Construction of the CEOs

Leadership is a process that requires the executive to direct, organize, control, and plan activities with an objective to influence a group to achieve a certain goal (Nahavandi, 2016). Leadership also involves persuading groups of people to achieve a certain goal through bolstering their zeal, confidence, and spirit so that they can entirely focus on a certain direction. In the corporate world, this leadership can be termed as organizational leadership, where managers make decisions to influence employees so that they can work towards accomplishing the organization’s goals (Trivisonno & Barling, 2016).  In this paper, the discussion will focus on the leadership of three Australian CEOs.  The paper would focus on CEOs Allan Joyce, Laura McBain, and Kate Carnell.  

In November 2008, Allan Joyce became the CEO and MD of Qantas Group with the objective of transforming the group and led its employees to some substantive progress. Qantas group had taken a nosedive since its privatization in 1995, and when Allan Joyce assumed the position of the CEO at the company, there was hope that he would completely transform the company (Sinha, et, al. 2012). He came at a time when Qantas international needed fresh leadership that would turn around its performance for the better. Also, the investors had got worried that if the company shall continue treading on losses then it would be bad for them. But with the coming of Allan Joyce there was some significant hoped and indeed Allan was on the path to drive the company to success.  

The motivation behind the selection of Mr. Allan Joyce is due to the radical surgery he carried out when he took over leadership at Qantas Airway and that is what presents him as a transformational leader. At the helm of the Qantas Airway leadership, he expanded Qantas across Asia and diversified the company with some new ventures to propel the company to faster growth. He quickly transformed the fleet of Qantas Group and after some time the company had acquired 150 new aircrafts (Sinha, et, al. 2012). Also, witnessed at the organization when he took leadership fundamental investments in training, technology, and lounges. It is reported that with his transformational agenda customer satisfaction was achieved, employees worked synergistically and felt that they had a role to play in transforming the company (Sarina, & Lansbury, 2013). Most importantly, the point is that Allan Joyce, presents himself as a transformational leader, and it is transformational leadership that motivated me to select him (Sarina, & Lansbury, 2013).

Laura McBain was the CEO of Ballemy. To start with she was an accountant and she is recognized as a CEO that led a baby formula company to a capital value of $ 1.5 billion. As a CEO of a small company, she strove to make some good returns for its investors. Indeed, it was her leadership at this small company that made it profitable (Smith, 2017). Unfortunately, her leadership is at risk as calls for resignation are gaining momentum. The profit slump in the Chinese market that made the shareholders furious and her missteps were blamed for the profit drop. The shareholder value is said to have dropped by $770 million and that indeed rubbed the shareholders in the wrong way. According to the stakeholders, her leadership was no longer strategic (Hyatt, 2017).

Allan Joyce

Her failure to coordinate the employees and plan properly in a changing market to some extent is blamed for the cause of the profit drop. Fundamentally, the leadership of Laura McBain failed to motivate, coordinate and strengthen the business operations in the Chinese market. As a reaction, shareholders or investors would always seek the replacement of a leader that they think is no longer satisfying their interests (“Executive Series 28 Sep 15: Bellamy’s Australia (BAL) CEO Laura McBain”, 2015). The point is that the shareholder’s interest must always be taken into account and failure to do that, in all probability would lead to an exit of a leader.

In essence, what motivated me to pick up on Laura McBain is the resilience she showed during her reign at the Ballemy as early as this year. Leadership ideally, requires that a person in position of leadership is able to handle various challenges that come their way and sometimes when the situation becomes worse, as a leader one should be ready to step down self-reinvention.

Kate Carnell also is known as Ann Katherine is generally identified as a businesswoman in Australia. At some point, she was a leader a Chief Minister of ACT for five years, that is, between 1995 and 2000. In the corporate world, she has served as the CEO of beyondblue and later became the CEO of ACCI (Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry) (“beyondblue”, 2014). As the CEO of beyondblue, she worked towards directing the company towards the right path that aimed at helping the company get on course in terms of profit-making. She has focused her leadership on research, and some roadshow campaigns to enhance the mental health of the Australians.

It is experience and her strategic problem solving skills that have motivated me to select CEO Kate Carnell. It is reported that before becoming the CEO of beyondblue, she had served in the position of a deputy chair and that means she had gathered enough experience to solve problems facing leaders. Basically, CEO Kate Carnell had known the problems facing the company and the solutions were with her. Therefore, after assuming the position of the CEO she went ahead to implement her solutions to the problems the company was facing. After a three stint at the company, Ms. Carnell is said to have left beyondblue with the right strategic direction. When she joined ACCI as the CEO, it was again another opportunity for her to steer the organization to the right direction as she did at beyondblue. In a nutshell, CEO Kate Carnell is a strategic leader, with a strong passion to plan and solve problems strategically to put an organization in a strong position (O’Neill, 2016).

In his Monday Interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Allan was a person that was talked in the political, media and trade union spheres, and the description of him was bad. The trade union defined him as derided, politicians called him devious and the media is also reported to have described as a leprechaun. His response to such description, he says that as the CEO of an iconic brand, definitely the mentions about him are expected to be abundant.  What is explicit in the interview that Mr. Allan is a leader who believes doing what he believes is right (Batool, 2013).He is someone who is not moved by some criticisms provided he understands that he is doing the right thing (Kollenscher, et.al, 2016).

Laura McBain

As of now, Qantas Airway is making losses, and that is why the Australian government had in early 2016 bailed out the airline. Even as the CEO, remains focused to steer Qantas Airways to profitability and the company is not making some significant profits and that is why politicians are calling for his resignation. However, the dwindling Qantas Airways popular star is reported to be dwindling due to high costs of fuel and also stiff competition. But, politicians are not hearing anything of the sort and calls his resignation are renting the air, but Mr. Allan  is adamant that he can still change things for the better. Amidst some criticism, Mr. Allan stays put, resilient, achievement-driven and tenacious and by surprise and that is why as today despite criticism Qantas is making a turnaround. Early this year, the airway is said to have posted a profit of a$206 million after tax.

Mr. Allan is a transformational leader, who sees leadership first as challenging, but amidst challenges resilience is critical. A transformational leader is someone who fully acknowledges that an organization can take a downturn and at that time the most important thing is to remain resilient and focus not on criticism, but on transformation. Financial Times asserts that defines the leadership at Qantas as one that is focused on gaining “hard-won turnaround (Smyth, 2015).” This is a clear demonstration that the leadership at Qantas believes in change, and indeed it is only through change that an organization can recognize success. Also, he is a leader who has some superior task-related personality traits. With several calls demand his resignation, he kept numb and concentrated on improving his performance. He showed courage, high emotional intelligence, passion to work with right-minded and supportive people and he was also flexible in nature.  Ideally, a leader should be someone with high emotional intelligence and that is the only way they can withstand criticism coming from different corners or people (Smyth, 2015). Also, CEO Allan presented himself as an assertive leader, who believes that when a decision is taken it must be pursued to the point he realizes a turnaround is required. Assertiveness is essential for any leader who wants to succeed and Mr. Allan has proved that. If he were not assertive, then achieving his transformative agenda at the company would be completely difficult. Leadership authors assert that a leader should be assertive in some of the decisions they make if they are seeking success (Smyth, 2015).From a general standpoint, the attitudes, beliefs, and skills of CEO Allan Joyce were transformed into behavior. He acts assertively, courageously, resiliently and boldly, provided his agenda is achieved (Aarons, et. al 2016). In summary, CEO Allan Joyce is a person with a strong work ethic who cannot fall prey into any trap that he believes can make him veers off from his course (Prakasam, 2014). He aims at doing what he firmly believes is right and he influences his employees or subordinates to follow his determined way and in the end, they succeed not as an individual but as an organization (Gordon, 2017). 

Kate Carnell

Laura McBain presents herself as a strategic leader, and her leadership has equivalently hade failures. As an ex- Ballemy Organic CEO, she admits that it was tumultuous and terrible on her side after the company’s profits downgraded (LaFrenz & Evans, 2017). In an interview with the Financial Review, she admitted that mistakes were made, and she alludes that a company that when a firm starts makes losses or profit downgrades, as a leader one would always be held responsible. However, she does not believe that failure is the end of her corporate leadership; she believes that as leader one must be resilient and in the event, mistakes are made it is indispensable to go to the drawing board to see how the situation can be rectified.

A strategic leader is goal-oriented and also process-oriented, and they are informed that a strategy can fail, and as a result, one should not lose hope for the loss. Basically, the point she drives is that leadership is a challenge, and sometimes one requires to have some time for reinvention, perhaps to develop another approach to success their strategic leadership. That is why, after her dramatic exit at Ballemy, she had to take some free time for self-assessment and later she sought professional advice on leadership in Barcelona and that saw her bounce into organizational leadership in the capacity of an MD of ASX Minnow (Evans, 2017).

Financial Review says that after going through an experience of adversity as a CEO at Ballemy, it became apparently clear that she was ready to mend her ways to avoid future failures in her leadership. However, from the perspective of leadership, McBain presented herself as a leader that can be trusted to propel an organization to success (McBain, 2016). It was her service at the helm of Ballemy that landed her another job at ASX Minnow because before her failure she was a leader whom employees could trust, work with and due to her approachable nature. In terms of traits, she is a leader who is persistent, task-oriented, result-oriented, and process-oriented. She seems to believe that even in the face of a stormy situation, she would always emerge victoriously, and hence she is a courageous leader.

Kate Carnell conceptualization of leadership is almost similar to that of Allan Joyce and Laura Carnell. However, Carnell presents herself not only as a business leader but as a political leader as well. She has served in different capacities in the Australian government, however, as a CEO of beyondblue and ACCI, it has come out that she is a strategic leader (Boswell, 2016).She comes with vast experience in politics, and business and indeed this kind of experience is of importance to a strategic leader. Having served in politics and business altogether, Carnell presents herself as a strategic leader whose leadership can be applied in different fields. She is a leader who is focused on results, and that is why when she quit beyondblue to serve as a CEO at ACCI, she left the organization stable and her strategies were still applicable. Nonetheless, she approaches leadership with courage, charisma, team-building spirit and this can even be justified in positions of leadership she has held. She is also a leader who is keen on details, and that perhaps can be justified by the position she held as ombudsman (“Inside Canberra interview with Kate Carnell AO, CEO of the Australian Chamber – Australian Chamber”, 2017).

Conceptualisation of Leadership

In summary, CEOs Allan, Kate Carnell and Laura McBain, view leadership as a challenge, but with the right mind, people, and motivation it is possible to lead and succeed.  However, McBain experience is the bitterest one in this situation because at one point she had to be sacked as a CEO and this one of the bitter experiences corporate go through. When things are bad the organizational stakeholders like owners or shareholders would demand an immediate resignation so that another leader takes over. But, McBain and Allan present themselves as leaders that are able to maneuver even in their worst situations and still make a remarkable comeback that surprises. Hence, they present themselves as leaders capable to change their worst to their best and this is a spirit of winner’s attitude that corporate leaders need to have (Gaddis & Foster, 2015).    

The effectiveness of any organization relies on the management and that is why the buck stops with the top leadership. It is the top management that influences of all the activities at an organization, therefore organizational success is a reflection of a leadership at an organization. Therefore, all the organizational behaviors are hinged on leadership and if the leadership is effective, the organization would succeed (Berson, et. al, 2015).

From the conceptualization of CEOs Allan Joyce, Kate Carnell, and Laura Carnell, they believe that success is only possible when the leadership is effective. However, their leadership styles are different, but the common goal is that they both seek to succeed in their leadership. It is the understanding that it is organizational leadership that decides the success of an organization that the three CEOs in their different companies strove to steer their companies to success. Most importantly, an effective leader is one that does self-assessment to discover themselves and perhaps correct their wrongs and get to the right track (R?ducan, 2014).The ex-Ballemy Organic CEO showed effective leadership when she decided to carry out self-assessment after her tragic exit at Ballemy. It is true that profits at the company had dropped, and the shareholder value was significantly affected, hence demands for her resignation gained traction (Mendenhall, et, al, 2017). This was a moment of tumult as a leader to her, and she knows that it was her failure to maintain the profit-making trend that cost her position. But, because she is an effective leader by nature she goes ahead to seek professional advice and that is why she comes back as a managing director at ASX Minnow. Furthermore, Allan Joyce and Kate Carnell are did self-assessment and that is why their leadership bears fruits. Kate Carnell moves from beyondblue as a CEO to ACCI again as a CEO. This is a demonstration that people believe that her leadership is strategic and would always result in positive results.  Similarly, Allan Joyce is live to the fact that his Qantas Airways is losing but goes to the drawing board and he bounces back with a$ 206 million taxed profits at the surprise of his critics.

Interviews

An effective leader must have a sharp perception, which allows them to understand how they are perceived. CEO Allan Joyce in his interview with Financial Times is informed about the perception people have about him and being described as someone who is derided and devious, makes him work hard to challenge such a notion by improving the profitability of Qantas Airways. Being responsive to the needs of stakeholders is an indication that one is an effective leader (Karanika-Murray,et, al, 2017). As a business leader, one must be able to plan properly and make decisions that would yield to organizational success that benefit all stakeholders (Ewen, et al, 2014). Kate Carnell is an effective leader and her success in business and politics make her an effective leader.  Furthermore, Laura McBain is responsive, and that is why after learning that her performance was bad and the stakeholders, she had to resign so as to give someone else an opportunity.  Additionally, CEO Allan Joyce, return Qantas Airways to the profit-making era in response to the demands of its stakeholders.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, organizational leadership is defined effective is all stakeholders are satisfied with the company’s performance. Effective leadership also entails a leader admits their wrongs and quickly correct their weaknesses (Goetsch, & Davis, 2014). As seen in ex-Ballemy CEO, Laura McBain she did not see her failure at the company as the end of her leadership but she carried out self-assessment to improve her performance. Also, organizational leadership requires one to be resilient, influential and a team builder, because for success to be achieved then stakeholder interest must be taken into account. Finally, effective leadership determines the success of a company, and if the leadership is poor definitely a business would collapse.  

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