Web systems management studies

Sys be inferred from observing an individual in a leadership role, but on many occasions one is left pondering what drives a person’s decisions. Many times, only a personal interactive discussion can bring forth the true powerful insights that have strong impacts in one’s personal beliefs. Being a group whose members’ concentration of study all involve finance, we not only chose to investigate one individual exerting a leadership role in this field, but we strived to obtain a more comprehensive experience by comparing and contrasting two individuals. We interviewed Mr. Greg Blume, CFO and COO of “The Blume Company” (Real Estate) and Mr. Michael Hansen, President and CEO from “EverTrust Financial Group”. We analyzed each leader’s approach in business by assessing their leadership characteristics, strengths and weaknesses, and finally evaluating their leadership styles as a whole.

First of all, it is pertinent to examine and analyze both of our subjects’ leadership characteristics. Looking at Fiedler’s contingency model, it seems that both Mr. Blume and Mr. Hansen can be described as task motivated individuals, yet it is noteworthy to mention that Mr. Hansen displays numerous qualities of effective relationship-motivated leadership. This characteristic appears to fit very well with the roles they perform, Mr. Blume’s as CFO/COO and the industry in which Mr. Hansen operates in as President/CEO.  This trait can be easily inferred from Mr. Blume by the way in which he relates to other coworkers. There are certain personality types in his workplace, namely Tom within his office, with whom he considers rather difficult to work with.  Often, presentation of work to this employee is done by another coworker. 
He is a detail oriented person that enjoys the repetitive tasks in his job.  Mr. Hansen’s task-motivated tendencies can be seen in his commitment towards results.  In fact, he goes as far as removing much of the relationships that happen naturally in a workplace. By forbidding dating amongst employees and discouraging activities such as company social gatherings (which he refers to as “picnics”), Mr. Hansen uses competence as the sole method of assessing the effectiveness of a subordinate. In terms of the Normative Decision Model, Mr. Blume places in the autocratic decision styles dimension, whereas Mr. Hansen more often practices consultation and delegation.  This is a result of the types of subordinates that each must interact with.  Mr. Blume often works in teams that include employees of other companies, such as architects and maintenance crews.  Their role is to fulfill the needs of Mr. Blume, and he therefore makes the majority of the decisions himself or in coordination with the CEO.  However, subordinates are generally not included in the decision-making process. In contrast, Mr. Hansen believes in delegating projects and decisions, as well as coaching in order to utilize an employee’s potential in contrast to dictating tasks.  Mr. Hansen provides direction, but allows his subordinates to implement their own decisions in order to achieve his vision, goals and objectives as a team.
Mr. Blume has developed and expanded his delegation skills by relating and learning from his coworker Terra.  Mr. Blume expressed delight in the ability to hand off more and more jobs to Terra, trusting that he can rely on her.  As the primary administrative personnel in the office, Terra is the first to fill the role with ambition.  However, it should be noted that Terra could be considered Mr. Blume’s only member in his In-Group. He appeared pessimistic about handing off other responsibilities to other individuals.  In contrast, Mr. Hansen strongly believes that empowerment and delegation are two primary roles of his job, and even desires and encourages his followers “pick up” projects from him, and provides instruction and training as necessary.  His ability to delegate and avoid micromanagement can be conveyed in one of his personal quotes, “When you control someone, you don’t get the best out of them”.
There are always significant attributes of the personalities of leaders that truly aid in making their visions come a reality, their strengths.  There are three leadership strengths we noticed after interviewing Mike Hansen:  His passion for being a leader, his strong communication skills and his ability to form and communicate a vision. Mr. Hansen clearly has a passion for leadership.  As the CEO and President of his company, he is passionate about his position, his industry and most importantly the people in his company.  Some of the relationship-motivated leader traits that he circumstantially displays compel him to form meaningful relationships with his followers and facilitate their goal achievement. The delight he finds in his leadership position sets the tone for his followers. The second leadership strength Mr. Hansen possesses is his strong communication skills. He thoroughly communicates a detailed picture of his vision to his followers through an effective well spoken, influential voice with a great sense of humor and interesting anecdotes.  Lastly placing a larger emphasis on his communication skills, Mr. Hansen has the ability to form and communicate his vision so that a child could easily see, taste and grasp it.  Some of the relationship-motivated traits he displays reinforce him in this area to relate to his followers and ultimately, enabling his to relate to him.  Greg Blume is characterized by strength in the areas of innovative thinking and risk taking. Mr. Blume likes to make things simple, thus he is constantly thinking of ways to simplify his daily responsibilities and tasks.  He mentioned that if one can make things simple, you can focus on other, more relevant aspects of the job that cannot be simplified, such as business relationships.  By making things simple, he makes things easier for his followers. Mr. Blume has a high tolerance for risk.  He mentioned that in order to be successful, one must be willing to take on risk.  This is an important characteristic for a leader to have because it shows the willingness to take upon responsibility.  Mr. Blume employs his technical skills and experience when making risky decisions for his company. 
As every person that has come into leadership roles has his strengths, they also encompass weaknesses. Mr. Blume has difficulty developing sustained, respectful relationships with some of his employees.  He commented that his property manager Tom would rarely put into action Greg’s suggestions unless Tom saw validity in the suggestions.  He mentioned he resorts to asking the owner, Bruce, to talk to Tom when Tom ignores his suggestions.  In addition to difficulties with Tom, Mr. Blume also alluded to the short-term employment of the last two administrative assistants due to them not being able to see eye to eye with him. Getting the job done his way remains Mr. Blume first priority.  He lacks emotional intelligence in regards to empathy for others and interpersonal skills like conflict management and team building.  His high need for control, poor delegation skills and Type A personality promote the breach in the relationships between Greg and his employees even more.
For much of our interview with Mr. Hansen, he recommended leadership concepts and offered leadership advice to our group, which had little or nothing to do with our assignment.  Although our group shared much of the responsibility for not communicating clearly to Mr. Hansen our goals for the interview, he did a poor job of listening and asking questions in order to understand our intentions.  This is in direct contrast to Mr. Blume, whose main concern was educating himself on our objectives and then supplying us with the information we desired. Mr. Hansen created a company policy that prohibited socializing and all co-worker relationships at EverTrust Bank.  Such a policy creates a much stricter task oriented structure than the one existing at The Blume Company.  Working for Mr. Hansen would appeal strongly to risk averse, task motivated employees who desire stability and safety. A relationship motivated employee may not be interested in working for Mr. Hansen on the whole, which may lead EverTrust into losing the diversity of having extroverted and enthusiastic individuals in their workforce.
Finally, we can infer a vast array of powerful insights from comparing and contrasting our candidate’s leadership styles.  As the CFO and COO of a relatively small organization, Mr. Blume takes on many tasks that are not common to people carrying his title.  He must be able to multitask, be a superior mediator and delegate well. In regards to the big five personality dimensions described in chapter three of our texts, Mr. Blume’s strengths seem to reside in emotional stability and conscientiousness. Even though he has a lot of energy, he seemed to also fall into the introvert category.  He seemed very secure and dependable, with a keen ability to keep a clear head and make expert decisions while applying his skills in an objective manner.  In addition, he was extremely organized and conscientious, traits that are imperative for a person fulfilling his role as a leader and accountant.  The latter trait, conscientiousness is key since it is “most the dimension most strongly correlated with job performance”.  As a motivated and dependable worker, Mr. Blume contributes positively to his company.  His hard work, multitasking skills, ability to work well with deadlines, and goal setting make him stand out as a leader, exemplifying many of the characteristics found in a Type A leader. Mr. Hansen’s big five personality dimensions concentrate in extraversion and conscientiousness.  He is tremendously sociable, assertive, ambitious, and communicative, while also exerting a reliable and structured personality which shapes the structure of EverTrust Bank.  His strong relationship skills, perceptiveness, and charisma seem to point to an intuitive feeler, according to the Myers Briggs Type Indicator. Both leaders seemed to have a high level of internal locus of control, a fascinating constant in all of the speakers we have heard of from throughout our class.  When speaking of their professional experiences, they referenced their actions as being the catalyst to the outcome of events, rather than the other way around.  Both were extremely proactive, planned for the future, and spoke of the importance of ethics.  Both speakers exemplified the practice of living with a vision.  This is one of the seven habits identified in Stephen Covey’s book, “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”  Mr. Hansen believed in this practice so deeply that in order to substantiate and reinforce his belief in the importance of identifying and understanding one’s vision, he keeps a paragraph taped above his desk which describes leading as weaving a fairytale for others to believe in and help execute.  It illustrated a strong metaphor on spreading and implementing a vision in a very effective and simple manner.
            In conclusion, we recapitulate our findings of leaders’ characteristics, strengths and weaknesses and leadership styles by in a very general way in the following statement: Each individual has just really brought his natural and particular view and approach towards events into the workplace, circumstances have not only shaped them but also created the occasion for them to lead, and they have presented themselves willing to lead. With regards to detail, their characteristics have taught us much. We’ve learned of the effectiveness of any kind trait giving the right situation for it to be practiced advantageously.  There is always a right balance between an orientation between the task and relationships, since in reality, none occur in a vacuum. The passion to lead mixed, emotional intelligence, being able to communicate visions in a detailed yet simple fashion, delegating and at the same time empowering people to exploit their potentials and develop them are all powerful tools of leadership. Both individuals presented us with their perspectives and insights on leadership, but most enthrallingly it was in their own way. We were left with an extremely powerful reflective thought from Mr. Hansen that we thought was a “When you control someone, you don’t get the best out of them”.

 

BIBILIOGRAPGY

1. The Art and Science of Leadership, “Afsaneh Nahavandi”; Prentice Hall, Copyright 2007 by Pearlson Education, Inc.

 

2. BA Honors Class Discussion, “Roland Dukes”; UW Business School-Autumn 2007

3. Mr. Michael Hansen, President and CEO, “EverTrust Financial Group”.

 

4. Greg Blume, CFO and COO of “The Blume Company” (Real Estate)