Leader Styles Essay

Style Kimberly Burrow HCS 457 May 20, 2013 Dalynn Campbell Leadership Style This essay is on the different leadership style from a historical person of my choosing. The successful management styles of this person also the leadership styles. The score of my Leadership and Team Self-Management Assessment the class was asked to perform. The leadership styles and traits of my historical person. The traits that I can learn from my historical person and the traits and styles my historical person can learn from me. Historical person Leonard D. Schaeffer was a successful leader in Blue Cross of California. He was the president and CEO who helped orchestrate the transition into Wellpoint, which is the second largest publicly traded health care company in the United States. By 2004, Schaeffer built Wellpoint into a 19 billion dollar operation. Schaeffer oversaw the merger with Anthem Health Care. Schaeffer brought a wealth of public policy and experience and government knowledge to the board as senior adviser to Texas Pacific Group (TPG). He served as an Administrator of the United States Health Care Financing Administration, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (Harvard Business School, n. d. ). Successful management style The management theory Schaeffer uses in 1986 when he was recruited for president and CEO at Blue Cross of California. Schaeffer was the visionary of making the company the 40 million dollars that he was informed the company should make that year he became president and CEO. He fired 3,000 employees, the CFO, and sold everything that was not nailed down. Schaeffer tarted HMOs in Blue Cross of California, his theory was, â€Å"if you look at Americans, they don’t know much about health policy, but they know a lot about the rights and privileges of consumers† (A conversation with Leonard Schaeffer p. 27). He went public with WellPoint, sold 20% to the public. That gave the company capital, acquisition capital, and stock. The company began to diversify risk, economic regions, differ ent regulators, and different opportunities. This style of management is in the influence of culture. Schaeffer stated † You need different management techniques at different times. If you look back on the history of our company, the first stage is the turnaround. You need top-down, autocratic, â€Å"Here’s what you are going to do. † â€Å"Why? † â€Å"Because I told you to do it. † Top-down, directed, tell people what to do. You don’t have to be right, you just have to keep moving (A conversation with Leonard Schaeffer p. 27). Successful leadership style The leadership theory Schaeffer used was the democratic leadership. With the motivation with internal drives and impulses. He made decisions, set goals, worked toward achievement, and informed task to be done. The autocratic leadership Schaeffer used had little trust in employees and systematically exclude them from decision making. His leadership behavior helped the organization achieve its objective. When individuals gets to the point he or she realizes they can not run a company alone that is participative management. They bring people in that add and create value. Autocratic style is occurs when leaders have meetings and members suggest things and the leader takes the best suggestions and uses it without members voting. Leaders should shifts from internal concerns to external concerns to ensure the company is running well and is providing consumers with the companies product. With external concerns the leaders should give up the day-to-day control. They may impact and control the company but they can not control the external environment (Schaeffer). The score of my Leadership and Team Self-Management Assessment My score for the leadership and team self-management assessment was 50. The score total explains that I have excellent team leadership skills. Leading a team, management needs to bring together diverse talent, define goals, arrange efforts, and manage the relationships between team members (McBride, 2012). The team leader with skills in authority to set directions, democratic leadership if the team is successful, and the ability to re-establish team relationships if there is an issue. A good leader can find the teams strengths and outline the purpose of the team. Each member is unique in his or her own way rather it is their age, race, their motivation, or his or her ethnicity that brings diversity to the team. A manager should listen to the members of a team and offer their thoughts to lead a positive discussion. Keeping up-to-date with training will help leaders or manager with teams on the projects of his or her organization. Leonard Schaeffer leadership styles and traits In Schaeffer’s early career his leadership style was â€Å"Autocratic Leadership. † He realized that autocracy is the most painful, least enjoyable, and has its place if in a turnaround situation (Schaeffer, 2002). After his autocratic leadership in turning around the company, he realized he had to change his leadership style. The company began to focus on creating innovative products and excellent customer service, along with any decision instead of no decision. His role to ensure the organizations long-term success when the company changed so he had to change. Schaeffer changed from autocratic leadership to participative leadership style. The participative leadership style at the company they set four or five clear goals for the team to meet and gave them free rein to meet those goal as long as they stayed on budget. He laid out specific strategies for each goal. Managers had to take responsibility for meeting these goals. Researcher Rinsis Likert from the University of Michigan explanation what â€Å"Participative Leadership Style† is, â€Å"requires that the CEO receive suf? cient information from employees to make important strategic decisions but that he or she leave the implementation of strategy up to the line managers† (as stated in the Leadership Journey). Schaeffer changed his style of leadership when the company could deliver on its promises to customers and investors. Schoeffer’s style changed to â€Å"The Reformer† that demonstrates what is possible. He has several meeting with people outside the company to discuss health care practices, policies, and government representatives. As reformer he is the point person for tough questions. During his leadership journey Schoeffer has created concrete goals, and has wore different leadership caps that alter the way he assess a business situation. Even though past leadership styles worked each new situation is different. He has learned to pay attention to the teams dedicated to fulfill the goals. The traits from Leonard Schaeffer I can learn Throughout the years Schaeffer has developed different traits on leadership and learned from the traits and advanced to better trait. The traits that I can learn from is the participative leadership style. The participative style is to set several goals and let the team work on the project as he or she wishes. The traits Leonard Schaeffer can learn from me I know that with each situation there is a different leadership style that can be used to completer the project. The traits that Schaeffer can learn from my leadership is empathy for those who work report to him. When leaders treat employees with empathy the team there tend to be a better influential in getting the team to take initiative. If there is bad behavior in the team a good leader knows how to guide the team. This essay is on the different leadership style that Leonard Schaeffer used throughout his career. He started with a company that was on the verge of bankrupt and turned the company around. Schaeffer management style was democratic in the beginning and at the end his style was autocratic of his career at Blue Cross of California. My score on the Leadership and Team Self-Management Assessment was a 50, which is an excellent team leadership skills. The skill of diversity in leading a team is good behavior skill. Schaeffers leadership style and traits started with autocratic leadership changed to participative leadership style and ended with Schaeffer’s style as the reformer. The trait I can learn from Schaeffer is participative style, and the style Schaeffer can learn from me is empathy. References Harvard Business School. (n. d. ). Great American Business Leaders Of The Twentieth Century. Retrieved from http://www. bs. edu/leadership/database/leaders/leonard_d_schaeffer. html McBride, S. (2012). Team Leadership Skills. Retrieved from http://www. themanagersguide. co. uk/team-leadership-skills. html Porter-O’Grady, T. ; Malloch, K. (2007). Managing for success in health care. St. Louis, Mo: Mosby, Elsevier. Shortell, D. S. (n. d. ). A Conversation with Leonard Schaeffer. Retrieved from http://s ph. berkeley. edu/pubs/magazine/mag_sp06/pdf/schaeffer. pdf Sullivan, E. J. ; Decker, P. J. (2009). Effective leadership and management in nursing. (7th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.