The leadership Style of Carl Douglas McMillon
The individual that will be interviewed for the company’s newsletter is Carl Douglas McMillon, the CEO of Walmart. He has served several leadership positions of Walmart. He started by serving as the leader Walmart Incorporations, was the Executive Vice President, and at some point served as the CEO at one of the branches of Walmart. Having served as the CEO since February 2014, Doug has seen Walmart grow to become the leader in retail sales. Through the help of his team, he has come up with a creative marketing and sales strategy. With the introduction of online shopping, Walmart needed a change in the way it conducts its businesses. Doug was able to provide the best strategy for change as the company adopted e-commerce. Walmart’s e-commerce section competes with other leaders in online retailers such as eBay and Amazon.
Doug has aligned the company’s strategy with Walmart’s mission which states “Save Money and Live Better.” This has attracted a huge number of customers and made Walmart to become the ultimate shopping destination for different shoppers across the globe. Under the leadership of Doug, Walmart has expanded in different places all over the world. Apart from being the CEO of Walmart, Doug McMillon is one of the board of directors in the US-China Business Council. He oversees a smooth running and operation of businesses between the two countries.
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Doug McMillon has one of the strongest personality and character traits. He is outgoing, outspoken, goal oriented, and stern. He has a diversity in his character which enables him to interact with the employees and those below him successfully. He leads his team by all virtues. Doug possesses an important character trait of being able to face challenges as they come and handle it effectively. This is one of the most important character traits of leaders as it enables the proper running of a company in the ever-changing business world (Hickman and Silva, 2018). Doug has been the CEO of Walmart for some time and is prepared to face challenges and deal with them effectively.
The five-factor personality model
The five-factor personality model theory integrates the different aspects of personality and how they can be used to create effective leadership. The five-factor include neuroticism, openness, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness (Northouse, 2018). All the five factors of personality can be used to describe the leadership style of Doug McMillon. The character trait of openness deals with the ability to be open to different choices as one considers all the information present. Doug applies the trait of openness by considering different choices raised by his team. He applies his years of experience in the retail business and takes in the choices presented by his team to come up with the best decision. Doug has spent several years in the retail business and makes use of his experience for the success of the company.
Extraversion is a character trait which occurs when an individual is social, has positive emotions, and can interact with employees and business partners easily. One of the outstanding character traits of Doug is that he is extroverted and social. He enjoys spending time with the employees and business partners as they discuss both business and non-business issues. This creates a strong communication network within the entire company. In case Walmart undergoes any challenge, most of the employees are willing to consult him for help. Doug is also optimistic and passes positive energy and emotions to his employees. According to Dubois (2015), a leader that is positive is important to pass positive emotions to his subordinates. Customers that interact with the subordinates are also likely to get a similar attitude about the company.
Doug also possesses the character trait of being agreeable. As an agreeable person, he portrays an understanding of his employees and their challenges in the workplace. He is also friendly with everyone in the company as he tries to create the best working environment. These attributes have improved his performance as Walmart’s CEO and enabled the company to grow into huge levels of success. Employees have also adopted his agreeable nature and passed it on to customers. Therefore, customers that interact with the employees and the company CEO are treated in a friendly and agreeable manner.
The personality of neurotic and conscientiousness are used by Doug in situations that demand a high degree of emotional intelligence. When emotions get in play in business environments, Doug tries to handle the situation in a way that is suppressive and wise. He does not let unpleasant emotions to overtake him or to make him lose his cool. He doesn’t act spontaneously but carefully considers the consequences of his actions. Each and every action he chooses to undertake is well thought out and calculated. In case he experiences down times, he tries to look at the brighter side and tries to use them to his advantage.
Solving a difficult problem
As the CEO of one of the most successful retail companies in the United States, it goes without saying that the company experiences a fair share of problems. One of the challenges that the company faced is the changing consumer tastes from retail shopping to online shopping. Walmart had long established itself as a retail company where customers actually have to go to purchase goods physically. The changing consumer tastes saw a gradual decline in the company’s profits. Doug McMillon stepped in as the CEO of Walmart in 2014 with one of his strategies as developing an e-commerce platform for the company. Walmart wanted to benefit from the market by having both physical and e-commerce stores.
Doug McMillon incorporated the e-commerce stores by hiring a team of experts and consulting with the top management. The team of experts was able to create a platform that was equally competitive to Amazon and eBay. At the start, the online platform took some time before customers were aware of the company’s e-commerce platform. Doug made use of massive customer discounts to be able to attract a huge amount of new customers.
Lesson learned
One of the lessons learned throughout the challenge with the e-commerce platform is to be keen about the customer’s interests and their changing tests. Doug has had success with the company because he his leadership style has been more adaptable to change. He welcomes change with positivity and hires the best experts in the field to facilitate the change. He also motivated his employees throughout the process of change. As such, Walmart easily adopted the e-commerce platform smooth and did not experience significant setbacks.
In conclusion, the leadership style by Doug McMillon is a perfect example of the best ways to run a company through appropriate leadership traits. Doug has a likable personality and is friendly to his employees. This creates a positive atmosphere in his place of work and in branches in different parts of the world. Doug is flexible and is easily adaptable to change and this is one of the reasons why the company smoothly adopted the e-commerce platform. He was able to motivate the employees throughout the process of change as the company shifted from focusing on physical retail to e-commerce.
References
DuBois, M., Koch, J., Hanlon, J., Nyatuga, B., & Kerr, N. (2015). Leadership Styles of Effective Project Managers: Techniques and Traits to Lead High-Performance Teams. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance & Marketing , 7 (1).
Hickman, C. R., & Silva, M. A. (2018). Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture, strategy, and change in the new age . Routledge.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice . Sage publications.
