The Developing Manager

The Developing Manager
Name:
Date of Submission:

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Title: The Developing Manager
Task 1:
For task one, I have chosen two organisations namely Airbnb and Novotel Hotel from Accor.
Airbnb is one of the most aspiring groups in the hospitality field. It is a premium marketplace for
home stays enabling people to find short-term lodging and accommodation with hosts. Brian
Chesky founded Airbnb in 2008 (Airbnb.co.in, 2017). Mike Curtis, V.P of Airbnb engineering
said that the mission of Airbnb is to make people feel home everywhere and this is also the
management style and culture of Airbnb (Thomas, 2017). Airbnb has adapted an approach from
the top to down management style and freestyle management style. At Airbnb, Managers are just
facilitators, and they exist to get obstacles out of the people’s way. These obstacles can be
information obstacles or career obstacles (Thomas, 2017). Managers do not give orders to
employees at Airbnb. Employees are expected to be motivated by the mission of Airbnb and
equipped with enough information to their managers. Managers do not tell them how to impact
in work. Airbnb is trying to define both its products and its company around the hospitality. The
management at Airbnb is more similar to Fayon than Taylor as the management is going from
top to bottom, empowering individual people (Hofstede, 1993). Novotel is one of the brands of
Accor group in the medium category. With over 400 hotels in the World and over 266 in Europe
alone, it is one of the leading medium brands in the World (Novotel.com, 2017). The Hotel chain
has cultural diversity in its management, and thus its management style is depicted in the way it
handles its employees. Its culture drives on skills, attitude and satisfaction. The organisation
believes in sharing the vision with its employees. Management should know how to make
employees smile (Docplayer.net, 2017).

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The leadership style of Airbnb can be best described as charismatic. As per Brian Chesky, the
organisation is a boat with half in water and half-afloat (Gallagher, 2017). In the lower half, there
would be holes (problems), and his job is to solve them. He says that although they empower the
organisation and its leaders to take decisions and management act as facilitators, there are many
decisions that he takes without much discussion with the terms. He believes that when there is a
decision taken in consensus, it create a middle way. In key places it is not right to take the
middle way, you take a risk in extreme ways to evolve (Gallagher, 2017). This is not a sign of an
autocratic leader because the decision power is not limited to one person, but it is given to the
organisation with the limits.
In the Novotel Hotel, the management believes in a leadership that suits both transactional and
transformational leadership (Docplayer.net, 2017). Transactional leadership is all about keeping
the operations in normal flow (Ingram, 2017). Here performances are rewarded, and the focus is
on the seamless flow of work. There is not strategic guidance in the leadership. So this is
required to keep the daily work in the hotel (Ingram, 2017). Novotel does not need strategic
changes in the day-to-day operations of the hotel this is limited to serving clients in the best way.
Transformational leadership is all about looking beyond the day-to-day management and
creating strategies to craft the next level performance (Ingram, 2017). This type of leadership is
required in the hotel to continuously improve the Hotel management and being competitive in
the organisation. Novotel has leadership that fits in both the categories where the mid-level
management focus on the transaction leadership and the higher-level focus on the
transformational leadership (Docplayer.net, 2017).
Airbnb does not believe in the top to the bottom communication process. Each leader is given a
chance to grow and takes responsibilities. Their superiors who are often facilitators to them give

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them all kind of assistance. This has lead to a way where people can introduce ideas, and these
ideas stand in the organisation based on merits. This kind of communication has empowered
managers to develop a deep level of understanding with the organisation (Thomas 2017).
Novotel promotes the upward flow of information. They allow the regional hotel management to
make their decisions and then the information flow upward. They believe in empowering
regional hotels and still create a clear communication from the bottom to top (Docplayer.net,
2017).
Novotel believes in the reconciliation of local culture and corporate culture. It believes that the
amalgamation of both cultures and individuals lead to a better organisation understanding.
Airbnb has a mixed culture of different regions. The informal setting in the organisation allows
people from all walk to flourish. What it believes is work being done in a healthy atmosphere
(Thomas, 2017).