Leadership Theories at Woolworths

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LEADERSHIP THEORIES AT WOOLWORTHS

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Analysis of the leadership in Woolworths.................................................................................3
Literature Review- Overview of application theories to the identified issue.............................5
Alternate solutions to the situation.............................................................................................6
Recommendations......................................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Organization Brief
Woolworths is one of the largest retail chains in Australia which is popular for its
quality of products and services provided to the customers (Woolworths Group, 2019). The
organization has been sustaining the competition by way of identifying strategies that
differentiate it from its competitors. However, the skill of leadership is considered to be
missing from Woolworths. As opined by Rosenbach (2018), organizations need strong
leadership for attaining maximum effectiveness. As suggested by Gordon (2017), the trait of
leadership can either be inbuilt or acquired. Leadership in an organization requires
developing the leadership skills and abilities in order to manage the operations of the
business. This means, a leader will be able to manage hard situations and still focus on
growing within the organization. There is a clear distinction between managers and leaders
where a manager manages the business operations whereas a leader has the potential to
control the group of individuals. As opined by Blanchard (2018), leadership is an essential
component of management, the behavior of leaders also helps to build an effective
organization. Organizational leadership involves all the possible ways that lead to
achievement of the organizational goals. Leadership quality will be able to map where the
organization wants to be, where it is at the current situation and what can be done to achieve
that position. A leader must set direction, utilize management skills to motivate and inspire
people in the organization and direct them towards the direction of gaining profitability. As
mentioned by Jones (2015), Woolworths has been facing leadership issues and identifying
new strategies can improve its marketing leadership position in the Australian Marketplace.
A leader requires to be dedicated, motivated and able to manage any situations with ease. The
following assessment discusses on the leadership theories and leadership or behavioral issues
prevailing within the organization. A brief literature review has been provided relating to
Woolworths managerial style. From the literature review, possible alternative solutions will
be identified to improve the present situation of Woolworths.
Leadership Practice at Woolworths
As suggested by Antonakis & Day (2017), leadership is a process of directing and
influencing the behavior of people towards the achievement of the goals. The business
landscape in the current century is extremely competitive and demands the leaders to possess
extraordinary skills in order to manage the people and business operations. Leaders are
suggested to be transformative and act as role models for the coming generation. As

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identified in the case of Woolworths, the organization was criticized once for its poor trading
performance. It is justified that there are issues in retail industry, but the leadership issues has
impacted the level of motivation of employees of the organization. Many have believed like
PYMNTS (2015) that the organization would require streamlining the management team and
innovative marketing strategies to regain a competitive position in the market. It is also seen
that, the lack of leadership qualities of the senior leaders, can be a cause of delay in
identifying solutions for the problems arising. However, it is the responsibility of business
leaders to understand the challenges and provide with relevant solutions. As suggested by
Girma (2016), leadership comprises of several aspects such as strategic planning, employee
motivation and fostering change management within the organization. This requires the
business leaders to cover every aspect facing the challenge in order to demonstrate a strong
leadership quality.
There is a significant impact of on the performance of the employees. According to
Kew & Wessels (2019), the senior management and the leaders of Woolworths have lack of
transformational leadership style that may impact on the motivation of employees thereby
affecting their performance. Generally a transformational leader is self-motivated and leads
others towards the organizational vision. Hawkins (2017) suggests that in transformational
leadership, the employees are encouraged by creating trust respect towards the leaders. When
employees are motivated they perform better which leads to job satisfaction. However, in
case of Woolworths, the retail managers have not shown sufficient leadership qualities in
order to gain better outcomes. As the leadership style influences the performance of
employees both internally and externally, it allows them to create a better working
environment. Transformational leaders provide employees with freedom and make them
learn their responsibilities towards the organization, team members and themselves.
As opined by Rosenbach (2018), Transactional leadership is one kind of leadership
style where the leaders are concerned with the completion of tasks and rewards are to be
given to the performing employees. But there are both positive and negative repercussions of
this leadership style. The leaders often utilize promotions as well as monetary benefits for the
performance of the employees. This type of leadership style is not right for Woolworths as
the employees require proper communication process between them and the leaders. The lack
of strategic leadership styles has led to lower productivity, lack of innovation and inability to
achieve performance targets by Woolworths. But according to many researches, majority of