Marleen Gonzalez
Personal Leadership Perception Paper
MHR 450
November 16, 2009
Fall 2009
Having good leadership is very important to have in our world today. I work in
retail for a clothing company called Guess? And I have been with the company for a little
over a year. I recently got promoted to Assistant Manager in August. I have always been
a hard worker and getting promoted within a year was a vision of mine. I am a manager
and I consider myself to be a leader. One of the biggest things I have learned from this
class so-far is how a manager differs from a Leader. Managers are cold, rational, toughminded, acts like a boss, and does things right. A leader is warm, visionary, inspiring,
acts like a coach, and does the right things. All leaders have certain behaviors they carry
and it depends on what type of leader one is. I am a relationship-oriented leader, which
means my behaviors will differ from a task-oriented leader. I am trusting and
supportive. I have openness to workers opinion, I give emotional support and I am a
servant leader. A Servant Leader serves constituents by working on their behalf to help
them achieve their goals, not the leaders’ own goals. I am also a situational leader in
progress, I adapt my leadership to fit a specific situations. This is one area that I am
working on in order to become a better leader.
In my job there are a total of five managers including my-self. Within our
management team I can already see who the “managers” are and who the leaders are. I
have always been the person who takes charge in the time of need. Holiday season is
the busiest time of year for all retail companies and for store management it can be a
bit stressful. Every holiday season we have a store meeting and this year none of the
managers but me and Claudia were putting it together. This was very stressful for us
because we need to put a meeting together in two weeks for a group of fifty. Claudia
was very upset with the other managers and was very sarcastic to them and putting
them down on not helping us two out. This unfortunately made the mangers angrier
and made them not want to help at all. So, I took initiative and polity explained to the
other managers why I personally needed their help and I listened to their complaints
about Claudia, who by the way is our store manager. I was being very humble with
managers and asking for their help in a nice way. I let them know that I cannot do
everything alone and I don’t know everything and I needed their help. The managers
have told me that they can trust me and they feel that can talk to me. This of course
makes me feel good.
I had to speak to Claudia about the way she approaches other members of our
team. She makes them feel belittled and demands them to do tasks. She is the perfect
example of a manager cold, demanding, and tough minded. She is an autocratic leader;
she likes to retain most of the authority and she makes decision assuming that we the
other managers will agree. When in reality sometimes we have better or other ideas. I
on the other hand am a participative leader; I share decision making with everyone.
Each manager has their own leadership style and as one can tell Claudia and I have two
very different leadership styles. The good thing is because we are both opposite of each
other we always have two different ideas or views. In the end the meeting turned out
great and Claudia took my feedback and is making some very good changes in her
leadership style.
As a result to my leadership style thus far I have resolved the conflict between
the members of my management team at work. There have been improvements from
all five managers including myself. I have learned that I need to work on adapting my
leadership style to specific situations for example when tasks are frustrating and
stressful I’m not the best leader. I need to calm down and be a supportive leader rather
than stress out and give up. As for Claudia she needs to have more consideration for
others and she needs to humble herself.
Being and effective leader takes time and is something I am working on.
Effective leaders adapt to the situation, give direction, and hold group members to high
standards of performance. Delegation is an important area of leadership as well. A
leader must delegate to others to help get the job done. For the meeting, I delegated to
the other managers what I needed help with and they responded in a positive way. They
appreciated the fact that I made them feel like a team and did not act the boss of them.
One person can never do everything on their own it takes a team and a good leader. I
consider myself a leader and I know after this class I will be a great leader. One thing my
father taught me when I was child was: “treat other as you would want to be treated.”
And I feel that is why my team can talk to me and trust me because I treat them with
respect and I expect the same respect back.