Leadership Focus Paper

Focus Paper

Keita Powell is a pint-sized powerhouse. She is energetic, result oriented, focused, and driven. Ms. Powell is one of many women in the Mary Kay Cosmetics sales force. She rose through the ranks from Independent Beauty Consultant to Independent Elite Executive Senior Sales Director rather quickly because of her charisma, ability to build a sales team of energetic men and women, and sheer enthusiasm to succeed. One would think that she was an amazing leader to get so many women to follow her in teaching skin care, beauty techniques, increasing and maintaining sells goals and to rise from a very junior consultant to one who is an executive in the business. However, she has made mistakes along the way and continues to feign focus on her sales force and customers but the true focus is on her needs, wants, and desires as well as keeping the use of her free pink Cadillac. This paper will evaluate Ms. Powell's leadership approach through four leadership models discovered through the Unit 3 readings.

Leadership That Gets Results

Ms. Powell is a leader who gets results. She uses three distinct leaderships styles. These styles are authoritative and coaching. Amazingly enough Ms. Powell is very flexible and able to move between the three rather easily. When using her authoritative approach, she is acting as an expert and defines goals for her team ("Authoritative," n.d.). Usually, authoritative leaders allow their team to figure out the best way to achieve the established goals. However, this is not the case, nor the preferred method as a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant. Instead, Ms. Powell provides a step-by-step path to success that is provided to her from the Mary Kay Cosmetics Headquarters. These step-by-step guides are considered training and provide the requirements to achieving specific levels of professionalism within the company. Thus, these leaders tend to look for people to work with them, people who can mobilize toward a vision (Goleman, 2000). Ms. Powell displays this characteristic when working with her beauty consultants. However, another major characteristic of Ms. Powell is she recognizes that not all of her consultants will be as energetic or eager as she with regards to selling cosmetics. Therefore, she moves toward a coaching style of leadership.

While coaching and developing her consultants she is providing alternatives for acquiring clientele, completing a skin care class that will result in thousands of dollars in sales, and team building. Providing alternatives, or simply stating, "try this (Goleman, 2000, p. 83)" is one of Ms. Powell's best efforts in helping her team members be successful in his or her business. "The coaching leader connects wants to organizational goals, holding long conversations that reach beyond the work environment, helping people find strengths and weaknesses and tying them to career aspirations and actions ("Six Emotional," n.d.)." She encourages her sales consultants to build their teams fast by sharing the opportunity to make money through cosmetic sales with three other women or men so that the consultants can promote themselves. Developing people for the future is one of the characteristics of coaching (Goleman, 2000), one Ms. Powell willingly achieves with each new Independent Sales Director she has under her executive umbrella.

Level 5 Leadership

A Level 5 leader is one who is respectful, selfless, results driven, and has the ability to bring out the best in his or her team (Collins, 2001). Individuals who display this leadership style are very complex, as they are stubborn and ruthless and humble. These individuals show ambition for their company and do not allow their egos to be obstacles (Collins, 2001). They achieve accomplishments for their company and rarely take credit for the achievement. In fact, Level 5 leaders will give all the credit to his or her team. Overall, Level 5 leaders are disciplined. They are disciplined in thought, people, and action.

Understanding that Level 5 leaders are complex because of their ability to be stubborn and ruthless as well as humble, Ms. Powell only exhibits some of the qualities of a Level 5 leader. She is respectful of people, stubborn and ruthless, and results driven. Ms. Powell is very strong in these areas of Level 5 leadership. Therefore, based on these characteristics she can be considered a Level 3 leader described in Collins' (2001) Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve. A Level 3 leader is considered a competent manager who "organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives (Collins, 2001, p. 140)." Thus, Ms. Powell has a few qualities to develop before she can be considered a Level 5 Leader.

Ms. Powell is lacking in the areas of selflessness and bringing out the best in her team members. This is evident in Ms. Powell's goal of winning a free pink Cadillac each year, which is a group achievement but she takes credit because she drives the car. Being humble and showing humility by giving credit to all who participated in selling the cosmetics is not something she readily thinks of when questioned about driving free. Ms. Powell does not have a problem with taking someone's ideas, making them her own, and find a way to benefit, even if she had assistance.

Further, her ability to bring out the best in people is a trait that needs to be developed nonexistent for those who are not as eager or enthusiastic about selling Mary Kay. In fact, these people tend to receive little of Ms. Powell's attention and often quit before they get started. One can begin to imagine what individuals who are not getting any attention from Ms. Powell or tips on how to be successful in his or her business are thinking. These people may be thinking, "Why am I following her, or how could she become a leader in this company by treating people like she does?

Why Should Anyone Be Led By You?

The question posed by Goffee and Jones (2000), "Why should anyone be led by you (p. 63)," is one that will silence a room of executives. In observing Ms. Powell, none of her team members ever asked her this thought provoking question. After reading Goffee and Jones' (2000) article in the Harvard Business Review questions of whether Ms. Powell could differentiate herself from other leaders began to form.

Does Ms. Powell selectively show her weaknesses and vulnerabilities (Goffee & Jones, 2000)? The answer is no. She will provide a heartfelt story that most women can identify with. Ms. Powell plays on women's emotions and uses that to her advantage.