- The document presents a training plan for newly promoted department managers based on goal-setting theory. - The plan involves training managers to set clear, concise goals for employees and provide appropriate feedback. Managers will learn to give tasks that challenge employees and help those struggling with tasks. - The training includes practicing writing clear instructions, evaluating employee performance, and building relationships with employees to motivate them to work harder. - Implementing this goal-setting based training plan for department managers is intended to improve employee performance and increase store sales. The client hopes to implement the plan company-wide if approved.

1. 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

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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)