Kory Gill

COMM 499

Theory and Department Management Training plan

The theory I am going to base my training strategy on is Goal-Setting theory.

Goal-setting theory states “in task related situations, various factors lead individuals

to accept performance goals” (Chory and Westerman, 2009). The first researcher

who developed goal-setting theory was Edward A. Locke in 1968. Locke is the

“pioneer” of goal setting theory. Task Motivation was developed because of goal-

setting theory. Two main points that comes from this theory are setting goals that are

clear and concise create higher level of performance than setting broad goals. People

will work harder to reach an extremely hard performance goal compared to an ease

one. These findings are based on two conditions which are feedback and whether the

person in the situation accepts the goal or challenge. Five components of goal setting

theory are clear goals must be given. The goals must have some type of challenge to

it. Goals must be understood by the person who is receiving the task and agreed on

with that person. Feedback must be present for the goal setting theory to work

properly. Given feedback helps people know whether or not they did a particular task

correctly. Also, provide time so people can learn what they need to do on more

difficult task. The purpose of goal-setting theory is to motivate and guide a person or

group on tasks related assignments to reach a particular goal. (Locke and Latham

1968).

History of Goal setting theory

Furthermore, Latham is the other person who helped develop goal setting theory.

Gary P. Latham was the researcher who help conducted the studies when Locke

discovered goal setting theory. This theory took 25 years and is based off of 400

laboratory and field studies (Latham and Locke, 2006). Goal setting theory helped

develop the four dimensions of negative feedback, which were discovered by Geddes and

Latham (Chory and Westerman, 2009).

In the new finding of Goal Setting theory, people who focused on the positives of a

particular challenge instead of the negatives performed better. Also, it was discovered people

who set long-term goals on hard task may not perform as well as people who set smaller goals

along the way of reaching the long-term goal (Seijts & Latham, 2001). For example, I would be

better off planning the steps on how I am going to get a store manager position instead of

planning to become a store manager.

The strengths of goal setting theory are when all of the pieces of goal setting are in play, it is

effective. Goal setting is effective because it make people want to better themselves if they like

their leader. Also, it is extremely clear what the leader or manager are looking for. I came to

realize that this theory is appropriate when an article talked about how it has to be the right

combination of negative and positive reinforcement for the person to keep trying to accomplish

the goals you set. I am trying to say that Goal setting theory have the sender of the message take

into consideration the receiver of the message. A good example where this is present are the five

components of goal setting theory that I talked about in the first part of this paper.

Client’s Problem

My client’s Communication problem was Don Cooley did not know how to train

department managers to make their employees work harder for them. To solve this particular

problem, I elected to apply the goal setting theory to a management training plan. This plan will

help freshly promoted department managers understand how to motivate their employees.

Method

I took the needed steps for goal setting theory to work correctly and put it into a

management training plan. This training program describes what ways to train people who just

got promoted to a department manager. The training plan is meant for an Assistant Manager to

read and train department managers by following the training guide. The training guide is meant

to compliment the training manual written by Wal-Mart’s corporate. Management training guide

is as follows:

Management Training plan

Purpose: To help department managers produce better results with their employees.

In order to teach department managers to give clear and concise directions, the freshly

promoted department manager will be giving a task relating to his or her department. The

manager has to describe how to do that particular task on paper as he or she is writing to an

employee. The manager have to describe the task so well that somebody who knows nothing

about the job could follow the directions and complete that particular task. However, the paper

should use as few words as possible without using words people cannot understand. After the

department manager in training completes the assignment, it will be reviewed by the Assistant

manager that is over the department manager being trained. The Assistant manager will review

the directions given by the department manager and check to make sure the instructions are clear

and concise. The Assistant manager will give back the assignment to be redone if the directions

are not clear and concise. In the case that the directions are clear and concise, the Assistant

manager will advance the department manager to the next step in the training process. This part

of the training should take no longer then a regular work week to complete correctly.

Next, the new manager will be trained on how to give their employees simple tasks at

first and consistently give employees harder challenges as they prove they can efficiently do the

easier task. Also, the manager in training will be taught how to help employees who are too

challenged by the task giving to them. To ensure employees are somewhat challenged with every

task assigned, a time limit will be set for each task. The time limit will be based on the ability of

the employee and the task assigned. The manager who is being trained will be taught how to

access the ability of their employees. The process of evaluating employees’ ability will be base

off of the time it takes them to complete a particular task and how well that task is done. This

training section will be available for new management online.

Furthermore, the manager will be trained how to give appropriate feedback to employees.

This will be done by the new manager watching a video of what is appropriate to say to their

employees and what things are not appropriate to say. The video will go over the consequences

of saying inappropriate things to employees as well. However, the main purpose of the video will

be to teach management how to give effective feedback to employees about their performance

once a week. The feedback given to employees must have what the employee have done well

and something that they could have done better. This will give the employees a guide to what

they could do better the next time they do the same task as well as what they should keep doing.

After the new department manager is done watching the video, two made up situations will be

given to them by their Assistant manager. The first situation will be an employee who work fast

but had poor quality work. The second will be an employee work extremely slow but did the job

well. The manager will be told to evaluate each employee and give both employees feedback.

The manager will then be asked to explain why they would give the feedback they choose to

give. In the case where employees do not need to improve, they will be moved to a more

challenging task. In addition, the department manager and Assistant manager will decide how

long an employee have to learn a particular task. This will be access by having four different

people learn each task needed to be done in the department and then taking the average of the

times the four people took to learn each task and multiplying them by two. This will ensure the

employees have adequate time to learn tasks.

Finally, the department manager will be trained how to build relationships with their

workers. This is the most important part of the training package because workers will not work

hard for managers if they have no respect for them. The manager will be encourage to talk to

their workers during lunch break. The department managers will be taught what questions to ask

employees to build a closer relationship with the worker. The manager should be able to use the

employees’ answers to their advantage. Example of this is if the employee said they want to be a

manager, the department manager could give the employee guidance on how to become one.

After this training section, the department manager will be asked to explain how to build a close

relationship with their employees’ overtime on a piece of paper. Additionally, the manager will

be given a goal of a made up employee; the department manager will be asked to explain on a

sheet of paper how to build a closer relationship with this employee knowing this information.

In conclusion, the training plan is designed to help department managers be more

efficient in handling their work load. This is done by training them how to handle their

employees in such a way the employees understand exactly what the manager wants done and

they feel challenged in doing the tasks so they work harder to complete it. In return, departments

will run smother and increase sells. This will result in an overall increase in store sells. This is

because harder working employees in every department means happier consumers. This will lead

to positive word-of-mouth and more people shopping at the store.

Results

I do not have any results to record as of right now in regards to this particular project.

However, my client is going to send this to corporate. My client hopes to get my training plan to

every Wal-Mart if corporate approve the plan. Also, my client will put this plan to work in the

Grandville Wal-Mart. He will do this by following the department manager training plan closely

and training people who recently became department mangers based on the strategies I outline in

the plan.

Recommendations

I cannot make any recommendations since I do not know how the training plan is going

to work.

References

Redmond V. M. (2000). Communication: Theories and Applications. Iowa State University:

Houghton Mifflin Company

Wood T. J. (1997). Communication Theories and actions: An introduction. The

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Wadsworth Publishing Company

Chory M. R. and Westerman, K. Y. C. (2009) Feedback and Fairness: the

relationship between Negative Performances Feedback and organizational Justice Western

Journal of Communication. 73(2) 157-181

Locke A. E. and Latham P. G. (2006). New direction in Goal-Setting

theory. Current directions in psychological science. 15(5)