Sander’s Strengths as a Manager
Alex Sander was the youngest and the newest product manager of the Toiletries Division at Landon Care Products’, which was later acquired by Avant-Garde. Alex is represented as a skilled, perfectionist, smart, self-driven, self-confident, hardworking, professional, and multitasking individual who is keenly focused on her job tasks, Sanders is an ultimate achiever who is always engrossed, motivated, and dedicated toward her individual and organizational targets. Alex successfully possesses all the ground-breaking business management qualities and always portrays high commitment towards her job tasks. She is highly passionate towards her goals and the evidence to this was the successful rebranding of two products in a period of just one year. Alex Sander has a strong educational background, relative experience in branding skin care products and additionally, she is highly creative and has quick learning abilities.
The 3600 feedback defines Alex as an amazing self-starter who always recognizes and implements necessary measures and expedient decisions. Sander also demonstrates the consistent learning behavior and keeps on identifying gaps in her personal skills and knowledge. She also strives hard to find out the effective ways to acquire knowledge. Alex Sander is an exceedingly intellectual and practical professional who does not only depends upon indefinite hopes but always push hard to find concrete answers. Alex is one of the highly productive managers of the corporation and productivity under her headship is outright. Sanders always provides her colleagues and subordinates their due appreciations and credits, and also demonstrates generosity in recognizing them with dinners, entertainment stipends etc. Sanders is a social person and apart from work, she is found to be more relaxed, composed, and entertaining person (Greiner & Collins, 2008).
Sander’s Weaknesses as a Manager
Alex Sander is undoubtedly a highly productive, focused, and committed person but on the other side, she is arrogant, impatient, short-tempered, authoritative, and intolerant towards her associates. Sander gives a picture of low emotional intelligence and was often criticized for her bad reinforcement techniques. She often steams over the feelings of her subordinates and team members, as well as, and practices Machiavellianism (to employs duplicity and cunningness in her conduct). Sander rarely values the opinions of others and always imposes her opinion without involving the rest of the team. Due to this behavior, most of the team members feel demoralized and undermined. Alex works tirelessly and also expect from others to work at the same pace, which usually result in contradictory encounters. Alex does not care about the emotions and feelings of other individuals, which often make them feel disrespected and alienated. Her intolerant and extremely authoritative style of management makes her subordinates burnt out. According to her 3600 feedback, Sanders is indulged in self-admiration and always prefer her personal standpoints. She does not value and respect the opinions of other and needs to learn to treat people with more dignity. Sanders herself is highly passionate about work and for that sake, she expects her subordinates to work like that too. She won’t mind them putting extra work hours, giving up their holidays and planned vacation. This usually makes people easily exhausted and frustrated with the dominating nature and disturbs their work-life balance to a significant extent as well. Alex appreciates her subordinates but she usually exudes the attitude of being superior to others and endeavors to off-put and belittles others. Sanders ruffle along the feelings of another individual by showing arrogance and bad temper. She hardly trusts anyone, as well as, tries to control every minute job detail and manipulate it in her own way without giving other the sufficient authority to completely execute the task with their convenience and creativity (Greiner & Collins, 2008).
Communication Style
Sanders communication style is inflexible, timely, authoritative, intolerant, and too straightforward. While considering the strengths of Sander’s communication style i.e. timely and effective communication; the team members of other nationalities would always receive an instant feedback and productive results because Alex hates at delaying tasks. She turns out to be a good listener who listens attentively to others and delivers results in response. However, on the other side, her inflexible, harsh, and excessive straightforwardness can make other people feel disparaged and belittled (Greiner & Collins, 2008). For instance, by reiterating the deadline and by mentioning that she has much more work to do than other can make them feeling insulted. Moreover, while communicating interculturally, Alex needs to keep in mind that every individual’s culture has their particular verbal and non-verbal communication norms and gestures that are extremely important to be borne during communication or else it may lead to contradictory situations and ineffective communication (Arnold et.al, 2015).
Reformulations
Europe and the United States are two absolutely individual markets with differentiated demographics, consumer choices, buying behaviors, as well as, cultural and social aspects (Nowack, 2015). Moreover, the climatic aspects and skin conditions also vary between the two. So if Sander wants the products to be successful in the United States that she previously sold in Western Europe, she needs to start from the scratch. She will encounter the challenges from product development to marketing and from distribution to sales. In order to meet all these challenges, Sander would need a comprehensive market research that will enable her to understand the consumer preferences, buying behavior, and product expiations in the United States (Burnette, 2016). Every market has its particular dynamics, trends, and configurations that are very important to be considered or else product failure is inevitable. Lastly, Sander should consider the cultural, economic, social, environmental, and political factors as they play a significant role in brand success (Eagly & Johannesen‐Schmidt, 2010).
Would I Work For Sander?
If I would be given a choice to work for Alex Sander, I would certainly say no for several definite reasons. Firstly, Sander vastly lacks in people management skills and does not respect others and their opinions. She does not understand the value of giving other people their workspace that is fundamental for performing with enough confidence and liberty (Lussier & Achua, 2015). I would say no because I also believe that working under the headship of a leader like Sander might suppress my creative supremacies, my ability to take decisions, my diverse eccentricities, skills, as well as, my self-esteem (Sosik & Godshalk, 2013). I believe that I always give my best without pressure and my performance gets affected with exceedingly stringent and inflexible deadlines. I always like to choose work settings that foster my skills, abilities, and competencies, and allow me to explore them further instead of making me on an automation mode of meeting deadlines as per the defined algorithm. I also believe that an individual could be more involved and engage in the given task when his/her willingness is included. Therefore, along these lines, I think that I couldn’t perform productively by working for Sander.
References
Arnold, K. A., Connelly, C. E., Walsh, M. M., & Martin Ginis, K. A. (2015). Leadership styles, emotion regulation, and burnout. Journal of occupational health psychology, 20(4), 481. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
Burnette, J. (2016). Human Resources and People Management. Pharmacy Clinical Coordinator's Handbook. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
Eagly, A. H., & Johannesen‐Schmidt, M. C. (2010). The leadership styles of women and men. Journal of social issues, 57(4), 781-797. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
Greiner, L. E., & Collins, E. (2008). A Day in the Life of Alex Sander: Driving in the Fast Lane at Landon Care Products. Harvard Business School Case,2177, 1-11. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
Lussier, R., & Achua, C. (2015). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development. Nelson Education. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
Nowack, K. M. (2015). 360 Feedback: From Insight to Improvement. Public Manager, 44(2), 20. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
Sosik, J. J., & Godshalk, V. M. (2013). Leadership styles, mentoring functions received, and job‐related stress: a conceptual model and preliminary study. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21(4), 365-390. Retrieved on June 9, 2016
