Homework answers / question archive / Maggie is the leader of a small trading company

Maggie is the leader of a small trading company

Business

Share With

Maggie is the leader of a small trading company. Her company is located in Liaoning province, China, and her company mainly exports a variety of fertilizers to countries in South America and Southeastern Asia. Maggie have worked as a leader for more than ten years. This paper shows the interview of this leader. The main purpose of this paper is to explore the leadership styles of Maggie Wang. When being asked about her opinion about the most important qualities for good leaders, Maggie firstly pointed out communication. Maggie perceived effective communication skills as one of the most important qualities owned by good leaders. Reflecting on her professional experience, Maggie described how she gained benefits from effective communication skills. With effective communication skills, Maggie always clearly conveys goals and objectives to her employees, which enables her employees to know what the desirable performance is and how to attain these desirable goals. Maggie indicates that effective communication also helps her develop a good understanding of her employees. Regarding the question about how to develop effective communication skills, Maggie offered a few pieces of advice. The first piece of advice is to be an active listener. Maggie suggested that good leaders should actively listen to the ideas of their employees. Active listening shows leaders’ respect to their employees, which is an important way to encourage their students to express their ideas and thoughts. The second piece of advice is to ask open questions. These open questions have the power to encourage employees to express their 2 ideas and thoughts as well. Most importantly, Maggie reveals that employees tend to have different needs, and they have different communication styles. In order to develop effective communication with her employees, Maggie would first observe and learn about her employees. Furthermore, Maggie also perceived employee empowerment as one of the most important skills owned by good leaders. Maggie described that people were at the core of her company’s success. She placed great emphasis on human capital. In line with Maggie’s description, she preferred to provide opportunities for her employees to experiment their own ideas, instead of directly telling them how to perform certain tasks. Maggie offered an example to depict how she applied employee empowerment within her organization. Linda is an experienced employee in Maggie’s company. When Linda first came to Maggie’s company, she knew little about how to sell fertilizers to foreign customers. Maggie assigned a few customers to Linda, and she encouraged Linda to communicate with these customers by herself. Maggie recalled that Linda once made a mistake due to the unclear communication with one of their customers. While Maggie didn’t find fault with Linda. Rather, Maggie had a conservation with Linda that helped Linda draw lessons from that failure. Under the leadership of Maggie, Linda has already become an excellent saleswoman. It shows that Maggie is willing to give opportunities for her employees to experiment their ideas, which is beneficial for the development of her employees. Maggie found it important to create a creative and innovative environment for her employees. Maggie had seen great changes in information and communication technologies over the past one decade. When Maggie first found her company, she mainly relied on the Internet to reach her potential customers. Nowadays, Maggie said that they had more ways to communicate with their customers. They can use email, Skype, Whatsapp, and even Facebook to reach their potential customers. Influenced by the advanced development of technology, Maggie established 3 their own websites, and they paid for Google Awards to promote their products to potential customers around the world. Maggie has created a creative and innovative environment for her employees. Meanwhile, Maggie also encouraged her employees to be creative and innovative through showing support for the ideas of her employees. With regards to the question about motivation strategies, Maggie revealed that she would use different motivation strategies for different employees. For example, Maggie would provide monetary rewards for these employees who have children. Maggie learned that those employees who have children preferred to earn more money to support their families. For young women workers, Maggie learned that they were more willing to have vacations as rewards, and then she would use vacations as incentives to motivate her employees to attain their best performance. Maggie stressed that each employee had different needs and concerns. It’s significant to develop motivation strategies based on their needs and concerns. In this way, these motivation strategies would work effectively. When implementing motivation strategies, Maggie suggested that it was better to treat all the employees equally and fairly. Otherwise, the employees would develop negative emotions about the motivations. In response to the question about diversity and inclusion, Maggie indicated that she actually encountered few challenges associated with diversity and inclusion. As Maggie’s company has no more than 20 employees, she dealt with a relatively less diverse workforce. Maggie explained that she was open to a diverse workforce, and she believed that her company would benefit from the increasing diversity of workforce. While Maggie said that she was currently facing a challenge that was caused by COVID-19. Affected by COVID-19, there was a period of time that her employees couldn’t come to work in the office. Then, Maggie let her employees work at home. However, it was challenging to keep her employees being inspired when they did their 4 jobs at home. Maggie reflected that she learned about the tendency of working at home, and she was considering how to effectively motivate her employees without working together. In terms of this challenges, Maggie indicated that it’s critical for leaders to maintain sustainable learning in the dynamically changing environment. The interview on Maggie’s leadership shows that Maggie adopts situational leadership. “Situational leadership refers to when the leader or manager of an organization must adjust his style to fit the development level of the followers he is trying to influence” (Anthony, 2019). Maggie is a leader who will adjust her leadership style to address the needs and concerns of her employees. When replying to the question about communication, Maggie placed emphasis on understanding the communication styles of her employees. She preferred to communicate with her employees in a way that was preferred by her employees. When developing and implementing motivation strategies, Maggie also perceived it important to develop strategies based on the concerns and needs of her employees. Additionally, Maggie also provided a creative and innovative environment for her employees. All these pieces of evidence prove that Maggie is a situational leader who is willing to adjust her leadership style in response to the concerns and needs of her employees. It was meaningful to have this interview with Maggie Wang. Through interviewing Maggie, I learned about the most important skills owned by good leaders, such as communication skills, employee empowerment, being innovative, and so on. I also learned about strategies to develop effective communication. For example, as a future global leader, I can be an active listener, and I can use open questions to encourage my employees to express their ideas. More importantly, I learned that I should develop a good knowledge of my employees before I develop any strategies for them. To conclude, it’s significant to have this interview. 5 References Anthony, L. (2019, February 12). Define situational leadership. Chron. Retrieved from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/define-situational-leadership-2976.html. 3) Ethics Leadership Interview-Students will select a leader from any organization/entity and conduct a compelling and germane interview. The goal is to find out the ethical quotient of the leader and how they continue to embrace ethical practices where they are employed. The interview should also reveal when they experienced a IPOH (Intense Period of Heat ) around a ethical dilemma they were confronted with. The Ethics leadership interview should be captured in a 4 page paper, 12 font and double spaced. Alternatively if multimedia is selected such as an audio or visual interview (eg: Podcast, Vimeo, YouTube, etc) that interview should be a minimum of 10 minutes and not exceed 12 minutes. (Due April 19)