Week 5- Solving Problems/ Improving Leadership

After five weeks of interning, I think that there are many positive things to say about the Dover Group and the way in which they function everyday. They have extraordinary, dedicated workers given that some of the venues are open seven days a week all year round and some events can go very late or start very early. However, one thing I noticed that could be improved with the leadership is the follower-leader dynamics and the power gaps between them. I noticed that the younger workers are often very intimidated even afraid of talking about certain issues they have with the managers and telling them their opinions. I think that some of the managers can sometimes be ignorant of how their employees view them. I often find that the managers are very moody. They are happy one minute and then annoyed the next and again I think this stems from the fact that they all work six days a week, some of them twelve or more hours everyday. So it makes sense that they can easily get annoyed if something is not running smoothly, even if it is something small. I also think that the restaurant and event planning businesses are always changing so it is important to make sure every venue is flourishing or else a lot of people can lose their jobs.

However, I do think this makes employees nervous about telling them their mistakes or asking them questions. For example, many of the employees wanted to take off for a few days to go away on summer vacation. I noticed that almost all of them talked to their peers about how they were nervous to ask because they did not want to get yelled at, these were mainly the part-time younger student employees. Even though these employees are not here year-round like the full-time ones I think it is still important for the leaders of the business to form good relationships with them because they could potentially come back after they graduate looking for full-time jobs. I think the managers purposely try to be intimidating and strict since these employees are so much younger and just see it as a fun summer job and not serious like the other employees. The managers have to rely on these part-time employees in the summer to help them. But I think that in order to form a better work environment for everyone, taking time out of their day to know these younger employees would be very beneficial.

This idea of forming closer relationships in this business ties into what we learned in our Theories class about LMX Theory or Leader-Member Exchange Theory. This theory explains that there are benefits to fostering a better work environment by having closer relationships between employers and employees. I think that sharing this knowledge with the general manager who I work with would help him understand how to handle these young high school and college students who do not take their job as seriously as he would like. If they had a better relationship with him and other higher-up people in the group, then they might actually want to work harder in order to prove themselves to the company. This, as I previously mentioned, could cause these employees to come back to Dover for jobs or even a career after they finish school.