Question

When leaders must make decisions which deeply affect their employees’ lives, such as reducing staff or dealing with conflict, how do think their decisions are similar to or different from the jury’s decision to find the defendant guilty?

Answer 1

Leaders do affect their employees lives when it comes to reducing staff or dealing with conflict.

Reducing staff is done so that profit is increased but cutting down expenses. When business is reduced from a client, the staffing needs to be reduced so that there is a balance in profit and the loss in the business. Every employer wants to increase the profit and minimize the losses so the employer would reduce staffing so that more work can be done with less employees. The employer would try different ideas to minimize waste and get maximum utilization of resources. Few of the employers ideas would be automation, removing unnecessary steps like double quality checks, time management and utilization management. Reducing staff would reduce the morale of the employees as there would be layoffs and they would fear about the security of their job and this would make them lose faith in their employer and their work performance would not be up to the mark. At the end every employee works so that they earn for their livelihood and when a person's job is put at stake, they would not be able to put up their best performance.

Leaders should be able to deal with conflicts at work in a timely manner. If they notice any groupism or unions building up in the company they should stop it and address whatever problems are there immediately so that they do not lose out their best employees just because of few employees who spread bad vibes across the company. For instance, there is a person who does not work but pretends to work all the time and just indulges in unnecessary gossip. A team leader or manager should conduct timely checks to review what is happening in a team so that performance at work is consistent.

A leader would do anything to save the company from bad performance or losses and this is similar to the jury's decision of finding the defendant guilty.

In other words, a leader may remove even a best performer for the well being of the company just as the jury would do all things possible to prove that the defendant is guilty when they need to protect the plaintiff.