Tutorial Week 7: Case Study – Leaders and Followers
Question 1. What are the key components of the relationship between leaders and followers in Pancontinental?
Within Pancontinental the key components in respect of the relationship between leaders and followers may be seen as including Emotional Intelligence, Authentic Leadership, Servant Leadership and Participative Followers.
Emotional Intelligence is defined as a ‘type of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and other’s emotions, to discriminate among them and to use the information to guide one’s thinking and actions’ (Salovey and Mayer, 1990: 189). According to Goleman (2001), ‘emotional intelligence comprises of 4 key components which are, Self Awareness, Social Awareness, Self Management and Relationship Management.’
When looking at the case study we can see evidence of the use of emotional intelligence throughout. Within self awareness we can see that the MD, Henry Callahan, has had a personal insight into the business and knows what happens in each area. He is seen by his staff as a ‘visionary leader’, always looking for ways to improve in the future. In the case we can see that the positive style he adopts is exceedingly effective in an industry that is usually dogged by disputes, both internally and externally. Indeed he states, ‘I’ve done practically every job in the company....from the bottom up – I know what long hours are and I have empathy for everyone in the organisation’ We can also see proof of his social awareness in this quotation by his reference to having ‘empathy’ for his employees. As well as that he also includes the need for fun within the organisation. Callahan’s ‘Fun in Flight’ vision is used as an awards system for great customer relations and also has the ability to reduce the level of stress for employees with the use of ‘MISS (Most Impactful Staff