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Question #1 (Chapter 8): Servant leadership is “an approach to leadership focused on serving others” (Hitt, Miller, Colella, & Triana, 2018, p. 271). In your opinion, what is the meaning of the following statement: “The most demanding test of the servant-leader is whether those served grow as people…” (Costa, 2010, para. 11)? Servant leader acts for the benefit of the people he is associated with. He ensures to maintain both qualities of a leader and a servant. He is ready to sacrifice today for tomorrow. Servant leader always work for the betterment of the people with whom he is associated with. He would encourage them to do things rather than dictate them. He thinks of people who work with him first i.e. he thinks of ‘you’ before ‘me’. He helps people with life issues also which help an individual develop faith on his leader. It develops a feeling of trust among the people towards his leader which help them perform better. He listens to everyone’s opinion which helps them to express themselves without any fear. He gives power to other people who help them develop their leadership skills. Thus servant leader provides all the essential opportunity which can help the people associated with him to grow. Now, it all depends on the individual whether he grows or not. Thus it is a test for the leader than despite of all the opportunities which he provides to the people, are they growing.

Question #2 (Chapter 9): “Individual factors are the most commonly cited barriers to effective communication. These factors include differing perceptual biases, semantic differences, status differences, consideration of self-interest, poor listening skills, and issues related to personal space” (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 302). Discuss how one of the aforementioned factors negatively impacted communication between two or more of the jurors in the movie, 12 Angry Men ( Friedkin & Donnelly, 1997). Make sure that you identify the jurors’ numbers. Individual factors play a very important role in any kind of communication. Individual factors like perceptual biases, semantic differences, status differences, consideration of self-interest, poor listening skills, and issues related to personal space can impact the entire communication between 2 people or a group. In this case, Juror # 1 was appointed as the curator of the group and everyone was supposed to speak in turn in the order of their number. Though it was a very nice approach but gradually it was seen that though everyone were likeminded people, but their experiences were different and thus their ability to take decision. Some had very strong opinions and thus tries to dominate the group. While some were reluctant to even participate in the group. Later on it was seen that reluctant leaders were also excited when they were comfortable with the topic of discussion. Thus individual factor like poor listening skills forced an individual to not listen to what others were saying and dominate the discussion.

Question #3 (Chapter 10): “When group members maintain or seek consensus at the expense of identifying and earnestly debating honest disagreements, groupthink is said to occur” (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 335). “At least eight specific symptoms are associated with group think: self-censorship, pressure, unanimity, rationalization, invulnerability, mindguards, morality, and stereotypes” (Hitt et al., 2018 pp. 336-337). Describe how the jury in the movie 12 Angry Men (Friedkin & Donnelly, 1997) exhibited one of the symptoms of groupthink. Make sure that you identify the symptom that you are discussing

Initially the group were of the opinion that the defendant was guilty because of their thought defendant belonged to a lower class and different race which they correlated with traits of being guilty. Later just to prove Juror#8 wrong, they started discussing the issue with details. Then the emotional aspect of the issue came to arise and juror came under the pressure to discuss the facts. Initially they just tried to conclude the case at the earliest as they were all into whitecollar job and wanted to return to their position again. However, later when they started discussing each fact, they realized the value of rationalization. Initially they were not rational and were declaring the victim guilty. However, later they realized that they need to think rationally taking all the points into consideration before giving verdict.

Question #4 (Chapter 11): “According to Bruce Tuckman’s group development model, teams typically go through four stages over their life cycle: forming, storming, norming, and performing (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 377). “…teams ultimately go through a fifth stage, adjourning, when individuals begin to leave the team and terminate their regular contact with other team members (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 377). Provide an example of how the jury in the movie, 12 Angry Men (Friedkin & Donnelly, 1997) experienced one of the aforementioned five stages. Make sure that you identify the stage that you are discussing. The jury experienced norming stage when they made the decision to do voting by a ballot. Norming is a stage when team starts to function and work together as a team. Responsibilities are clearly laid down and expectations are set. The jury understood that secret ballot would help everyone to express their opinion clearly without having the fear of being rejected by the group. Thus they came up with the idea of secret ballot. The best part of secret ballot was that people can up with different opinion which they had earlier as secret ballot allowed them to express themselves better.

Question #5 (Chapter 12): “There are five potential responses to conflict, as well as situations in which each response if appropriate: compromising, accommodating, avoiding, compromising, and collaborating” (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 407). Describe how one or more of the jurors in the movie, 12 Angry Men (Friedkin & Donnelly, 1997) used one of the aforementioned responses to conflict to manage dysfunctional conflict. Make sure that you provide the juror(s)’ number(s). At the beginning few of the juror member, in order to avoid conflict did not give their true opinion and agreed to what other Juror were saying. As a result 11 out 12 juror has the same opinion. Their objective was to avoid conflict. However, when it was decided that voting should be done through secret ballot, it was seen that few juror came up with different opinion that what they had earlier. It is clear that earlier they did not give true opinion as disagreements would have raised conflicts and thus in order to avoid conflicts they agreed with others.

Question #6 (Chapter 13): “Senior managers must choose the structures to use for their firms. Middle- and lower-level managers often are involved in these choices, and play a key role in the implementation of the choices. Factors that should be considered in designing the structure of the

firm include strategy, external environment, internal technology, and organizational size” (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 434). Which one of the aforementioned factors interests you the most? Why? According to me, external environment plays a very important role in determining the organizational structure. External environment influences the business and these are the factors over which we have no control. Depending whether the external environment is stable or unstable, the manager should determine the organizational structure. External environment includes factors like political/legal, economic, sociocultural and technological. If all the factors should be assessed to decide which structure should be chosen.

Question #7 (Chapter 14): “Resistance to change involves efforts to block the introduction of new ways of doing things” (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 482). “Resistance to change can usually be traced to one or more of the following four causal factors: lack of understanding, different assessments, self-interest, and low tolerance for change” (Hitt et al., 2018, p. 482). Describe a situation where you resisted change. Make sure that you use one of the four causal factors to describe the reason for your resistance. What was the change that you were resisting? Did you eventually accept the change? Why or why not? Generally we will find that there are resistances to change. Few people resist change as they have low tolerance for change, or they lack understanding or for any other reason. I have even resisted change in past. The main reason behind the same was low tolerance for change. Earlier our company was dealing in cosmetics. The company used to take feedback from customer online. The company was of the opinion that online survey did not gave enough idea about customers requirement as the questions are limited and often people are in a hurry to complete the survey so they just write anything and finish it off. So the company decided to change the survey style and asked us to personally take feedback from customers. As the task involved waiting from customers and required more time, I was resistant to change. Low tolerance towards change made me resistant towards change. However, later I accepted the change as I had no option. I realized that personal feedback helped the company to gain true and detailed opinion.

References https://www.skipprichard.com/9-qualities-of-the-servant-leader/ https://blogs.baruch.cuny.edu/mondaycps/?p=99 https://thefutureorganization.com/forming-storming-norming-performing-adjourning-andtransforming/ https://smallbusiness.chron.com/external-environment-organizational-structure-66111.html...