Taran Swan’s story as general manager of Nickelodeon Latin America is a true pattern of successful leadership in building organizations. She manages to foster a great team of people who would feel equal and work together to achieve a common goal that she manages to set without exercising authority. Furthermore she manages to make everyone feel equal in their ideas by allowing discussions rather than exercising power. Her management is extremely effective when the company was being created but at the same time, as her team increased she kept the tight working style which guarantees success in the long run even if she is not present. Although the case study that is examines her character doesn’t cover her story after 1998, I have no doubts
Taran Swan manages to combine success in the short and in the long run by applying new ideas with combination of established shows from the history of the Nickelodeon. Instead of trying to satisfy the community she tried to shape their interests - an approach that only natural leaders are strong enough to follow.
Her calm and consistent style of leading the company is in contrast with a few of her very risky but also very successful decisions. Furthermore she shows that she can not only adopt her company to the difficult and different environment of Latin America but she can adopt and respond to problems inside her own team by changing her leadership strategy and event the organization of her company as in the case of the conflict between Neuhaus and Byrne.
In my opinion, by far her greatest advantage and her best quality is her transformational style of leadership. At the macro level she is rarely using her authority in decision making because she allows her employees to discuss and convince each other and herself what is the best path that the company should follow. Furthermore she allows certain individuals of her team to be in charge of different tasks even organizational meetings. She is devoted to her team and she doesn’t hesitate to pay some of the employees