What Is Paul Anderson Case Study

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As Sutton suggests, the CEO of BHP Limited – Paul Anderson, had a change in his leadership style which lead to the success of his company. This was more closely analyzed in Sutton’s talk with the CEO himself where they discussed about the progression of the company. When Paul first took over in 1998, the company was under a messy management and there had not been a CEO for nine months previously. As a result, they were facing challenges in keeping the talented staff and maintaining the stock price as well as gaining profit. At this time, Paul used autocratic/telling leadership style. With this type of leadership style, he made all his decisions then he informed others of the organization about it. The leaders are usually very involved and supervise …show more content…

He began to shift his style from Telling to Participating. In Participating, the situational leader gives more responsibility to the employees. The leader provides direction but the decisions ultimately lie with the followers. The role of leader is to provide feedback and increase the confidence of the employees for the task completed. This type of leaderships style would allow the followers to be more involved and hence act as an incentive for them to work hard for the company because their decisions matter. When they feel important to the company, they would naturally put extra effort and commitment. Paul listened to the collective feedbacks of his top people and established a turnaround strategy that he believed would help the company to thrive. Thus, he made clear of its company’s goals and made several tough decisions such as closing a titanium plant that was losing out, to help the company overcome hard …show more content…

In the beginning, they are at R3 of the Readiness model. They are able to perform the task but are unwilling to use the ability. Instead of lacking confidence, they are reluctant to do so due to the differences they had but this changed when they overcome their differences. They became able and willing. They were committed and confident to perform the job. Following that, another assessment of subordinates is used in follower development. The leader evaluates the follower on the readiness or development scale and matches the behavior style to the follower’s development level. In this case, the employees were at Development Level 3 which is reluctant contributor. Whilst they have moderate to high competence and variable commitment, they chose not to follow. This was later shifted to Development Level 4 which is peak performer. The followers have high competence and high commitment. Thus, the effectiveness of the followers would be peak high. However, this follower development would change accordingly based on the employees’ competence and abilities. Their attitudes, levels of enthusiasm and commitment are also an ongoing change. The leader must be open to the prospect of moving from one level of readiness and follower development to another, it may be positive or

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