Team and Leadership Behaviors

Team and Leadership Behaviors Transactional leadership focuses on the outcome of performance. The emphasis on such a type of leadership becomes evident in the leader's ability to establish goals, clarifying who does what when, then administrating over the mechanics of the gears once they're set in motion. The article points to Whitman's range of leadership, from setting goals for profit margins, sales growth, and ultimately, her managing 2,400 employees.

Meg Whitman already seems to be more in tune with the elements of transactional leadership as she is very meticulous about data, whether it be customer or otherwise. It is this nuanced management of detail that ends up forming policy and patterns for predictable successes for EBay.

The article begins unraveling the background aura behind the success of EBay, namely the fact that EBay does not have inventory or warehouse costs, the staff is very friendly, and the nature of the vast marketplace allows for supply and demand models to work consistently. Still, the article goes back to emphasizing Whitman's ability to control values and goals of the company into becoming policy and procedure.

Whitman showcases her leadership methodology by explaining a very clear vision of where she expected EBay to be, and how successfully that objective has been realized. It seems that the way EBay has reached success through Whitman comes primarily from Whitman's interpretation of the current market and where EBay belongs in such a market. However, Whitman takes another step further by not only interpreting the vision of EBay, but by helping others, namely her employees, to see that same vision which then becomes translated into business initiative.

This business initiative then becomes the engine which results in predictable uniform outcomes through procedural problem solving. Since the bottom line is most important, but the bottom line can't be reached without dedicated, hard working employees, this is where Whitman's ability to build on the initial levels of trust comes in. Whitman has managed to create a deep sense of identification not only among employees, but among customers as well.

The same values and vision that help her to focus in on accomplishing the company's financial goals are the values and vision that have become a trademark for the atmosphere of the company. This showcases Whitman's transformational leadership skills. It seems that in imposing order on what was a very unstable internet startup company, operational guidelines have been derived from that strong will to survive. But the operational guidelines are the smaller gears that operate on the larger machine of unity.

Whitman's transactional leadership roles give way to transformational leadership roles as she redefines the corporate culture of EBay's offices into one that allows for efficient communication, as shown by her cubicle format, and also her ability to allow for the most opportunities of development for the company.