Model for Leadership Role

Positive leaders and their approach to human development

Positive leaders are focused on ethical values and use a mentality for human development. Such leaders never break from ethics but are able to adapt over time and eager to change. They strive to get the most out of the capacities of individuals; they are respective, open, and welcoming. A leader who exercises a constructive leadership approach will inspire her people, encourage them to learn and develop, and help them fulfill their full potential. The boss helps to contribute to the organization’s development and progress.

About my mentor

Paula Clara, a Market Analyst at ABC Companies, is my boss. Paula is an effective boss who treats her workers with due respect and the utmost trust. I have known her for over five years; we were working together with her at ABC Corporation where she was an Assistant Business Analyst before raising the ladder to become the chief business analyst of the company. Her promotion is mainly attributed to her positive leadership style of the department she was posted as an assistant business analyst. My first meeting with Paula was when I received my first corporate job and got posted in her office. She used to encourage us to do the best for our product and the benefit of the enterprise. It is while under her supervision and leadership that I learnt that she is ever jovial and attentive at listening to comment, compliments and opinion of the people without getting emotional. During our interactive sessions at the conferences and meetings, Paula would always encourage us to be visionary, be social and realize our self-awareness.

Paula’s Leadership

Paula is in charge of Business Analysis Department at ABC Corporation, a position she has been holding for the last four years. She exercises a combination of leadership skill to ensure that the employees have a friendly working environment. Paula believes in teamwork and discussion with his management colleagues as well as the subordinate staff. Paula is a pacesetter; she does need to be pushed to perform her functions. She leads her staff in her department by a showing the members what is expected of them and what is be done and how it will be done to achieve the desired result. She will authorize the team when she intends to introduce visions, and she does this by inspiring them to be enthusiastic to accomplish the missing. She is patient to coach her staff and at the same time trying to create emotional bonds which bring a feeling of bonding and belonging to the organization.

Leadership Model

Paula is a woman who is dedicated to serving the company and the staff. She is a woman with self-awareness and a sense of self-direction. She will not be compelled to perform her work, but rather will do it out of love for her job. She is a visionary woman who always sees positives in everything that comes her way; she encourages her staff to be visionary and does their best while serving the company. Her actions well motivate the employees in her department; she delegates leadership duties to the staff to instill a sense of responsibility to them. She usually ensures that there is a meeting with her staff so that they can air out their views and offer solutions to the same. Social awareness, as practiced by Paula, has helped her to understand and respond to the needs of other staff, and she is always respectful of the rights of others.

Business Leader I admire

I admire Tony Hsieh, and he is the Chief Executive Officer of Zappos. Tony is a graduate of Harvard University and has vast experience in management and the corporate world. He was an employee of Oracle before quitting and later founded the Link Exchange advertising company. The partners sold the company to Microsoft after its two years of existence. Later, together with his partner, he engages in another project they called Venture Frogs which was an investment fund and incubator in San Francisco. In 1999, together with his partner Lin, they invented an online shoe site company. They injected $2 million in this project which Nick Swinmurn renamed Zappo.com, playing the Spanish word for shoes. The dot.com crashed in 2000, and it saw Venture Frog lose all its investment except in Zappos, this leads Tony to dedicate himself to serve the company as a full-time Chief Executive Officer. He makes various decisions while at the helm of Zappos, including the development of the ten core values.

Zappo.Com

Tony leads Zappo.com; this is a company that deals with the provision of online services. During its inception, the proprietors intended it to offer an online website that offered the best selection in shoes. The owners considered features such as brand, style, color, size, and width to be important factors when selecting the shoes. Over time, the company has evolved from offering online shoe selling services to a company dealing with various online services. The company announced its intention to join Amazon.com because they share a strong passion for customer service. In 2010, the company was restructured into ten companies under the Zappos Family (“About Zappos | Zappos.com,” 2017).

Tony’s Leadership Method

Hsieh is a very innovative and interactive leader. The decision to give the company employees a chance to work for the organization without the traditional leadership positions is worth noting. Although some of the employees working on an intensive tech project left the organization, Hsieh is still running the company successfully. The proposal to make the employees work under the self-management system which the company calls Holacracy is an innovation that has seen some employees remain in the company. The communication was made in advance, and the employees had enough periods to decide whether at the expiry of their period they will stay or leave (Feloni, 2017).

I admire Hsieh for his active leadership. He speaks out his mind and the desire for growth. Hsieh is ambitious and will not give up his quest for success even if the circumstances fail him. The crash of dot.com did not prevent him from investing, and rather he decided to concentrate on Zappos to steer it to higher growth. His desire and goodwill to lead the organization have seen the company expand and form other ten companies under the Zappos Family Umbrella. He is positive that the decision to give its employees Holacracy, which is aimed at having self-organization and self-management (“Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Art of Great Company Culture,” 2017).

Conclusion

Hsieh is the CEO of Zappos.com; the company is doing very well under his leadership. He has demonstrated that he can lead the organization; he is innovative and persistent. A leader should take the bold decision; Zappos.com made the decision to implement Holacracy, a new concept where traditional leadership roles are not practiced. Although some employees were left, the company is doing well under the guidance of Tony, its CEO.

Reference

About Zappos | Zappos.com. (2017). Zappos.com. Retrieved 18 January 2017, from http://www.zappos.com/c/about-zappos

Feloni, R. (2017). Zappos’ multimillionaire CEO explains why he lives in a trailer park with his two pet llamas. Business Insider. Retrieved 18 January 2017, from http://www.businessinsider.com/zappos-multimillionaire-ceo-explains-why-he-lives-in-a-trailer-park-2016-1

Tony Hsieh, Zappos, and the Art of Great Company Culture. (2017). Retrieved 18 January 2017, from https://blog.kissmetrics.com/zappos-art-of-culture/