Leadership Practices and Challenges at Woolworths

Running Head: MANAGEMENT
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Leadership theory
6/5/2019

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Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2
Company Overview and Activities (Woolworths).................................................................................2
Leadership practices or style at Woolworths.........................................................................................3
Challenges or issues faced and leadership development programmes at Woolworths.......................3
Strengths and weakness of the Participative leadership.........................................................................4
Recommendations for performance improvement in Woolworths........................................................6
Conclusion.............................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction
The report brings about the discussion on the concepts of management and the analysis
of leadership practices and theories in organisation. Leadership refers to the process of
influencing the behaviour of individuals working in an organisation. It leads individuals or
group of an organisation towards the attainment of a common goal. To understand the
concept of leadership practices, ‘Woolworths Supermarket’ has been taken as the company in
this assignment. The aspect of style and behaviour of the leaders and managers will also be
discussed in the report.
In addition, the differences between leadership practice and coercion will be described
along with concept of power and authority. The report will mention the issues or strengths
and weakness of the leadership style practiced within organisation. In the later part, the
report will provides some recommendations based on the issues identified for improvement in
future, related to the work practices and leadership practices. Thus, the readers will gain an
understanding of the concepts of leadership practices and way it shapes their success and
growth of the organisation.
Company Overview and Activities (Woolworths)
Woolworths Supermarket is an Australia based supermarket grocery store/chain,
managed, and owned by Woolworths. The company specialises in the selling of the grocery
items such as vegetables, and sell DVDs, magazines, and other items. The company
constitutes for 80% of the Australian market, and in included a part of the retail industry in
the country. Moreover, the Woolworths Group manages some other trusted and recognised
brands, which aims at creating the excellent experience to their customers around the world
(Woolworths, 2018).
The supermarket deals in the food products or eatables, therefore maintaining the health
and enhancing the customer satisfaction is utmost important for the store chain. Therefore,
effective leadership skills and management practices are required for undertaking right or
responsible decisions for the organisation. Thus, the Woolworths employ great leaders and
other practices to gain organisational goals. This aspect is one of the great characteristics that
makes ‘Woolworths’ a significant brand in the Australian retail industry (Fernie & Sparks,
2018).

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Leadership practices or style at Woolworths
To determine the leadership team, and the members of the Board of Directors, it has
been found that aim to maintain and increase shareholder value while performing other
operations. Leadership is a vital function in context to business organisations, as it
maximizes the organisational efficiency and leads to the attainment of goals. However, in this
context the role of the leaders is important as they motivate them towards high performance
through strong relations. Thus, in any organisations leaders or managers must practice
effective leadership to attain predetermined goals and objectives. It has been found through
research that the style of leadership that is practiced at the supermarket is participative
leadership. To define participative style, it refers to the style of leadership that invites or
encourages employees to participate in the decision-making activities of the organisation
(Methner, Hamann & Nilsson, 2015).
In this style of leadership, an organisation emphasizes on giving importance to their
employees, and provides them information regarding the issues faced by company.
Woolworths focused primarily on the aspect of increasing the motivation levels of employees
working in the organisation. It is considered as an important responsibility of the leader in
grocery store chain (Sewell et al., 2017). Moreover, it has been found that the supermarket
has adopted the employee engagement approach as their working style. This has been an
important strategy that Woolworths uses to reduce their employee turnover, increase the
productivity and enhance overall organisational efficiency. Thus, these are some of the
characteristic aspects, which mention the effectiveness of leadership i.e. participative
leadership within organisation (Methner, Hamann & Nilsson, 2015).
Challenges or issues faced and leadership development programmes at
Woolworths
A number of leadership challenges or issues faced by Woolworths includes poor
innovation, lower productivity and change management aspects. These are some of the issues
or challenges in context to leadership faced by Woolworths (Knox, 2015). In context to the
retailers such as Woolworths, the managers face problems mainly such as managing the
advanced employer turnover rate, release of the quality service for the customers, and
inventory management, acts as major issues affecting leadership. Increase in productivity