership ...

Self-managed teams provide employees opportunities to information-share and grow within their organization. In self-managed teams, responsibility is increased, and work teams are assigned a variety of tasks like scheduling, budgeting, job assignment, developing, selecting team members, and much more (Brown, 2011, p. 349). In allowing employees to assume responsibilities that typically belong to leaders, team members may feel a sense of ownership, purpose, and leadership within their organization. As I have mentioned in previous assignments, I was a part of a work team that built training curriculum for our newly hired employees. While our team launch was initiated by leadership, our work team took ownership of the project once leader directives were given and goals established. Paul Tesluk (2008) noted that work teams need effective leadership in order to arrive at the point of self-management. Once the team is established, the leader helps the team understand goals, but goals are com...

When I was in college as an undergraduate student, I was a member of our Public Relations (PR) team. There were two PR teams on campus; each team consisted of 4 members (2 males, 2 female). Though we had events during the schoolyear, the main function of our job occurred during the summer. In the summer, we traveled to various middle and high school camps throughout the country, and served as camp counselors/servants/entertainers, you name it! However, before we began our rigorous traveling, both PR teams went on a retreat with our PR team director. During the pre-travel retreat, we participated in outdoor team-building activities. Of all the team-building activities, the outdoor events were most challenging. One activity was called the trust fall. In the trust fall exercise, one person stood on a ledge, blindfolded, with their back to the rest of the group; the person on the ledge was approximately 6ft in the air. While the person was on the ledge, the rest of the team members locked...