Alan Mulally Ford Motor Company

The content of this paper is to outline the roles of leadership and how it affects organizational performance. It then discusses the role of Allan Mulally’s, CEO of Ford Motor Company, leadership style. The paper also presents how Mulally’s decision to set a goal increased the company’s performance and mentioning how Allan Mulally’s openness has gained him trust and helped him to reach his goal. Finally, my point of view on the impact of Mulally’s leadership style and how it effects the organization. Leadership is guiding people toward productive results to achieve the goals of the organization. An effective leader has the ability to motivate and influence others. Leadership influences organizational performance depending on the level to which the leader enables managers and team leaders to plan, organize, control, and act effectively. By accepting authority, responsibility, and accountability, managers can confidently face though situations that require decisions made. Faced with an overwhelmingly complex situation, Alan Mulally has been brought in as Ford Motor Company's new president and CEO. As diverse global dynamics confront the company and competitive pressures continue to build, he has the challenging task of improving Ford's brand image and returning the company to profitability. Mulally has invited your consulting firm to advise his management team on restoring the company's reputation and viability. Leaders significantly influence organization’s success, they must have the ability to develop new ideas, use that idea to set goals, and develop ways to achieve those goals. They must have aspiration to build vision, values, and goals, in order to accomplish great performance. Leaders have the talent to influence other people in order to have them follow him or her and have the ability to motivate the employees. They need to be able to be flexible to changes in its environment like demands, expectations, and pressure. A good leader builds trust, develop opportunities for the employees grow, get them encouraged, listen to employees, and bring up the best of them. By valuing and respecting cultural differences at work, leaders may avoid the negative stereotypes that can affect the company’s success. Leaders need to address the importance of open communications within the organization. Active listening, questioning, and placing emphasis on verbal and written communications between management and subordinates guarantees the company stays on track with the organization’s goal. Recognizing individuals and team differences will help the leader achieve a successful career with the organization. To build trust, the person in charge should be open to communication, be honest and hold integrity, be a risk taker, problem solver, and be able to face reality. Also, another factor that can be included in being a good leader can be the willingness to be open to diversity and a one that sets good ethical competency. It is the leader that will guide an organization to success. â€Å"Allan’s style is pretty relentless,† said the chief financial officer Lewis Booth His look is confident, disciplined, have the desire to succeed and very determined (Hellriegel & Scolum, 2011). He filled five binders with information he collected from interviewing to set plan for Ford Motor. Communication is the key aspect for him, he wants everyone in the company to know what is going on, what the company goal is, how to reach that goal, the position that the company is in, and the fields that need specific awareness. Because of his openness, Mulally gained many support from his employees and built trust. Mulally created cards that were written the four goals on one side and the meaning of the company on the other side to let everyone know what his intentions were. Allan Mulally is a very hands on leader, he expects weekly or sometimes daily updates of all the components of the company. Ford needed someone to point out what needed to be done and how it could be done. Alan Mulally set a goal to increase the sales by 2011 and he developed ways to accomplish that goal. One of his goals was to have Ford sustain its independence and not be taken over by the government. His target was small cars that were fuel efficient and electric cars rather than big trucks, bring up brand new Taurus to build brand, differentiate itself from it competitors, and take the company globally. He made sure that everyone in the firm knew these goals and how to reach the goals. Ford has picked up sales by 25% and is 1. 4 points on market share, where the two of its competitors lost. Allan Mulally made sure that everyone was involved in every operation that was taking place in the organization and that everyone understood the goals. He built trust by communicating with his employees and by being open. There were no secrets at Ford, everyone knew the plan. At Ford, the 12 functional departments and Mulally himself held meetings on every Thursday. In the meeting Mulally wants to know everything and he involves everyone from manufacturing to human resource to participate. His intentions were to communicate and be able to open about the problems that had occurred and find ways to work on it. I think Allan Mulally’s leadership style is very effective because I believe in communication and the involvement of everyone from every field of a company. By being open and communicating with his employees, he built trust, respect, and motivated his employees. He’s also a risk taker, passionate or very driven and a strong person. He set goals to achieve and he managed to find ways achieve those goals. I think, he definitely should continue with his style of leadership.