Leadership Report: Boeing Case Study and Muilenburg's Leadership

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of leadership within Boeing, focusing on ethical, authentic, and distributed leadership styles. It begins with reflective statements exploring key leadership concepts such as the importance of understanding leadership theories, the contributions of individuals and stakeholders, the need for diverse leadership strategies, and the application of motivational theories. The report then delves into a case study of Boeing, examining the company's innovation, its crisis following two plane crashes, and the leadership of Muilenburg. It assesses the challenges associated with ethical, authentic, and distributed leadership, providing recommendations for improvement. The report covers leadership styles, strengths, weaknesses, and personal development plans. The report offers a detailed examination of Boeing's leadership, its evolution, and the challenges faced, making it a valuable resource for understanding leadership in a complex organizational context.

LEADING BUSINESS
ORGANIZATION

Table of Contents
PART 1: REFLECTIVE STATEMENTS.......................................................................................1
PART 2............................................................................................................................................5
A) Introduction............................................................................................................................5
B) Ethical, Authentic and Distributed leadership and challenges associated with practising
these.............................................................................................................................................5
C) Critical evaluation of Muilenburg's leadership style..............................................................7
D) Recommendation and conclusion .........................................................................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10

PART 1: REFLECTIVE STATEMENTS
Questions Reflection
a). Why do aspiring
leaders need to have
a clear
understanding of
leadership theories
and organisational
behaviour?
A leader within organisation have to face several issues in term of
managing employees and dealing with the risks that are present in
external business environment. This affected the performance of
employees up to a great extend, hence it is very crucial for a leader to
have thorough knowledge regarding the use of different leadership style
so that a leader would be able to guide and manage its follower in
effective manner in any sort of uncertainty to in order to work with
coordination to deal with situation and overcome from it. But despite of
this it is also crucial for a leader that to have an in-depth understanding of
organisational behaviour. This is because it support leader in predicting
the outcome of particular action or consequences of activities so that it
become easier to formulate tactics that can be easily accepted by the
employees and over which the further operations can be performed.
b). What are the
main contributions
that individuals,
leaders and
stakeholders make
in creating and
executing the
mission and vision
of an organization?
An individual employees is one which is very closure to operations part
of an organisation and are responsible for performing the work toward
accomplishment of organisational vision and mission by providing quality
performance that leads to organisational success at marketplace. On the
other side a leader is one who suggest the directors of company regarding
the creation of mission that leads to achievement of competitive
advantage at marketplace. In addition to this, leader is also responsible for
creating the strategies or working direction in order to guiding employees
and aligning their work toward accomplishment of organisational vision
and mission. Despite of this, mission statements is basically formulated
on the basis of demand and expectations that stakeholders have toward
the company as they are the one because of which a business is sustaining
in marketplace. Hence, the changes within the demand of stakeholders
influence the mission and vision of a company.
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c). Why do aspiring
leaders need to
understand a broad
range of potential
leadership strategies
(and specifically
change management
strategies) in order
to maximise
organisational
potential in a variety
of different business
contexts?
An effective leader is one who have a thorough understanding of several
leadership and change management strategies as the contemporary
organisations always operates in a dynamic environment where customers
need and expectations of customer changes frequently. Hence knowledge
regarding change management support a leader to formulate tactics for
employees performance in order to implement changes within the
organisation effectively. Therefore it is crucial for an aspiring leaders to
have a better understanding of leadership strategies so that it would be
able to take an action by interpreting variety of different business
situation for dealing with them. For instance, in case of fluctuating
customer demand within market due to change in trends a leader have to
implement those in its product for which effective strategies are required
to formulate like adopting situation leadership. On other business context
related with implementation of new technology leader is required to
formulate strategy for improving the working practice of employees and
adopting autocratic leadership style for making employees rigid toward
technology implementation.
d). Why do aspiring
leaders need to be
able to critically
evaluate a range of
motivational
(employee
engagement)
theories within a
specific
organisational
context?
In order to become an effective leaders the aspirant must know the
effective utilisation of motivational theory in order to get the higher
employees engagement so that the organisational performance can be
improved. This is because the organisational performance get affected by
the quality of work employees performed and the quality of work get
enhanced by keeping employees satisfied and motivated toward their
work. This further support in keeping them engaged with the affairs of
company and work which they perform so that their quality of work can
be performed that leads to improvement of organisational performance.
For instance, in case of role assignment the leaders are responsible to
assign the task or role to its employees as per their expectations or
capability to work or hold pressure of a role so that their would be more
employees engagement. For this Hierarchical theory of motivation can be
applied as each person is different in term of their expectation so that
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roles assign effectively. This support in keeping them motivated for
increasing employees engagement that in turn leads to improvement in
organisational performance.
e) Complete the
attached ‘Potential
Leadership Style’
Questionnaire,
answer the
following questions
and produce a
PowerPoint
presentation for
potential recruiters.
1) Potential leadership style:- As per my knowledge regarding several
leadership styles some basic that are required within an contemporary
organisation are autocratic, democratic, transactional, transformation and
situation leadership style. Among these democratic is most suitable
leadership style for me as I prefer to take feedback from my followers in
order to take their view regarding actions to be taken in particular
situation. In addition to this I also ask them to share their creative ideas in
order to bring more innovational process and practices within the
organisation which make employees happy and motivated toward their
work as their wills are consider before taking any action.
2) Key strength:- Strength are the positive point of individual which
differs them from others and assist in performing an individual better
within organisation. My basic strengths are:
Knowledge:- I have a thorough knowledge regarding several motivational
techniques that are used to motivate and keep employees influence toward
their working goals and practices.
Skills:- I am quite good in skills like communication, motivation, leading
people in particular direction and these all support me in keeping my team
aligned with their gaols and dedicated toward work so that it get
accomplished in timely and effective manner.
Behaviour:- I am polite and cooperative while interacting with the
employees of my team. This support me in gaining their trust and keeping
them influenced toward their work.
3) Key weakness:- The weaknesses of an individuals are those short-
comes which restrict them to perform their work in a particular manner.
My weaknesses are:-
Knowledge:- I don't have much knowledge regarding several leadership
models that can be used to improve the leadership practices within the
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organisation. This sometimes affect the quality of my work as well as
employees performance.
Skills:- My skills like time management, not proper understanding of
situation, lack of decision making etc. These all highly influence the
performance of team members.
Behaviour:- My major behaviour issue is that I am not much friendly in
talking with people especially individuals who are unknown for me. This
sometimes creates a negative image of mine in front of my team
members.
4) Personal development:- It consists of number of actions that are
performed by an individual for enhancing their skills and capability of
doing work effectively. For my personal development I have decided to
attend seminar for improve my knowledge regarding the leadership
models and their application in effective manner. In addition to this I also
work toward improving my time management and IT skills so that work
can be perform in more effective manner. Despite of this I would also try
to improve my social behaviour by interacting or planning outing with my
team employees.
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PART 2: – Management Report based on the Case Study
A) Introduction
Leading organisations are the one which identifies the most challenging organisational
issues that particular company has faced and manner in which leaders one-by-one represent the
hard facts, present ideas and exceedingly practical about how to take actions in order to address
those issues in effective manner (Agostini, Nosella and Filippini, 2017). To explain this
effectively, Boeing company is consider which is an American multinational corporation which
work toward manufacturing, designing and selling air-planes, satellites, rotor-craft and missiles
worldwide. This report contains a case study of Boeing which includes detail about the
innovation company has performed and manner in which get wrong and because of which it has
to face a worst crisis where two air-planes manufactured by Boeing get crashed and leads to
death of 346 people. In addition to this it also includes description regarding the leadership
followed in organisation and manner in which its leader i.e. Muilenburg defined this situation
and take corrective actions.
B) Ethical, Authentic and Distributed leadership and challenges associated with practising these
Leadership is defined as the process of guiding and directing the number of people
toward a particular direction in order accomplish the goals and objectives of an organisation
(Barbero and Puig, 2016). It plays a crucial role in the growth and development of a employees
as effective leadership provide guidance and motivation to employees so that they can work in a
right direction. There are number of leadership style that a leader can adopt such as ethical,
distributed and authentic leadership style which can be better understood through following
description:
 Ethical leadership:- It refers to the kind of leadership which is directed with respect to
ethical behaviour, believes and value for respecting the dignity and rights of other
people. Application of ethics to leadership and management styles involves considering
ethics in term of making decisions, setting boundaries within the organisation and
developing ideas to work further. This support a leader to form up its positive image as
well as organisation in front of employees and in market place (Crick and Chew, 2017).
For instance, Airbus remains more concerned toward the following of ethical principles
and because of this the leaders of company focuses toward directing the work of
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employees in operations by considering the UN Global Compact and IFBEC's Global
Principle of business ethics that support in setting benchmark for ensuring high ethical
standards globally.
 Distributed Leadership:- It refers to the primarily concerned with practising of
leadership instead of specific role of responsibility of leader. A distributed leadership is
all about the expertise instead of leadership by role or having experience from years but
this leadership style requires higher level of transparency, trust and mutual respect as
there is not any guarantee that it have positive impact. This leadership is effective as it
work toward organisational improvement (Ehret and Wirtz, 2017). For example: The
aircraft division of Airbus get weaker in taking order due to it is facing delivery problem
with the order of only 256 aircraft which also slow down the profit. Hence in order to
maintain the profit range, the leaders has adopted distributed leadership style that help in
keeping employees motivated toward their work and bringing improvement in this
situation in order to increase the delivery rate of aircraft.
 Authentic leadership:- It refers to an approach of leadership which emphasize over
building up leader's legitimacy with the help of maintaining honest relationship with
other followers that value their input which is built over ethical foundation. The authentic
leaders are one who act in real, sincere and genuine way which is true to who they are as
an individuals. For example, In case of operating loss faced by Airbus in 2006 which is of
approx €572-million which leads to sever drop down in profit of company (Higgs and
Dulewicz, 2016) . In order to deal with this situation the leaders of Airbus has adopted
authenticate leadership where it clearly represent about the condition of the company to
its employees despite of providing them fake promises for future success to keep them
stick with company. This support them in gaining the trust and confidence of the
employees which contribute toward getting long term retention support from employees
to gain future success.
These all leadership styles are helpful for an organisation in term of improving its
managerial practices or avoiding the risk that may affect organisational performance at
marketplace. But while implementing these leadership styles to deal with organisational issues
that Airbus is facing following difficulties and challenges it has faced:
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 While implementation of ethical leadership in its operations the leaders of Airbus found it
difficult as it affect the manner in which work done by employees because it make their
work more complex as they have to consider all the standards while working (Garden,
2016).
 The distributive leadership style work over brining improvement in current process but
while implementing it by Airbus the major challenge faced by leaders is to make decision
regarding either focus on future or managing the pressure for present. Like for delivering
more in future Airbus employees are required to handle high pressure in present and if
they manage the present work pressure then it won't be able to increasing the future
delivery rates.
 The major issue with this leadership style is that it contradict the objectives within an
organisation in which leader's value may sometimes not match with the things that are
right for an organisation or its stakeholder (Jacquemin and De Jong, 2016). Like, the
leaders have clearly depict about the situation for company to its employees which is not
right as this results into staff turnover and also the image of company get affected within
marketplace.
C) Critical evaluation of Muilenburg's leadership style
Dennis Muilenburg held several range of engineering, management and key executive
roles and currently working Chief Executive of Boeing which is a larger global aerospace
manufacturer. He is also a good leader who directed the work of staff member toward
achievement of competitive advantage by performing high quality work (Murali, Pugazhendhi
and Muralidharan, 2016). Dennis Muilenburg's has a greater engineering experience which make
them able to have a technical depth knowledge and intuition which supported him to become a
good leaders. He is quite dynamic in term of managing and directing its employees as
Muilenburg follows the situational leadership style to manage its team. The main reason behind
adopting situational leadership is that in aircraft company there are number of issues that arises
while working which are required to handle in different manner. Muilenburg operates its
leadership practices over three major believes:-
 A willingness to draw upon a wide spectrum of talents:- According to him, it is
essential for a leader to understand where a gap between knowledge or experience and
get surrounded with a team which compliment it. This is accomplished when Muilenburg
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shows democratic leadership characteristics while taking decision as it support in sharing
different or innovative ideas which leads to better decision making (Roome and Louche,
2016).
 An important mission :- In aerospace, inspiring people to give their best efforts is very
crucial where failure have catastrophic real-world consequences. According to
Muilenburg, all the team members must have common understanding of the purpose
within a business regrading what they aspire to do and strategy to be adopted for
achieving this. So for brining coordination and common understanding among team
members in various situations, Muilenburg prefer to adopt autocratic leadership where
they pass their orders as well as instruction to employees on which they have to work.
 Charting the Course :- According to Muilenburg, one of the most required behaviours
of leaders in a company is “charting the course” i.e. being strategic so that it would be
possible to see around the next corner, predicting the future and then lay out strategy
which defines path (Tomaževič, Tekavčič and Peljhan, 2017). For this Muilenburg uses
participative leadership when requires to influence employees regarding taking initiative
for participate in activities by sharing their innovative ideas to formulate effective
strategy or plan for working effectively.
Hence, from the above mentioned information it can be said that Muilenburg holds up
dynamic or flexible personality in term of leading its staff fellow effectively. This is because he
use to work over situations leadership where his leading style get changed as per the condition in
front of them. But this leadership style of Muilenburg have both positive as well as negative
elements which also affected his working. As with the help of situational leadership the CEO of
Boeing i.e. Muilenburg become able to bring several innovations aircraft which includes a new
aerospace to market such as 737 MAX, 77XX and 787. This is become possible due to his
participative leadership characteristics which influence the people become more influenced and
dedicated toward work for making plans successful. Despite of this, company also planned to
bring new space vehicles regarding low Earth orbit travel for getting first human foot sets on
Mars which become possible due to its democratic leadership characteristic which invites more
innovational ideas from the team members. These all are the leadership elements of Muilenburg
which make it possible for them to bring new innovative aerospace that leads to improvement in
organisational market position.
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But on the other side there are also some negative elements about the leadership style of
Muilenburg which make it getting things wrong as it get stuck into the most drastic crises for
Boeing where two airlines get crashed and killed around 346 people. These both incidents are
connected with automated flight controls which happens due to misleading or mismanagement
of Muilenburg and leads to grounding of company's bestselling aeroplane. In addition to this
deliveries of new aircraft get halted as aeroplane take out of services from market (Tukker and
Tischner, 2017). This happen because of his autocratic leadership characteristic where he require
similar understanding among all the people. Because of this things get wrong into the company
like share value fallen down by 10%, compensation demanded by companies, lawsuits against
Boeing filed by relatives of people who died etc.
In order to tackle with this situation i.e. crashes involving Company's 737 max aircraft,
Muilenburg presented sympathy toward the people who get victim of this situation, apologies for
the case happened and has work toward improving brand image by adopting futuristic approach.
For this he stated that they are formulating a team of top engineers and technical experts that
work toward collaborating with Federal aviation Administration to update software to improve
MCAS function which ensure this would never happen again. In addition to this they take
responsibility to build planes that are secure and safe for people travels and brining more
technical experts to ensure such things not happen again (Wonglimpiyarat, 2016). These all
contribute toward building up a positive image of Muilenburg as a global leaders who take up
stand and responsibility to remove chances of happening such things again in future. After this
efforts which Muilenburg is putting forth to improve the condition of Boeing it can be said that
his decision to remain within the company for getting out of the this difficult situation. As the
company get success in market because of his efforts toward bring new innovations and by bring
company out of this situation Muilenburg become able to improve his personal image as a global
leader (Yuen, Thai and Wong, 2016).
D) Recommendation and conclusion
The crises which Boeing aeroplane has faced left a huge impact over the goodwill of
company as well as image of Dennis Muilenburg being a global leader because this happen
under his management and guidance. This has damaged the personal brand image which is
required to be improved by Dennis Muilenburg in order to regain the positive perception of
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customer or other stakeholder toward the company. For this it is recommended to Dennis
Muilenburg that,
 Dennis Muilenburg must apologies regarding thing which has been mistaken by him that
he launched the aircraft 737 Max in market without ensuring the effective working of its
engine as well as Manoeuvring Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) software.
As these are the main cause behind the happening of these two big crashes within the
history of aircraft company. This recommendations will be helpful for the Boeing
company in improving the trust and confidence of stakeholders toward the company
which is very crucial as the majority of people are against them. As over the statement
presented by Dennis Muilenburg comment was passed by the American political activist
which state that his management was on fast track and they ignored the warning of
engineers. Hence this action will be better as it help in improving the brand image of
company in front of its stakeholders.
 It is also recommended to the Muilenburg that he must focuses toward hiring the
employees which are having advanced technical knowledge so that the chances of error
in operations of aircraft. In addition to this it also help in improving the standard of
performance as well as practices of the employees with the help of shared knowledge.
The main reason behind suggesting this is that Muilenburg has stated in his statement that
company will provide associate training and additional education material to pilots in
order to improve their understanding regarding the actions to be taken in any uncertainty
for avoiding the chance of happening such event again. Hence if employees are already
being advanced in their knowledge then it become easier to make them learn new things
from this training by making more queries over learning to understood the basic things
effectively.
 Another recommendation to Muilenburg is that they must focuses toward developing
relation with third party regarding the checking and verifying the operations as well as
working of engine and other system with its aircraft. This support in ensuring the
feasibility of aircraft as these will go through two verification check i.e. one from the
internal assessor and another one is from the external assessors who are expertise in this
field. It help in avoiding the chances of error or system failure as the mistake in the
system can be identifying and work effectively. This recommendation is provided to
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