Paying Attention Case Study Example

Competency models refer to the manners and abilities that managers need to exhibit for an organization to be successful. The Leadership Competency Model provides us with various skills that middle managers should have. From the case about Andra Rush and the listing in Figure 7.3, she possesses many of the leadership skills in the figure. She exhibits personal drive. She drives herself to change the treatment of employees, starting her trucking company, enrolling for further education and her persistence in delivering a shipment under severe conditions. Rush also has financial and technical understanding. She borrowed money and used her credit cards to buy equipment despite the minimal resources for her company. Rush is competent at building relationships as exhibited through her employees. She has brought change. She entered the trucking industry despite being dominated by males. She is listening. It is because she listened to the nurses, patients and others (Hughes, Ginnett & Curphy, 2009).
The Leadership Pipeline what leaders should do as they move from first-line supervisor to functional manager to chief executive officer. Andra Rush illustrates this at her work. Initially, she was an individual contributor at her jobs. She related well and was listening to her co-workers. She planned projects and delegated work. She helped others solve their issues. She learned to make others productive in her company. Once her company started growing, Rush needed to move into the midlevel manager role by developing new first-line supervisors so that they become the organization’s leaders. She listened to her employees and required her managers to run the daily operations. She integrated her company functions and focused on the enterprise’s future. While moving to the group director, Rush learned to manage her business portfolio. Instead of valuing individual people she was now assessing entire business units. Evaluating strategies for capital allocation was her major at this point. As the CEO of the company, Rush’s main job became to manage the entire company. Her primary goal became to guide the company in the direction that was best for all stakeholders. Through her journey down the Leadership Pipeline Rush moved from an individual contributor who took care of only herself, to a company CEO in charge of aspects of her growing company (Hughes, Ginnett & Curphy, 2009).
Andra Rush not only acts as the leader of her company, but she also belongs to several volunteer organizations. Her leadership style does need to change as she moves from her role as the president of the Native Americans Business Alliance to that of the CEO of Rush Trucking. The three components of the Community Leadership Model apply to Andra Rush. The components are framing, building social capital, and mobilization. The Framing component involves itself when Rush listens to people and helps make right decisions. Rush is very active in her company as well as her community. This allows her to build relationships with a diverse group of people, which in turns helps her acquire resources that may not be at the organization’s immediate disposal. Even though Rush may have the social capital, and even though she may have the resources, she still has to have the right leadership style to get the right people and the right resources to move to the same target outcome. This is called mobilization (Kaiser, 2011).

References

Hughes, R., Ginnett, R., & Curphy, G. (2009). Leadership, enhancing the lessons of experience (7th ed). St. Louis, MO: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
Kaiser, R. (2011). The leadership pipeline: Fad, fashion, or empirical fact? An introduction to the special issue. Psychologist-Manager Journal14(2), 71-75.