Helen Frye

Using Leadership to Improve Ethical Performance An organization needs effective leaders in order to motivate employees to meet or exceed its objectives. However, effective leaders are not always so easy to come by. Few individuals possess the ability to motivate or inspire others. Therefore, it is imperative that organizations seek out those gifted individuals who have the skills to influence others to meet company goals. Helen Frye is an example of such a leader. Helen Frye is currently a Regional Account Executive for the Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. Frye has been a leader in the Food and Beverage industry for over 20 years. She is a transformational leader that leads by example and motivates her teams to always exceed company objectives. Frye does not settle for just meeting objectives, however. She sets stretch goals for herself and her team that are well above the
company’s minimum expectations. Even though the goals are challenging, Frye maintains a strict culture of ethical behavior. To this end, Frye expects her team to outperform goals, but she expects her team to follow the rules and conduct themselves in a professional manner. This paper will analyze the leadership, motivation, and ethical values of Helen Frye that make her an effective business leader.
Biography
Helen Frye is an established business leader with over 20 years of experience.
She began her career in business in 1989 as an office manager for the Frito Lay Company. In 1991 she moved into sales and became an account manager covering the territories within and surrounding the city of Shreveport, LA. It was in this position that she discovered her love for sales and business. Within one year she was promoted to district sales manager and supervised a small team of account managers. As a district manager for the Frito Lay Company, she outshined her fellow managers by exceeding sales goals and demonstrating a transformational leadership style. Transformational leaders are “leaders who inspire followers to transcend their own self-interests and who are capable of having a profound and extraordinary effect on followers” (Robbins & Judge, 2015, p. 346). Helen motivated her team to exceed company goals by encouraging her employees to find creative ways to improve productivity. Moreover, she empowered her team to make decisions that would benefit both the customer and the
company. In 1997 she accepted a job offer to become the Food Service Director in West Virginia for Pepsi Cola, which is the parent company of Frito Lay. Within three years she became an executive for Pepsi, serving as Vice President (VP) of Retail Sales for West Virginia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. As VP of Retail Sales, Helen received multiple awards and led her teams to exceed company objectives by as much as 150% of sales revenues. She severed as the VP of Retail Sales until retiring from Pepsi Cola in 2008. However, Frye recently came out of retirement and accepted a position as a Regional Account Executive with the Dr. Pepper-Snapple Group. Frye looks to use her talents and leadership skills to outperform expectations and improve profitability for Dr. Pepper.
Leadership Defined Helen Frye believes leadership is a combination of both innate and learned skills. According to Frye, “The best leaders have the innate ability to comprehend and act in a way that is natural; however, leadership skills can be refined with learning.” Frye believes that leaders are born with certain leadership traits, such as charisma and intelligence, but she feels that leaders need to learn how to use their natural abilities to effectively and properly influence others. In fact, leadership is defined as “the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals” (Robbins et al., 2015, p. 332). To this end, Frye believes effective business leaders use their abilities to influence their employees to exceed goals in an ethical manner.