Leadership in Business and Society: Gail Kelly's Leadership Analysis

This report provides an analysis of Gail Kelly's leadership style, particularly during her time as CEO of Westpac. It examines her 'OneTeam' approach, which emphasized teamwork and customer focus, and her emphasis on building trust and fostering a 'generosity of spirit' within the organization. The report highlights Kelly's strong communication skills, optimism, enthusiasm, and high emotional intelligence, and how these traits contributed to her success. References to relevant leadership theories and models are included to contextualize her leadership approach. The report also discusses how her personal experiences influenced her leadership style. The report emphasizes that Kelly's leadership was a relationship-based approach, where she focused on the unique skills of individuals and built strong relationships with her team, particularly senior management, to solve issues effectively. This analysis provides a comprehensive overview of Kelly's leadership qualities and their impact on Westpac.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Leadership
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Gail Kelly, who was the advisor of Westpac and now is working for UBS, was
considered to be one of the most successful female CEOs in Australia throughout her reign in
Westpac. She resigned from Westpac, after been working there for seven long years as the
chief executive of the company. She is widely regarded as the first ever female chief
executives who lead the biggest bank of the country and is a regular feature on the Forbes’s
list of “the most powerful women” (Liu, Cutcher and Grant 2015). However, it is to mention
that her leadership style is based on the OneTeam approach. This approach encourages the
employees for working together as a team for supporting one another in order to put the
customers first while keeping the company first over their own business unit as well as the
individual outcomes.
Furthermore, it is also to note that Kelly encourages trust in between the management
and employees and at the same time believes in the approach of “generosity of spirit” to
leadership. It is a relationship based leader approach, which is a pillar of her leadership style.
As per Haskins (2018), the leaders who possess generous spirit are much more memorable
and they believe that can achieve anything if they truly desire for it. With the same, Kelly is
known to notice the unique skills among the individuals and was able of giving a
personalised account of the way of contributing to the team success. She was a very strong
communication leader whose personal life experience of growing up in the city of South
Africa has influenced her style of leadership. Apart from these, it is to mention that the
personality traits that Kelly possess are that of optimism, enthusiasm and warmth. While
being there at Westpac, the entire team used to respond positively to her optimism and
enthusiasm. She was also successful in keeping the team in an upbeat mood and at the same
time, projected warmth throughout her years in the company. With the same, Kelly also has
higher level of emotional intelligence. Hunt and Fitzgerald (2018) in this context have
claimed “the most effective leaders have a high degree of emotional intelligence”. She makes

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use of her skills of relationship management for spreading her level of enthusiasm and
building a strong and powerful personal relationships along with the senior management team
for solving out the issues.

3LEADERSHIP
References:
Haskins, G., 2018. Kindness: Perspectives from women leaders. In Kindness in
Leadership (pp. 85-110). Routledge.
Hunt, J. and Fitzgerald, M., 2018. STYLES OF LEADERSHIP. Leadership: Regional and
Global Perspectives, p.62.
Liu, H., Cutcher, L. and Grant, D., 2015. Doing authenticity: The gendered construction of
authentic leadership. Gender, Work & Organization, 22(3), pp.237-255.