Assignment 1 – Understanding leadership Our Hotel is situated on a busy location in the city. A range of office blocks, universities, education centres to high street shopping and market halls. This provides the hotel with a broad range of custom. In turn, this has brought employees from all types of cultures and backgrounds to work and train here. Together, with their work/life experiences and the history of the hotel, it has formed its own type of culture. A management culture that I will describe as relaxed, laid-back, very professional, proactive and a keen eye to attention to detail. I believe there is also a bias to this culture when recruiting too, this culture then reflects on to the ways all other departments are managed.
Again, referring to the `Tannenbaum and Schmidt’ model pictured above I strongly see myself as an `democratic’ leader. I can be with my own team stuck in an emergency situation or preparing for an office refurbishment project and even with other colleges from other departments on daily updates or in other meetings, I have noticed my approach has always been democratic. Having this approach is greatly helping me with my relationships with other managers as I can see a similar management culture all-round the organisation. However, I witness myself getting annoyed and frustrated to work with one particular department as it is clear that from top to bottom the department has an `autocratic’ style in any type of work behaviour and communication with me. Seen the positive behaviours of colleges in department’s using a democratic approach makes it clear to me to keep and even improve on my current leadership style. Feedback from employees during informal job chats are also positive and they all seem relaxed and free to share this information with me. I have recently prepared packs with 7 questionnaires/surveys and passed them on to every employee and manager in my department to receive formal feedback about my management skills and style. The pack also included a questionnaire about their learning style. I then used the feedback and wrote myself a mission statement that I now refer to during departmental meetings