领导力采访作业(英文版)

MGMT 680

September 17, 2017

Leadership Interview Analysis

In this interview on leadership, the interviewee I selected is one of my friends, his name is Zhao Renjie. Zhao has worked in the financial industry for 7 years and is currently the general manager of a business department at a securities company. In the fourth years of Zhao's work, he was sent to Guizhou Province by the head office to set up a new business department. At present, under Zhao’s guidance, the business department has been operating steadily for three years, and its performance has been steadily developing. Therefore, Zhao has a wealth of professional knowledge and management experience in this field and deserves to be shared with others.

With the knowledge of leadership, I will focus on the three dimensions of ‘leadership and followership communication styles’to analyze Zhao's leadership, and then, draw relevant conclusions. These dimensions are: 1. Authoritarian, Democratic, and Laissez-Faire Leadership;

2. Task and Interpersonal Leadership;

3. Traits, Situational, Functional Leadership.

“You can't imagine how difficult it is to start a new business department alone!”This sentence is zhao’s opening remarks. Our interview began with his memories of setting up a new business department. Zhao had not been to Guizhou Province before he received the appointment of the head office. When he came to Guizhou with the task of setting up a new sales office, his first thought was not to recruit new employees, but spent a week talking with his team about how to carry out this work. “Only by listening to all useful opinions can we make a good start，even though we have a tight schedule.” Obviously, Zhao does not mind spending more time as a democratic leader in order to gain the rewards of democracy — more support and cohesiveness.

Democratic communication also runs through the day-to-day operations of the sales department. Zhao insists on having two regular meetings a week, Monday and Friday (the head office only requires the general managers to hold a regular meeting once a week in their business department on Monday) and he encouraged everyone to speak out at the meeting. As mentioned in the textbook，researchers have found that democratic leadership is often most effective. It’s associated with increased follower productivity, satisfaction, and involvement. Indeed, it is not uncommon for employees to present constructive suggestions at the regular meetings every week，and his subordinates would invite him into the WeChat Group to discuss some work. But, democratic techniques are time consuming. Thus, after Democratic discussions, overtime often follows. Simply, in China, overtime is no big deal.

When we analyze Zhao's leadership behavior from the perspective of Task and Interpersonal Model, the Blake and McCanse’s Leadership Grid is worthy of reference. According to this theory, communication styles are divided into five categories, basis on the degree of task-orientation and interpersonal-orientation，namely，Impoverished Management, Authority Compliance, Middle-of-the-Road Management, Country Club Management and Team Management. According to interview, Zhao's leader communication style can easily be located into the style of Authority Compliance. This kind of leaders are highly concerned with completion of tasks but demonstrate little concern for interpersonal relationship. The leader believes that efficiency can be achieved only through appropriate work arrangements and the elimination of poor staff. Such a style can increase the output of company in short time but due to the strict policies, high labor turnover is inevitable. In order to achieve the goals of department, Zhao introduced the KPI (Key Performance Indicator) to evaluate the performance of employees. He has also set up some rewards and punishments policies to drive the sector forward. According