Christine Holgate: Experience and Career Background

Discuss about the Leadership Styles of Christian Holgate.

The chosen leader is Christian Holgate. Christine Holgate  is an Australian business woman and one of the leading business woman across the globe. Born in the United Kingdom, she is the spouse of Michael Harding.  Christine Holgate has been the chief executive officer of Blackmores Ltd for more than nine years. She joined her former company, Australia Post in the designation of a chief executive officer and a managing director in the year 2017, on 30^th November to be specific. She was the replacement of Ahmed Fahour, who happened to resign from his position in the month of February and leaving the same in the month of July. It has been found that her salary was negotiated and fixed at A$1.375 Million with an equal possibility of bonuses and increments. She started her career as a Christmas “Postie” when she was only 18. In terms of her experience it can be asserted that she has approximately an experience of more than 30 years in various multinational companies as a senior designator.  The industries that she has served are inclusive of healthcare, telecommunications, finance firms and media houses. In the context of her service abroad, it would be worthy to avow that she has been an integral part of leading sectors in Asia, America and Australia, serving in the public board for more than 20 years. Lately, she has been serving in multiple positions at the very same time. To be specific, she is an indispensible part of Australia-ASEAN Council that is known well for supporting trade and cultural relations between Australia and the other member countries of the ASEAN group. At the very same time she is also serving as a board member in the Collingwood Football Club.

There is no iota of doubt that the gigantic figure that Christine Holgate is, she definitely uses some key leadership styles in order to maintain her position in the industry. To be very specific, I is not about a single leadership style that she follows. She changes her approach of management and leadership style according to the situation and issues that she faces. However, generally in order to deal with maximum of the issues she uses a combination of three leadership styles. These are directive leadership, authoritative leadership and affiliate leadership (Shevlin and Rose 2017). Summing up in short, directive, as the very term suggests is about directing or ordering the employees tp work at part to her orders. Authoritative, though sounds similar to directive,  is a little different. According to this style, Holgate places her orders but also keeps concern that the employees are not stressed at carrying out the orders. However, she ensures that she gets her work done through this approach. The directions in this approach are clear and mostly affirmative, molded in a way that the orders does not sound like commands. Affiliative is the final approach that is mostly followed by her. In accordance to this approach, she manages all her officials at the time of conflicts. Using this approach, she counsels, helps and coordinates with her employees. This approach is also taken by her while she motivates her employees for performing better.

Christine Holgate’s Leadership Style and Approach

Perhaps the most worthy example that can be cited are the two cases that occurred in the month of October, 2017 and April 2018. In the month of October 2017, the online services of the company was disabled. The issues was soon discovered by customers and chaos began. Soon the matter took worse turn while it was reported to media channels and the issue was widely covered by Fairfax Media. In this particular context, Christine Holgate used her authoritative approach of leadership. Very skillfully, without further elaborating the issue she manage to assert that there has been a minor technical failure that would be resolved soon. Owing to the poised, calm and placid yet stern authoritative tone, the issue was not dragged further. Apart from that she also used Affiliative leadership strategy in order to fix the issue in sometime (Clegg 2017). She used affiliative approach in order to calm her employees to take the matter lightly. Since the situation was already tensed she did not want to tense up her employees even more by using any kind of commanding approach or by questioning the situation. She very tactfully handled the situation.  

Another example that can be cited is of a major issue that cropped up in the company on 3^rd April 2018. The issue was regarding delivery of products. Delivery issues were also reported earlier by the customers. It cannot be said that the issues related to delivery of products are totally resolved. However, Holgate is taking stern steps towards resolving the issues. In this particular context it can be said that the leadership approach that she has undertaken in order to resolve the issues related to delivery of products are Affiliate leadership and directive leadership. She used her directive leadership style to keep a constant monitoring over the entire delivery process. While at the same time she uses affiliative leadership style to cooperate and coordinate with the employees so that it eases up their work. She mentors, guides and enhances the working ability of the employee (McKenzie and Egea 2015).

There are also some key challenges that she faced as a leader during her tenure in the different companies that she has worked. Perhaps the most notable challenge that she still faces is managing the growth expectations of the companies as well as the employees. Apart from that Christine Holgate also faces the challenge of expansion of employee benefits. On one hand, while it is imperative to recruit employees those are valuable for the company on the other hand there is also a constant risk of draining the capital, the revenue of the company on the high salaries of the eligible employees. The risk of employee performance also matters in this particular context. All most all the time recruitments are made, Holgate faces the challenges of analyzing if the employees that are recruited would be beneficial for the company (Peterlin,  Pearse and Dimovski 2015). She also faces the issues of employee retention. Retaining the employees are tough since the employees always look for better opportunities. In order to retain the valuable employees, a lot of employee benefit programs are undertaken by be. However, there again runs the risk of capital management (Neculae and David 2017).

Examples of Leadership in Action by Christine Holgate

In order to be more effective, Holgate and her assistant can employ and recruit workers based on the particular type of work or job profile that they are looking for. That is, commuter engineer should never be recruited in technical department. Researchers have shown that most of the employees quits job due to lack of job satisfaction. Holgate can also recruit employees on contract basis so that the employees are unable to drop the job.

In the process of this assignment, I have learnt that leadership basically means to lead a group of people towards a particular destination that is pre decided. Leadersip is not about any degree, rather I have seen that leadership is all about the ability that cones from within. According to me, it is about the characteristic feature that is already present in a leader. I have also learnt that leadership is not about any command or order, rather it is all about coordinating the members of the group. Leadership styles are of various types. Some of the notable leadership styles that I have gone through are autocratic leadership style, democratic, strategic, transformational, cross-cultural, facilitative leadership style and many more. Each of the leadership styles serves various purpose in an organizational context. Apart from that, there are also leadership approaches that I have learnt while conducting this study. The types of leadership approaches that I have come across are affilitative, affirmative and directive. There is a little difference between leadership style and leadership approach. Affiliative leadership was the term that was coined by Daniel Goleman in the year 2002. In this particular leadership style, the leader solves the conflicts and issues keeping harmony and coordination among the team or th group intact. Apart from that in this particular leadership style the leaders nurture the team in a way that each member of the team are connected towards each other and shares a mutual bond of trust. While conducting the study about Christian Holgate, I have come across the fact that she uses directive leadership style in particular in her business. Directive leadership style refers to the fact that the leader, I this case Holgate would be setting clear instructions to her employees. According to this leadership style,  the members or the employees of the group are clearly let known about the common objectives of a particular project or task and all the members are channeled towards that particular goal.

Reference List

Clegg, S.R., 2017. Fatal Leadership Approaches.

McKenzie, J. and Egea, K.H., 2015. Facilitating whole-of-institution engagement in the first year experience through distributed leadership approaches. UiB-European First Year Experience (EFYE).

Neculae, G.E. and David, S., 2017. Leadership Approaches–a Comparative Analysis. Risk in Contemporary Economy, pp.507-521.

Peterlin, J., Pearse, N.J. and Dimovski, V., 2015. Strategic decision making for organizational sustainability: The implications of servant leadership and sustainable leadership approaches. Economic and Business Review for Central and South-Eastern Europe, 17(3), p.273.

Shevlin, M. and Rose, R., 2017. Leadership Approaches to Inclusive Education: Learning from an Irish Longitudinal Study. In Inclusive Principles and Practices in Literacy Education (pp. 53-67). Emerald Publishing Limited.