Leadership Analysis: Woolworths and Bradford Banducci

This essay provides an analysis of leadership within the global hospitality sector, focusing on Bradford Banducci, the CEO of Woolworths. It explores his leadership style, particularly highlighting the transformational approach he employs to drive positive changes within the organization. The essay examines the influence of his experience, education, and leadership skills on the company's performance, emphasizing the importance of effective management, customer relations, employee engagement, and supplier relationships. It also discusses the impact of leadership on organizational performance, comparing Banducci's approach to those of other leaders in the international business landscape. The challenges faced by Banducci and his strategies for overcoming them are also examined. The essay concludes by emphasizing the significance of coherent leadership skills and behaviors in enhancing organizational success and the willingness of the workforce to enhance organizational success.

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Leadership for Global Hospitality
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Leadership for global Hospitality
A leader is a person who is believed to have the ability to direct and command people towards a
specific direction and is bound by power and authority. In case of an organization, a leader has
the mandate to lead people towards achieving the set organizational goals. Leadership styles or
approaches used depends on the situation or circumstance under which leadership is exercised,
example, a leader in a business organization may not lead the same way as that in a health center.
This is because the situations are different and also the set goals to be achieved. Various leaders
are successful in their various environments because of their various characteristics like their
personality, leading styles, level of creativity, leadership skills among others. In this case, I focus
on Bradford Banducci, chief executive officer of the Woolworths Group of companies (Wang, et
al, 2011).
Bradford Banducci has been the CEO of Woolworths since February in the year 2016, within the
short period he has led the company a significant change in the level of success has been
recorded. From the level of management to an improvement on the level of employee’s
productivity, it’s evident that his ability to lead the company is beyond doubt. His ability to lead
the company towards achieving the set organizational goals has been influenced by various
leadership skills, example, his experience in the corporate sector over the years has been a key
factor. Before joining the company, Brad had been working with various successful corporates in
the market in various leading position where he significantly made a positive impact. He later
joined the company and has been working as the head of liquor department before being
appointed as the CEO of the company. Experience in every area is very important as it ensures
that the leader understands the trends within his area of leadership and can simply relate with the

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present happenings to enable his control towards achieving the set organizational goals (Gritzo,
Fusfeld & Carpenter, 2017).
His level of education has also greatly enhanced his ability to lead the company towards success.
With an undergraduate in commerce, degree in the same field and an MBA in management from
the Australian Graduate School to me is all a leader requires to be able to enhance management
control on all activities enhanced within the organization. Understanding the importance of
effective management as a gear towards achieving the set organizational goals, it’s clear that
Brad’s success in his work is as a result of his learned skills in the various education levels he
has gone through. His way of observing and directing operational activities within the
organization has also been influenced by his ability to understand the various operational
procedures in a given organization like Woolworths. I have learned that a leader with educational
adequacy in his field is able to be more productive than that who don’t have the required
education skills in his field as its clear from Bradford Banducci case (Duvall-Dickson, 2016).
Leadership approach enhanced by Brad is transformational approach, this is an approach put in
place to enhance positive changes within an organization to help achieve the set organizational
goals. Reflecting from transformational theory perspective, a transformational leader is the one
who gives orders to the follower and evaluates if the follower obeys the orders to either punish or
reward the follower all with an aim of enhancing a positive change (Avolio, Walumbwa and
Weber, 2009). Brad has been able to ensure that his ability positively influences the employees
as well as the customers towards the set goals. His ability to improve customer’s culture by
putting up measures to ensure that the customer is treated in the right way is one of the factors
that have enhanced the company’s success. Improved relationship with the employees as well as
the existing suppliers has ensured that they remain loyal by ensuring they carry out their roles as

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expected, this has laid an impact in the laid success. It’s important to note that, Brad has clearly
defined his measures to ensuring that he positively transforms the company, this is important as
unclear defined measures results to confusion and in some cases failure to achieving the set
organizational goals.
Leadership directly affects the level of organizational performance, that is, efficient and effective
leadership positively enhances the level of organizational performance while poor leadership
negatively affects the level of organizational performance (Robertson, 2016). Brads ability to
lead Woolworths through its operational activities as well as improving customers, employees
and suppliers culture has highly ensured a significant improvement on the levels of productivity.
His leadership approach has shown him also as a charismatic leader who motivates his able
followers to perform towards achieving the set organizational goals. Comparing with other
leaders in developed organizations in the international business, Brad’s style of leadership is
unique in that in a very short time the company’s performance has positively improved. I have
learned that a leader’s ability to lead and control his followers is what enhances or affects the
level of productivity thus affecting the level of organizational performance through studying
Bradford Banducci ways of leading the Woolworths Company (Brauckmann and Pashiardis,
2011).
Traits and skills of a leader influences their behavior while at work as well as their level of
success. A leader is entrusted with the role of coordinating all the activities of his or her
followers depending on the situation in which leadership is exercised. Challenges experienced
during leadership by the various leaders are different and the various ways of solving them are
also different. Ability of the leader to solve any existing challenge depends on his ability to

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understand the cause of the challenge and come up with various measures on how to solve it
(DuBrin, 2015).
In case of Bradford Banducci, the various challenges he is facing are as a result of poor
management of the company before he took his tenure in office. Some include poor marketing
operations as well as high levels of competition. To solve this, Brad has ensured that he first
understands the root causes of the existing challenges and come up with measures to solving
them a skill that has enhanced success in his activities. It’s important for all leaders to ensure
they understand the existing challenges and their causes before suggesting any measures of
solving them. If the challenges relate to the followers, it’s only good for a leader to understand
their needs as well as their characteristics. Studying Bradford Banducci as a leader has helped me
understand that leadership is an important process that requires an individual with coherent and
appropriate skills in that specified field and that effective form of leadership is influenced by
both behaviors of the leader as well as that of the workforce and their willingness to enhance
organizational success.

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References
Avolio, B.J., Walumbwa, F.O. and Weber, T.J., 2009. Leadership: Current theories, research,
and future directions. Annual review of psychology, 60, pp.421-449.
Brauckmann, S. and Pashiardis, P., 2011. A validation study of the leadership styles of a holistic
leadership theoretical framework. International Journal of Educational Management,
25(1), pp.11-32.
DuBrin, A. J. (2015). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Nelson Education.
Duvall-Dickson, S 2016, 'Blending Tribes: Leadership Challenges in Mergers and Acquisitions',
SAM Advanced Management Journal (07497075), 81, 4, pp. 16-22, Business Source
Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 15 November 2017.
Gritzo, L., Fusfeld, A., & Carpenter, D. (2017). Success Factors in R&D Leadership: Leadership
Skills and Attributes for R&D Managers Analysis of data from a large-scale survey
reveal the behaviors, skills, and attributes that distinguish successful R&D leaders.
Research-Technology Management, 60(4), 43-52.
Robertson, J. (2016). Coaching leadership: Building educational leadership capacity through
partnership. New Zealand Council for Educational Research. PO Box 3237, Wellington
6140 New Zealand.

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Wang, G., Oh, I.S., Courtright, S.H. and Colbert, A.E., 2011. Transformational leadership and
performance across criteria and levels: A meta-analytic review of 25 years of research.
Group & Organization Management, 36(2), pp.223-270.