Sustainable Leadership Power (3 page paper)

Virtual Team: South Dallas Cafe

South Dallas Café (2019) was establish in the late 1990’s in South Dallas as a southern style, family owned restaurant. The restaurant is known for its southern style menu that ranges from pork chops, to deep fried chicken with dressing, mac and cheese, baked potatoes green bean, pies, cakes and more. With this great success for the past 20 years, the restaurant is looking to expand and open multiple locations. However, the founder and CEO of the restaurant, Kay Doss has decided to appoint myself to become the manager of customer service that is located within the organization to help with this expansion with hiring the right servers and hostesses in the Houston area. However, Kay Doss wants a take a different approach and insist on developing virtual teams to assist in the teams within the restaurant. According to Hoch and Kozlowski (2014), virtual teams are becoming more of a norm in the workplace. Therefore, to ensure this location is a success, we will incorporate virtual teams within the organization to assist in opening our second restaurant in Houston Texas.

Teams in South Dallas Cafe

At South Dallas Café, we believe in passion and excellence towards our main goal, customer satisfaction with a smooth transaction. At the restaurants, teams are established to oversee the establishment of the main divisions of the restaurant: Kitchen, technical & management and customer service. The kitchen department will be in charge of all food preparation affairs, including but not limited to ordering the required food stuff and other ingredients. The technical and management department will be responsible for human resourcing, IT infrastructure and services and general restaurant management. It will also be expected to keep an ordered track of the restaurant performance in terms of finances, customer base and establish the most favorite dishes and orders by processing the data captured by the service department.

However, the most important team in a restaurant is the customer services. According to Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, and Wright (2017), in order to create a competitive edge in a market, one must have offer customers a greater value than the competitors in its market. Therefore, the new location must provide the best customer experience that they cannot receive at any other restaurant in the area.  And this is why I became manager. The customer service team will be responsible for taking customer orders, serve customers will respective foods, drinks, junks and drinks as orders, as well as taking and implementing customer feedback. The team will be responsible for maintaining the restaurant image to the customers and other guests. As of now, the customer service team at the first location is superb. This is one reason why the restaurant has been successful for the past 20 years is because of the customer experience: good, quality food and outstanding customer service. As of now, the customer service team consist everyone within the restaurant, which includes the kitchen staff, management, servers, hostesses, and bartenders. Located on the website, South Dallas Café (2019) has receive 5 stars on Yelp and rated Dallas Texas Top 5 restaurants in the city.

Remote Members of Customer Service Teams

According to Breuer, Hüffmeier, and Hertel (2016), virtual teams are formed by bring together groups of professionals who are not in the same physical location. Their communication and time schedules could be a big challenge to the team leader, but there is need to observe key tips and tricks when forming virtual teams. Gilson, Maynard, Jones Young, Vartiainen, and Hakonen (2015) states that one tip in forming virtual teams is being proficient in soft skills as well as being a high performer. The main reason Kay Doss appointment me to manager of the customer service team was because of the high ratings and positive feedback from customers on my customer service skills. Therefore, when inviting remote members, I will use different form of technology that will rate each member from their restaurants to ensure quality members that holds different duties within a restaurant. When potential candidates apply, the team will be formed by members from the successful job applicants, consultancies partners, and senior employees. I want this team to be diverse, with different perspectives of what customer services might look like to them. The table below represents this information in a more precise and understandable manner.

Table 1 Team Members

Team Selection Procedure and Communication Channels

All the team members are already conversant with what happens in a family own restaurants with the exception of new recruits. However, the recruits have been vetted and found to understand what awaits then should they join South Dallas Cafe. Due to the nature of virtual teams and the difficulties in bringing different personalities to work together compatibly, the team is founded with a common mission for all members (Zsambok, 2014). Liao (2017) states that teams are formed to gear towards a mutual accountability of what a positive, customer experience might look like, while members are selected based on their technical expertise, interpersonal skills and their problem solving and decision making skills. Therefore, I am seeking a collectively team that form a reliable complementary skill base for all members. To avoid undue expenses, communications will be done via Skype since it has been established as the most convenient means of communication in our line of work. The scheduled meetings are scheduled to overlap despite differences in member time zones. The team has been formed by selecting the most suitable candidates to avoid an undue costs in human resources. Communications will also be done remotes as they reduce commuter expenses (Rocco, 2015).

Team’s Capabilities and Decision Making

The team members are expected to make critical decisions in their line of work (Breuer et al., 2016). However, since the team members do not know each other and some of them may not be comfortable working with the others, it’s quite challenging to decide how to put them together. Although the ability to make decisions and solve problems has been vetted as per the company policy, other factors such as ones race and gender could turn out problematic. For example, sexual relationships amongst staff could result into underperformance. Other factor which could affect them include working away from home, raising children , working for longer hours than prospected, staff motivation and health in general. More so, cultural conflicts, the information provided, prejudice, personal attitude and personal habits could also be great determiners in decision making (Gilson et al., 2015 & Noe, 2017).

Potential Conflict

Keith (2012) urges that conflicts amongst employees could be hazardous. Damages in creativity and productivity and lose of morale have been witnesses. Keith (2012) further explains that virtual teams are quite dangerous since conflicts can be in any direction. Petty issues such as impatience tend to cause a lot of problems. This is quite common in traditional teams that keep members waiting until a meeting is called. However, virtual teams, especially those joined in an online platforms, issues can be raised in real time. Improperly vetted issues and giving of false consensus due to peer pressure are dangerous in a virtual team. Keith (2012) further urges that false feedback and lack of transparency in a team stalls many processes and projects and this becomes expensive for the team management and the team at large. In an online platform, provision of false information especially on the main information repositories could lead to misinformation and consequently affect the cost and quality of production.

Running the Virtual Team

Rocco (2015) says that virtual teams are rapidly growing and their management is a quite difficult adventure. As a result, I will run the team in a work defined system where each member will be playing a distinct role. For instance, how each member of the kitchen team will provide suggestions or feedback on how to deliver meals more efficiently and timely. Servers will be able to suggest different items on the menu for customers. I will also set standards for very type of task or service that has to be provided. I will also establish a set of communication tools including emails, chats and video conferences. Meetings will be held regularly to establish any issues and how they were solved and the time in which they were solved. Any deliverables set will be clearly detailed to avoid ambiguities. The working environment will be as professional as possible. I will also come up with a staff motivation and rewarding culture for the all staff based on their skills and hard work. I will also utilize project management tools to track food time being ordered and how long they were served.

Motivations

Liao (2017) states that motivation could be either intrinsic or extrinsic. He suggest that intrinsic factors are inbuilt and do not necessarily need any external input although they could be manipulated by some other external factors such as salary and allowances. Liao (2017) also points out that intrinsic motivation is more of feelings than anything else. Satisfactions, feeling capable, enjoying challenges and accepting appreciations are examples of intrinsic motivations. In order to get the most out of the customer service team, I will provide incentives for creative ideas in the new location as well as paid trips to visit the main location in Dallas Texas. On the other hand, extrinsic motivations are moved by the immediate environment, whether coworkers or the organization. Conditions of work, political security, salaries, promotions and the general environment, all of which are beyond the control of the management motivate workers externally (Vassilev et al, 2014). At the new location in Houston, the members of the customer service team will be allowed to share thoughts and concerns on the development of the establishment. For instance, colors of the internal walls, dishes, silverware, and even the uniforms of the staff. I want to keep the members engaged and make their input feel valued.

Management Support

South Dallas Café (2019) has been growing over the years and still stand strong in Dallas as one of the Top 5 Restaurant in the city. Management support to open a new restaurant in Houston Texas must be welcomed as long as it generates enough revenue for the investors. As a result, a detailed report on the projected financial gains will be reliable to convince the management to invest in this venture (Noe et al. 2017). Also, my personal portfolio is adequate to convince the management to buy my idea of a new restaurant in a metropolitan area.

5 Strategic Measures

According to Gibson (2015) the success of virtual teams is always a strategic goal for all team leaders that is part of virtual teams. However, in order to ensure success, there are ways in which organizations assess the virtual team to make sure it’s working. First is trust. Breuer et al. (2016) states that self-trust is very essential before one move forward to trust the others. Therefore, managers must trust that themselves and believe that they have the right people in place to ensure success. Secondly, understanding the business strategy, creating a strategic execution plan, and leading the change matter a lot (Gibson et al., 2015). Each member of this team must understand that we are creating a restaurant that is known for great customer experience. Each member must work together for the common goal and mission to build this great restaurant in Houston Texas. Another strategy is open communication. This can be feedback and business coaching help address issues as soon as they show up as it also changes the behavior. The fourth strategy is working in a diverse team with different personalities, style and cultures. Gibson et al. (2015) states that virtual teams is great for diversity to hear different ideas and concepts. This will help in developing solutions or thinking outside the box. The fifth strategy that Gibson et al. (2015) describes is having effective leadership. The leader will help bridge all strategies together. They will lead the team in a way that develop a culture that all members will excel and reach their full potential.

Conclusion

Hoch et al. (2014) states that the main function of the virtual team is to oversee the main divisions in the organizations and ensure that they work towards to the goals and the objectives of the company. As manager of the customer service team for the new South Dallas Café in Houston Texas, the goals is to motivate each member in the virtual team to develop strategic plans in a successful new restaurant. Virtual teams are becoming the norm, but this team will help in the establishment of a clear communication path which the key to any of the organizations (Hoch et al, 2014). Due to these advantages, I recommend the virtual team to be adopted in all the organizations.

References

Breuer, C., Hüffmeier, J., & Hertel, G. (2016). Does trust matter more in virtual teams? A meta-analysis of trust and team effectiveness considering virtuality and documentation as moderators. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(8), 1151.

Gilson, L. L., Maynard, M. T., Jones Young, N. C., Vartiainen, M., & Hakonen, M. (2015). Virtual teams research: 10 years, 10 themes, and 10 opportunities. Journal of Management, 41(5), 1313-1337.

Hoch, J. E., & Kozlowski, S. W. (2014). Leading virtual teams: Hierarchical leadership, structural supports, and shared team leadership. Journal of applied psychology, 99(3), 390.

Liao, C. (2017). Leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel perspective. Human Resource Management Review, 27(4), 648-659.

Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.