Leader’s Impact on Followers, Essay Example

As far as my volunteer experience under John’s leadership is concerned, John’s trust in his subordinates enhanced their self-confidence and motivated them to take responsibility for successfully persuading the children to pursue college career. We all knew that John had extensive real world and volunteer experience yet we would always watch him trying to learn from everybody he would meet. This also inspired us to take an open-minded approach to our work and focus more on listening to children. The strategy worked and we soon built good credibility with the respective children assigned to us. For John, showing confidence in us was the appropriate thing because most of us had no prior experience and were nervous. But John’s confidence made us feel good and inspired us to meet or exceed his expectations. Similarly, by setting personal example of continuous self-improvement through learning, John convinced us that this was the key to his success as a professional and volunteer leader. John also wanted us to focus on listening and when we achieved results with our assigned clients, we got the proof.

As far as my manager Adam at Best Buy is concerned, he would always praise an associate while assigning the customer to him. This would inspire the associate to perform well because he/she knew that Adam truly values their work and knowledge. Similarly, Adam also delegated considerable decision-making authority to each associate which increased associates’ loyalty to Adam and also sent the message to associates that customer comes first at Best Buy. By matching actions with words, Adam had greater credibility in associates’ eyes. Adam was extremely knowledgeable and could have answered any question a customer would ask him but he would do the right thing by referring customers to associates. Adam wanted to let the associates know that he believes in his team and everyone is a capable member of the team. Adam’s delegating authority to associates was also the right approach because it demonstrated Adam’s commitment to customers and the associates knew that customer is at the center of everything in their department.