Experiential Leadership Project Progress Report Essay

This paper is an experiential leadinghip project whose subject is, Sandra Ussery, my direct supervisor at work. Sandras designation is Pricing Systems Supervisor, under FedEx National LTL. At present she over take heeds society direct employees. Sandras boss is Diane Lia, the Pricing Systems Manager for FedEx National LTL. Diane has two direct employees and nine indirect employees. The main reason I redeem chosen to focus on Sandra is because she is in a newly created position. Good supervisors be populate who, still when they must correct soul, can step on your toes without messing up your shine.They give spate a shot in the arm without letting them feel the positle. populate suck inm to need encouragement most when they sense that they have really failed. Perhaps they failed the boss, or the organization or just failed themselves. In any case, it is at that second gear that the leader needs to show her characterhow she is able to help them along with the healing proces s. My supervisor, Sandra Ussery, is that kind of a boss and many more. This paper aims to get ahead an evaluation of her from those people under her. It shall also provide a copy of the questionnaire which I used in gauging the kind of leading she implements with her staff.The process of evaluating an individuals performance contains elements of positive and negative reinforcement. How well people perform is largely determined by whether their performance is evaluated or rewarded. Many organizations, especially smaller ones, do not have formal evaluation programs because they have survived without them in the past and they see no benefit for them in the future. Yet, performance management is essential crimson among supervisors because they upgrade the level of the human performance of organizations. They identify riddle beas in the workplace when it comes to human resources.Although the situation does not appear to be in need of full attention right now, the implications will b e felt later on by organization if they do not act consciously on the issue. There argon adjustments that include minimum and accessorial charges, including additional adjustments in select lanes and dish up areas. The FedEx dispatch Segment accumulated annual revenues of $3. 6 billion in fiscal year 2006. This includes FedEx payload, a leading U. S. provider of regional next-day and second-day and interregional LTL freight services. The company is known for its high performance and exceptional service and reli force.FedEx Freight extends its service to all U. S. ZIP codes. It is supported by its principle of no-fee- money-back guarantee on all eligible continental U. S. shipments. It gives service to Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, europium and Asia. Holding corporate office in Memphis, Tennessee, the FedEx Freight Segment also includes FedEx National LTL, a leading provider of long-haul LTL services throughout North America. flavor at t his description, this paper maintains that every organization needs to start where it should be rightly sothe individual.The FedEx National LTL, is a leading U. S. provider of long-haul LTL freight services. federal official Express purchased original employer, Watkins Motor Lines last June. Prior to this purchase, the pricing organizations department, which was called the auto rate department under Watkins, had no supervisor. The supervisor position was created to have someone to train new employees as they were added to that department. Prior to four others and myself moving to the department in the span of a year, thither had been no new additions to that department for 7 years.After the acquisition, the supervisor bank line was created so that the manager of that department could focus on workings with managers of other departments at our location and at other operational(a) companies to integrate our systems together. FedEx National LTL, which is the operating company that I work for, specializes in providing low-cost transportation to our customers with slower turn around generation. Our partner freight company, FedEx Freight, specializes on one to two day turnaround times at a higher cost. The main reason we were purchased was to add the long haul, low cost service to FedExs already quick turnaround customers.FedEx National LTL operates in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, notwithstanding we can transport a shipment through the various operating companies anywhere in the world. The main factors affecting the companies operation at this time is the integration of our system into theirs. Our department takes pricing that is negotiated with our customers and we input it into our automated rating system. This system is designed to automatically apply pricing to freight bills so that no one has to manually rate them. This process is a huge cost deliverer to the company and is a highly focused on at FedEx.Federal Express has a mandat e to input all pricing into this system, this trend they have to pay few people to rate the bills. The problem we are facing is to integrate our automated rating program with theirs. Also, their operating systems are different than ours, but based on the same platform, so all the managers of the IT, IS, and Pricing Application departments are focused on integrating these systems. There is a comprehensive net income of nearly 330 service centers and advanced information systems, FedEx Freight provides service to virtually all U. S. ZIP codes, including Alaska and Hawaii.The carriers regional and interregional LTL service is supported by a no-fee money-back guarantee on all eligible continental U. S. shipments. It gives service to Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. Holding corporate office in Memphis, Tennessee, the FedEx Freight Segment also includes FedEx National LTL, a leading provider of long-haul LTL services throughout Nort h America. In general, the company offers customers and argumentationes worldwide with services in transportation, e-commerce and business services.The annual revenue is a staggering $34 billion. It is known worldwide as having trustworthy and admired employers. It has more than 275,000 employees. Contractors employ positive safety with a high ethical and professional standard. As I said before, what I penury to do with my project is collect feedback from my fellow coworkers, some of which have been there less than a year and others who have been there ten years or more. I have already discussed this project with my manager, supervisor, and coworkers and all of them have concur to provide information and feedback, as I need it.Since, most of the senior people have worked with Sandra for at least five years, I will be able to get their impression of her and her leadership abilities. Sandra did not train many of the seasoned people, so I will discuss with the four new people how ef fective they feel she was as a trainer. I also plan to evaluate her based on the leadership expressions I learned in the course. I want to see if Sandra tends to focus on one style or varies in styles and approaches depending on the employee and the situation.She has agreed to let me observe her a few times a week during the course of this project so that I may see her leadership style at work. I believe the best way to determine a particular style is to observe her actions towards me and other members of the department. I have contacted Human Resources to see if I can get a commercial enterprise Description for her position in order to see what is required from her and her assigned tasks. While I am observing her I will use these criteria to see if she is confident in completing these tasks. I will use these criteria to evaluate her leadership ability and her ability to meet the needs of the company.I plan to be as objective as I can with this report, especially since I have only been with the company for two years, and in this department for about seven-spot months. I plan to use the leadership styles outlined in the book as a guide to determining her style or styles of leadership. I want to gather as much data from coworkers and my manager on Sandra, since I have spent little time working with her. I want to see how the perceptions of those employees that have worked with her for a long time differ from those of us that are new.I believe that using the information outlined in our book, the job description qualifications and expectations, and the observations and information collected from coworkers and myself will help to determine if she is an effective leader. According to Dennie Carey, senior vice president, marketing, FedEx Freight, Whether operating fast cycle logistics or plotted distribution, shippers have told us they require a high degree of certainty, shipment integrity and actionable information. The company meets customer needs by continuing to embellish in their people, equipment, facilities and technologies.FedEx Freight has improved service in 3,000 lanes. Add to this is the safety features to its tractors and this ushered the easy access to its regional and long-haul service via the internet. It has also taken over the trading operations of Watkins Motor Lines in September, FedEx National LTL. It now focuses on the market with a highly engineered network. Sandra Ussery is a manager with faith in her staff. Part of any working day is inclined over to tracking and checking the progress that has been delegated throughout her staff.This is not about looking over the shoulders of her staff, but about monitoring the progress of the given program of the moment. Most people need reminders and her staff finds her as the ultimate reminderer in the organization. The people who most enjoy working with her are those who are self-starters, nonindulgent individuals who bring her the results of their projects before she ever h as a chance to check on their progress. After a while, she learns whom she needs to remind and whom she can count on to follow through without reminders.She is able to encourage empowerment of all staff since she recognizes that this is very grievous in do changes more effective. The more involved people are in the process of change, the more effective the change will be and the more lasting it will be for the company (Coyle and Kossek, 2000). Definitely, Ussery enhances her staffs ability to influence other subordinates in order to facilitate efficient decision making process within the organization. Those directly under her like and who worked with her within a year or so like Jessica, Jane, David, Daniel, Jerri, Sheila find that she exercises authoritative leadership ith them.This may be so because she trained them directly and she knows that these people would understand her when she wants things make perfectly. Authoritative leadership is the most effective in terms of gene rating changes for the company. Authoritative leaders as she is, she is very clear on what she wants to accomplish. She also has the ability to produce to her staff the significance of their job in the accomplishment of the companys goals. This centre therefore, that employees or the team knows their roles in the grand goal of the company.Through the strategical positioning of a vision, an Ussery provides standard on which the results of the team can be evaluated. The other staff like Scot, Cathie, Penny, and Diane, who is also Sandras manager, find her diversifying her leadership style to ensure that they are applied appropriately to certain situations. These people ordain that Sandra balances her authority and democracy in her leadership styles. They evaluate her as having the sensitivity and aroused capacity to recognize what would be the most appropriate leadership system that is being called for by the situation.In many cases using just one strategy cannot generate effect ive results. One of the important components in leadership is also recognizing the potential of an assigned leader. Characteristics of the leader have been known to be very important in the achievement of goals. This is very important in the context of the FedEx where implementations of projects are assigned to specific leadership and utmost excellence is needed. According to many psychological studies, which aim to recognize the character behind some of the effective leaders in successful organizations, emotional intelligence is very important for many leaders (Goleman, 2000).This has been widely reviewed in many literatures. According to Goleman (2000) this emotional intelligence can be reflected on the ability of leaders to have the necessary social skills. This means that they must be able work well with their people under different circumstances to ensure that there are no barriers to communication. This would help the problem to be resolved immediately and for improvements of the programs be initiated efficiently. They must also have high levels of motivation, which would allow them to do things through initiative and exceed the expected results.These are all seen in Sandra, as evaluated by her people and they especially find that she is really flexible as well to the call of the times and the moment. Finally she knows her limitations and prevail that she cannot possibly do everything without the able help of her staff likewise. Ms. Sandra Ussery is a good manager because she taught me through her example how to get the job done. I started taking notes and wonder what I would do if I were in charge. I looked and listened and collected a catalog of what people liked and disliked and collected a catalog of what people liked and disliked about management.She would often come up to me and say, Heres what we are going to do, and made us believe we could do it. From that moment on, I was ready. Are you ready? Youve got to take stock and honestly answer the qu estion. It requires huge amounts of time and effort. Not everyone is willing to make the commitment and the sacrifices. She often would say that she gets a high watching people succeed. Making peoples actions visible by publicizing and recognizing their work strengthens others. It opens doors to potential new relationships because people are more aware of one anothers contributions.Success is an attractive magnet for pulling people together and increasing their attachment to the project. Ms. Ussery points out that create stable political coalitions is often based on making certain that participants involvement is publicized. She notes that good press is an essential political currency. While publicizing other peoples actions heightens peoples sense of personal power. It builds commitment because it makes it more difficult for people to dissociate themselves from the actions and activities that they were recognized for.There is also a rising literature today on leadership that empha sizes the need to inspire collaboration. This is the emerging mainstream form of leadership where power in the process of decision making is more decentralized. There is now a present emphasis on the ability of group collaboration to actually facilitate the achievement of the goals. Collaborative leadership is practiced by Sandra as an effective means of communication that could actually imbibe greater productivity and greater creativity for the achievement of the goals of the department she is in.