Justifications of the choices of the Chief Executive

Discuss about the Critically Analyze The Leadership Style.

Organizational success depends on the type of the leadership style and approaches portrayed on the followers (Chapparamani, 2012). Leadership is definable as the practical and social skills that encompass the capability of an individual to offer guidance to people who voluntarily participate in certain activities of an organization. All the leadership approaches and theories, according to the path-goal theory developed by Robert House in 1971 poses different types of behaviors on the leaders (Ahrens et at., 2015). These leaders’ behaviors, either directly or indirectly influence the participation, satisfaction, motivation and the overall performance of the followers. The theory identifies the following; achievement-oriented, participative, supportive and directive as the leadership approaches that are more influenceable to a successful organization as leaders are flexible and ready to change their styles depending on the situation (Owen, 2015) Leadership theories and approaches acquired by the leaders are always essential to every organization that they lead and they are always differing according to the situation. The article, therefore, looks at leadership styles and approaches of three different Chief Executive officers in Australia, those are; Gillon McLachlan, Kate Carnell and Munny Stul. The article exploits the effects of each of the leadership approaches and theories on the work related environment, the biography of each leader, the overall behavior of employees, and conceptualization of their success, organizational issues, and recommendations on how to combat such problems.

Gillon McLachlan is an Australian, born in 1973 and currently the Chief Executive Officer of Australia Football League in 2014. After the university education, Gillon worked as the management consultant with the Accenture and then worked as a strategy consultant in 2000 with the AFL (Hopkins, 2011). In 2003, Gillon got an appointment to be the General Manager of the Commercial Operations of which later in 2008 became the Chief Operating Officer. In 2012, Gillon got an appointment as the Deputy Chief Executive Officer during which played a significant role in delivering stadiums for both the GWS Giants and Gold Coast Suns. In 2014, got an appointment as the Chief Executive Officer of the AFL replacing Andrew Demetriou.

Kate Carnell born in 1955 is an Australian businesswoman and also an advocate for the small business owner a former Liberal Party politician who was a Chief Minister of the Australian Capital Territory (Haber-Curran & Sulpizio, 2017). After the graduation from the University of Queensland with a degree in Pharmacy, Kate served as the inaugural chair of the ACT Branch of the Australian Pharmacy Guild between 1988 and 1994 then as the Vice-President of the guild from 1990 to 1994. Along with that, Kate served in various positions such as the chairman of the Southern Pharmacists Company limited between 1982  to 1992. Vice President of the Retail industry and Training Council, ACT  between 1987 to 1991, Member of ACT Board of Health between 1990 to 1991 and Member of the Pharmacy Restructuring Authority 1990 to 1991. Kate became the leader of the opposition in 1993 after being elected to the second ACT Legislative Assembly in 1992. In 1995 being the only woman. Kate became the Chief Minister in the minority government after the Liberal Party wins of seven seats out of seventeen. 

Biography and leadership style of Kate Carnell

Manny Stul is an Australian born in 1948, is married to Jacqui Tobia with three children. Stul rebelled with his parent’s ideas of becoming a lawyer and later dropped from school, worked as a bank teller before venturing into other business and currently is the Chief Executive Officer of the Moose Toys to Polish parents who both survived from Holocaust .Moose Toys is a renowned shopkins and mighty beanz collectible plastic toys that take inspiration from everyday grocery and departmental stores. At the age of 67, Stul became the first Australian to win the Ernst and Young World Entrepreneur of the Year, in 2016.Manny Stul development is based on the believe that innovation is always  the key to successful business, by doing things differently in the market. The innovativeness is always achieved a leader, surrounding himself with great people who can generate ideas, by having the right employees at the right tasks..At tender age, Manny began working at a construction site so as to collect capital, and later ventured into business of selling cutlery. The cutleries set were of Scandinavian design that attracted Manny because of its simplicity and cleanliness. That led to Manny importing the homeware, and then ventured into belly bottom brush and organic farm that did not go well, ended up with Moose Toys.  The Moose Toys commands the toys market over Mattel and Lego Toys Company since they can create their intellectual property without having the pressure of following the pressure of the existing trend, hence the uniqueness of the products. That innovativeness led the company to be named the toy company of the year in 2007, winning awards. Manny believes that remaining discipline in thought and action has always treated the employees with honesty and integrity, thereby creating a good relationship among the workforce. The motivated employees, therefore, tend to work harder and smarter.  Staying disciplined, transparent and of high integrity throughout the process, helps in averting disasters and maintain a closer relationship with the retailers and distributors.  Manny also takes close follow up continuous technological changes that affect the company’s production.

Kate believes in the E’s- Enthusiasm, Engagement, Ethics, and Entrepreneurialism as a capacity to inspire and bring others to their best. From the former positions as the Chief Minister, Kate understands well the role of engagement as a critical aspect of an individual choosing from things that they are passionate about. She has pushed for various changes in the workplace like having communication skills, long working hours, lack of control since they all make the people have difficulty in maintaining a healthy work-life balance. As a result of the political career, Kate has become a serious driving force behind Transact Communications through economic development contributions, support to business sectors, knowledge and technological advances to the medical profession.

Biography and leadership styles of Manny Stul

Manny Stul is a situational leader who can show practical leadership skills depending on the situations that arise. A situational approach is a leadership approach that determines the methods that are most useful in certain circumstances (Lutz et al., 2013). The situational leadership approach helped Manny to bring up the company when it was on the verge of collapsing after Moose Toys used a chemical that was switched by a Chinese material distributor without Manny’s knowledge. A disaster later struck during Melbourne Cup in 2007, when a child swallowed a Bindeez bead manufactured with the material from the Chinese company hospitalized (Scott, 2010).  A laboratory test that was done by Sydney biochemical genetics discovered a link between the sickness and the ingestion, whereby the ingested bead releases date rape chemicals. The incident led the global health authorities to place a ban on the products as the Moose distributors were facing many legal cases. Litigation of the products and the brand name made Stul fear of failing again and showed the leadership skills by strategizing a comeback by admitted all the wrongdoings and presented each creditor with a comprehensive recovery plan at the same time striking deals with over 30 distributors.

Kate Carnell poses different kinds of leadership styles that have positive impacts on the effectiveness of the subordinates. These are autocratic and democratic.  Autocratic Leadership mainly focuses on the power given to an individual allowing them to make all the decisions on their own later communicating them to the subordinates who follow the instructions (Bhatti et al., 2012). The style is evident on Kate during her political life as the Chief Minister; she was responsible for making orders for the employee in the ministry to follow. A one-way communication system characterizes the approach. Democratic leadership mainly focuses on including the subordinates in every stage of decision-making process even though the final decision lies upon the leader (Clarke, 2011). Unlike the autocratic Leadership, the communication is both downward and upward. Team leadership entails the creation of a clear picture of its future, what it stands for and where it is heading to hence the clear vision provides a strong sense of the organization’s objective. Kate also poses the type of leadership whereby she believes in the E’s of the management, that are Enthusiasm, Engagement, Ethics, Entrepreneurialism. The style is evident on how she is capable of managing her business enterprises. The advantage is that subordinates are more likely to work effectively for managers who adopt a certain style of leadership than others.

Critical perspective, comparison and contrast each leader

Gillon McLachlan is seen to have both the transactional and transformational leadership skills. These are approaches that cover two levels of leadership: Transactional is whereby the self-interest of followers is focused on to achieve organizational goals while the decisions lie with the leader on the other hand. The approach is evident in the football coaching whereby the leader gives the players to chose on which position in the field they can easily play to their best Transformational approach is viewable as an extension of the transactional leadership approach.The transformational approach goes to further step of creating a performance transforming organizational vision that appeals to the higher ideals and the values of the organization’s people to make it happen.  Followers get motivated by more than just their self-interest, and they are motivated to give more effort than what transactional leadership alone can achieve.  Through, this approach, the leader who is the coach, trains the players to make the individual gain and eventually play their best during the competition to give the team a win. In the end, both the team and the player get the credit.

Gillon has been the key driver that saw the creation of the AFL media that based on the simple premise that League ought to have ownership and grow the intellectual property behind its publishing instead of being done by other business enterprises Gillon’s greatest achievement oversaw a complicated deal with the Government of the Queensland to rebuild the Old Stadium of the Gold Coast to a new named Metricon Stadium. According to the Gillon colleagues; he is a plain-speaking deal maker that can see a bigger picture immediately.

Gillon McLachan is the current Chief Executive Officer of the Australia Football League, who held and made tremendous achievements before being appointed for the position. Munny Stul is the Moose Toy’s Chief Executive Officer, that is the best in Australia, after making several business adventures that all failed.

Conceptualization leadership is definable as the process of contriving an idea and formulating it mentally that later get transferred into the followers It does not occur in a vacuum as leaders always invite the owner to assist in shaping the vision to meet the organizational goal rather than the individual goal. The leaders through conceptualization never keep their dreams to their selves but share the thoughts with others to have a common narrative among the colleagues. The above leaders draw their success from conceptualization leadership as follows; Leadership conceptualization process is influenced by the motivational relevancies therefore viewed with the connection of various inputs contracted from some perspectives and in consideration of the socially constructed programs to cause influence relationship.

Gillon McLachlan conceptualizes success in the leadership style from the skills and knowledge gained as a former footballer and a coach of some teams,  insist that for success coaching, the levels of satisfaction is a primary determinant of whether people are willing or ready to follow you as the leader . A coach who is more than an administrator and a parent are more likely to influence the quality of the football environment, and the results of each game played no matter whatever level. The coach’s controlling aspects are capable of not only changing the player’s football experience but also any other life elements. Gillon embraced the group learning where participants who are players are encouraged to ask questions, criticize and share experiences with others, unlike other coaches that will always read, attend workshops, watch and give instruction to players.

Manny Stul conceptualizes success in the leadership skills such as being disciplined and honest to all the stakeholders of the Moose Toys who took all the advises and encouragement when the company was almost getting a ban. Manny Stul took responsibility for all the shortcomings and discussed the issue with all the creditors and distributors in an open manner. The strategy ensured continuous trust among them. Manny Stul also showed the subordinates the way to go a crisis strike, through standing strong and convincing the global health authorities of the reviewed safety of the company’s products. As a result, all the bans got lifted, and the company rose back to its feet to be the best in Australia. Through innovativeness and experimental, Manny Stul was able to settle on the Moose Toys after giving a try to different business such as organic farm and homeware. Manny was able to transform and restructure the company from the original status it was acquired to the current situation.

Kate Carnell conceptualizes the leadership through quite some aspects. She is good in communication and convincing people that led her to be a politician and the first woman to be the Chief Minister of Australia. Through her skills, she was able to lead some health and parliamentary positions leading them to successful missions.

Organizational issues are always brought about through the constant interaction between people and technology about the designing, implementation, safe disposal, and usage of health information system. It addresses on how such system changes people, on how people should respond to those changes to improve the individual and population health. Possible organizational issues in the Moose toys are low raw material and consensus among the team members. Resources are the core of every organization, and inadequacy of it may derail the internal performance and the external relationship with the distributors.  The lack of the raw material may lead to a little amount of production or low-quality production. Moose Toys depends on the importation of raw material from China. The importation does not guarantee constant operation of the company, since the supplier in China, might fail to send the raw material.

Other critical issues, such as having substandard products or chemically added materials, which eventually affect the users health wise. To address such issues, Moose Toys should find a better way of creating its source of raw material that will see a continuous safe production of items. The inadequacy of consensus at times of the problems may lead to the dysfunctionality of the organization, like when the company was almost shutting down due to the legal cases. Therefore the team members are always required to share and discuss the problems to have c common understanding. During those situations, there is always reduced cohesion among the team members as many leaders always opt to bear the responsibility alone. When the leader does not involve the team members in the problem-solving process, they tend to lose the sense of belonging to the organization. During such cases, the leaders are expected to bring close all the participants and make them understand the organizational problem, then to give them an opportunity to share their views on how it can b tackled.

Over the decades, numerous leadership theories have been developed making no single theory as the best way of management .The most widespread are Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Transactional Theory, Transformational Theory and Behavioural Theory. The Great Man Theory assumes that leadership traits such as intelligence, responsibility, and creativity are intrinsic which means that great leaders are born.The behavioral theory mainly focuses on the behaviors of leaders rather than the mental, physical or social characteristics. The method divides leaders into two categories; those that are concerned with the tasks and those that are involved with people.

The contingency theory states that there is no single way of leading and that leadership styles are determinable by the different types of situations, where some people can perform to the maximum and the minimum when the elements are removable. Transactional leadership theory is characterizable by a positive mutual transaction that exists between the leader and the follower’s .For the success of the transactional approach, the leader must have the motivational value to create an interactive reinforcing environment among the members. The theory states that humans are always seeking to maximize their pleasurable experiences and diminish the un-pleasurable ones, therefore will always associate with individuals that add value and strengths to their lives.

Conclusion

Most of the successful leaders have almost same styles and approaches, as this is well derivable from the three discussed leaders above; Kate Carnell, Gillon McLachlan, and Manny Stul.  According to the leadership theories such as transformational which sees the development of both the employee and the organization as with the Gillon McLachlan in AFL leadership? The situational and contingency leadership approach that was administered by Manny Stul during the legal cases against the Moose Toys helped the raising of the company from the verge of failing. While Kate Carnell showed many different approaches such as behavioral and democratic methods that enable her to work successfully in various capacities both the public and the political positions. When all this methods and theories applied correlatively, then an organization and the employees are bound to have tremendous development.

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