Leadership Style Of Alison Watkins
The aim of the paper is to understand and analyse the leadership qualities of Coca-Cola Amatil CEO Alison Watkins in order to figure out how her foundation and leadership style can be further developed in order to come out of any organization crisis situation. In this context, it is very important to study the leadership style of Watkins because of the critical problem-solving and insightful model of leadership that she set an example of.
As a leader Alison Watkins in her leadership journey through the help of the board was able to narrow down on four priorities. The first was the fact that the business performance of Coca-Cola Amatil was not going well as her standards and hence she had developed a clear plan which was the first priority she focused on. Thus, the clear planning was the first priority, secondly it is important to note the fact that having a clear vision was also some she laid a lot of stress on. Along with this the third priority that her leadership focused on was develop a good relationship with the major customers of the organization. She specifically focused on all these things because the business under stress in all these factors. Hence, from here it is very important to note the fact that the foundation of her leadership was very strong which led to the success of the organization and thus this proves that she was able to focus on her goals as well (Sulistiani et.al,2019).
However, it is also very essential to note the fact that the foundation of her leadership based on her listening capabilities through which she was able to absorb all the issues that the organization was facing. In fact, an aspect of her leadership which should be taken into consideration is the fact that she built her strategy taking advice from others which proved very helpful in ensuring the success of the organization (Maisoni et.al,2019). Thus, she also delved into the processes of Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in order to understand how to maintain a good relationship with the retail customers which gave her useful insights that she is able to put to use when it comes to addressing the crisis that the company was facing.
She has constantly put a lot of emphasis on the act of listening as the most important strategy in order to understand the kind of issues the employees within the organization was facing as well. And hence, by listening to all their issues she was able to strike the right balance between the employees as well as the organization. She worked towards combing the employee needs in organizational goal in order to work towards enhancing the morale of the company. This clearly resulted in a boost in the company work culture, where the employee reflected high performance (Watkins, 2019).
They were able to handle the required pressure, gave their critical insights in improving the organization as well as were able to follow directions thoroughly as well. This is a very important precedence that she was able to set through her leadership which impacted and improved the organization as a whole and helped the organization in achieving the goals successfully (Miyauchi and Cressman,2019). The culture that she set through her leadership style help in retaining strength which is very crucial when it comes to dealing with all the issues that the organization was facing. Moreover, she laid a lot of emphasis on improving engagement with the employees and hence always tried to be accessible to make sure that the employees are able to relate and trust her. As a leader she ensured that she was able to known and understand the pulse of the employees (Director).
Another aspect of Watkins leadership through which she addressed ethical behaviour is through that of the social CEO concept. The larger idea of this was to create an understanding of social responsibility within the employees of Coca-Cola. And in order to launch this idea she actively demonstrated the execution of the concept and popularised the same through social media. At the core of the concept Watkins included the idea that the businesses in Australia should combine organization outcomes through and with sustainable means (EOWA et.al,2012). She very boldly addressed that the products of the organization resulted into conditions like obesity, a lot of usage of sugar which leads to the increase of carbon foot print as well as addressed that the packaging by plastics should be taken into consideration in order to build a sustainable future. This increased the image of the organization who is willing to make chances in their production process in order to work towards sustainability. Moreover, Watkins made it a clear alignment with the shareholder returns so that the sustainable form of business can be continued in the longer run (Hooper,2020).
Furthermore, it is also important to note that she encouraged the use of social media to popularise this form of business model and to build trust with the employees as well as with the consumers in order to forge a sense of community. Watkins has also explained that in her leadership building this community in and outside of the business space has been very crucial in order to impart a general understanding of sustainable measures that the larger community of the organization could imbibe and practice. In fact, she made this an integral part of her strategy which the organization followed for straight twenty years. Thus, what is very important to focus on is the fact that her sustainability agenda was the core even before other organization delved into the same (Check,2018). This is what makes her leadership insights unique from others and this is the reason why Coca-Cola has been able to make significant changes when it comes to addressing about a sustainable business model. Hence, through her leadership Coco-Cola Amatil was able to work towards two very specific sustainable priorities, one of which was to ensure consumer wellbeing. Taking this into consideration they reduced the sugar content of their beverages. Secondly, very importantly they addressed the environmental impact and in order to achieve the means they made plans to change the plastic packaging (Schmidt et.al,2018).
Thus, the leadership style that Watkins used was transformational leadership, she not only changed the future of the organization but also worked towards ensuring that the employees and customers have a good perspective towards the company. At the core of her leadership, she laid most emphasis on how change can be brought by using the strength of the stakeholders which proved to be very helpful for the company to a great extent. Not only this her transformational form of leadership goes beyond just the organization. She is also very insightful which is a very important trait of transformational leaders and in this context, she envisioned the importance that the sustainability model of business holds for the future as well (O’Sullivan,2017). Through her leadership style she clearly created a pathway for the future success of the organization. In this process at the initial stage of her joining as well she ensured that the organization adopted a sustainable business model in order to keep the consumers as well as the environment sound. Hence, this can be called one of the most important aspects of transformational leadership where she clearly reflected to be a leader to have a vision. According to which she was able to devise all the plans and the strategy required in order to bring the organization out of all the issues they were facing (Efrat and Hooper, 2019).
Having said that, from a personal perspective some aspects of her leadership is a major takeaway is the fact that she focused on the people she was working with and the people she was catering. She relied on the encouragement of others for the organization’s success and in this process, she very importantly focussed on building good relationships with everyone. On the other hand, the second most important pillar of her leadership was the fact that she put a lot of stress on the partnership angle. In order to bring the organization out of all the troubles it was facing she was very well able to create long lasting partnerships depending on which the business of the company saw exponential growth and success. In my personal understanding and the biggest lesson to be learnt from the leadership role of Watkins is the fact that she has been instrumental and very important in building mutual respect as well as trust and she did set this particular tone throughout her leadership in driving the company towards success (Walters and Helman,2020).
To conclude, in the study of leadership it is very important to understand the leadership style of Watkins who showed a lot of strength in bringing together the interest of the organization, employees and consumers to render the organization its success. The transformational, problem-solving as well as the futuristic and insightful form of leadership that she exhibited is also very important to focus on.
Reference
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