Analyzing Leadership Influence: Patagonia, Trader Joe's, eHarmony

This essay compares and contrasts the leadership influence of Patagonia with that of Trader Joe's and eHarmony, highlighting the impact of leadership styles on organizational success. Patagonia's founder, Yvon Chouinard, adopted an autocratic approach focused on environmental responsibility, which sometimes clashed with executive decisions and caused employee concern. Trader Joe's, under Joe Coulombe, prioritized employee engagement and flexibility, leading to high retention and success in the retail industry. eHarmony emphasized customer service and employee development, fostering a learning environment that contributed to its growth. The analysis reveals that while Patagonia's leadership style sometimes created insecurity and affected profitability, Trader Joe's and eHarmony's employee-centric approaches fostered success in their respective markets. Desklib provides access to this assignment and many other study tools for students.

Running head: BUSINESS POLICY
Business Policy
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Compare and Contrast the leadership influence of Patagonia with that of Trader Joe’s and
eHarmony
The unique leadership trait helps in leading a company towards success despite of the
huge competition. The leaders undertake the innovative approach to direct the employees in right
path and ensure the productive outcome for the future prospects (Demirtas, 2015). Currently
Patagonia has captured the leading position in supplying the equipment and hardware for
climbing. The company is renowned for the extremely positive behavior towards maintaining
environmentally responsible scenario. The founder Yvon Chouinard had been much strict to his
new initiative that was perceived negatively by the CEO, Casey Sheahan. The CEO along with
his executives faced considerable challenges in managing functionalities according to
Chouinard’s vision as it was quite autocratic in nature (Reinhardt, Caadesus-Masanell & Jin
KIm, 2010). Chouiard did not afraid of the failure and initiated the idea of leading on his own
way for acquiring success. Therefore, it was noticed that employees began to worry about the
retention of socially responsible atmosphere, which was the key method of earning more
revenues. In fact, the other business leaders even started to feel the decreasing rate of the
revenues due to the autocratic decisions made by Yvon Chouinard.
On the contrary, it was observed that the leaders in Trader Joe’s are more focused on
developing the product variations that can attract more customers and increase the profitability
level. The business leader, Joe Coulombe, had put the employee engagement at the top of the
priority list. The flexible working profile and the greater opportunity created for earning more
money attracted many applicants to work under Trader Joe’s L. (Ager & Roberto, 2014). The
maintenance of the flexible working structure is quite effective for retaining the employees and
making them committed towards the work functionalities. Hence, it can be implied that the

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leadership influence in Trader Joe’s turned out to be much beneficial in terms of acquiring the
successive position in the retail industry.
The scenario of eHarmony explains that the company maintained the exclusive and
commendable customer service that attracted more service users. An effective leadership style
helps the employees to grow professionally and personally. The scenario reflects that almost 230
employees were in customer service (Jan Piskorski & Helaburda, 2008). It depicts that the
leaders are much efficient in providing a learning atmosphere to the associated employees. This
leadership trait was quite influential in terms of achieving the business success.
In comparing and contrasting the leadership influence on Patagonia with that of Trader
Joe’s and eHarmony, it is noticed that the former company did not maintain efficiency in
employee engagement. Therefore, the employees generated the sense of insecurity while
working under the organisation. This ineffective leadership style affected the profitability level
and the reputation of Patagonia in a recognizable way. On the contrary, both Trader Joe’s and
eHarmony maintained the effectiveness developing employees’ welfare at the first place and it
reflected on their performance efficiency. The flexible approaches were required for acquiring
successive position in a competitive landscape.

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References
Demirtas, O. (2015). Ethical leadership influence at organizations: Evidence from the
field. Journal of Business Ethics, 126(2), 273-284.
Jan Piskorski, M., & Helaburda, H. (2008). eHarmony. Harvard Business School, 1-26.
L. Ager, D., & Roberto, M. (2014). Trader Joe's. Harvard Business School, 1-17.
Reinhardt, F., Caadesus-Masanell, R., & Jin KIm, H. (2010). Patagonia. Harvard Business
Review, 1-29.