Affiliated School;
Explain polarities and polarity management,
Polarities are situations in a business where both the sides have merits and demerits for the firm. This means there is no absolute best decision, but that does not mean that it is the end of business for that firm. This is because not all problems are meant to have solutions but they can be handled in a manner that they do not get out of control (Anderson, Kathy, 2010). Good examples of polarities are cost and quality. This is because a firm always aims at being cost efficient, minimizing costs at all time, at the same time firms would like to make the best quality of products, this is an expensive endeavour. The firm will be stuck between being cost effective so as to avoid overheads, or to produce the best quality and be at a risk of not making good profits.
Polarity management is an approach that is used to ensure that there is a balance within the business. The main objective of polarity management is to ensure that the merits of different views are experienced while working to completely avoid the demerits (Garry Steve, 2007). Basic to this management is that the polarities are viewed as counter balancing sides of the same strategy. This means that there is no side that is viewed as not efficient and the firm should completely discard it. It is the view that all sides must be incorporated and there should be a strike of balance to avoid any losses. This enables all employees to feel as part of the firm as their ideas are all incorporated into the business without stigmatizing on basis of demerits (Johnson Barry, 2005).
Create a Polarity Map
Let us take the earlier given example, whereby a firm seeks to improve the quality of commodities that it produces and still it aims at being cost effective so as to maintain the same profit margin. The polarity map will look as follows, the merits and demerits of both sides.
Discuss applying Polarity Management to your top management team.
Proper management of polarities is a skill that eventually leads to solving of a real problem in a firm. It requires proper approach of the employees so as gain the best results out of it. Top management staff should use the following steps in achieving the best results.
- Access the other employees and get to their skills and experiences. This helps them in creating teams and choosing the team leaders based on capabilities (Garry Steve, 2007).
- They should establish both respect for team members as they are all equally important to the firm. This leads to respect of opinions and decisions.
- This respect leads to team members having enough courage to voice out their opinion and creates a somewhat competitive environment for people to come up with the best solutions. This is also good as it aids in brainstorming in search of the best steps to be taken in implementing the strategies (Johnson Barry, 2005).
- The top leaders, including top management teams, are expected to always be unbiased to make the best decision based on the output it will give.
- There should be use of democracy, the decision should initially emanate from the people and the majority will always have their way and all should accept. This means that there should be a properly and clearly outlined method of reaching a decision. This is to ensure fairness (Anderson, Kathy, 2010).
- The top management should also be involved in encouragement of the silent team members so that they can come out and give their opinion as they also matter to the firm.
- The top management should finally show empathy and assertiveness. This is because some issues that the firm is dealing with may be so sensitive and touch the people personally and therefore require to be handled with a lot of empathy. Assertiveness to ensure that the employees are still in check (Garry Steve, 2007).
References
Garry Steve, (2007), Polarity Management; Gain and Maintain High Performance, Pearson Prentice Hall, New Jersey
Anderson, Kathy, (2010), Polarity Coaching, Orthodox Print Press, New York
Johnson Barry, (2005), Handbook on Polarity Management, Macmillan Publishers
