Mary Bara's Leadership Style Case Study

My evaluation of Mary Barra uncovered several positive and negative attributes to her leadership style and leadership style. First let’s examine Barra’s positive attributes. Barra exhibits a task-oriented management style. Leaders like Barra whom exhibit some task-oriented leadership behaviors is to ensure that people, equipment, and other resources are used in an efficient way to accomplish the mission of a group or organization. With this style Barra clearly and consistently has demonstrated that she is goal oriented. Barra is relentless in her efforts to dive in and find the root cause to an issue then resolve it. She does this by staying organized and appointing the right people and positioning them in the right place to assist her in coming up with the most
Barra’s communication style is more of a direct approach, with little fluff, she clearly communicates goals and expectations, for it’s important for her to create structure and goals within her organization. Considering that Barra’s work force is a male dominate industry this approach is an effective tool in successfully commanding her staff.
Looking at Barra’s negative attributes to her leadership style, there are only a few that stood out. One item in particular is Barra’s coercive power, which is the authority to punish her subordinates (Kinicki & Williams, 2018). While handling the 2014 defective ignition recall and investigation, she fired 15 people at GM that were involved in some capacity with original cause of the problem (Kinicki & Williams, 2018). Immediately following the termination, her focus was on getting leaders and employees to demonstrate four key behaviors: ownership, candidness, accountable, and improvement. She began by telling the top 17 people who run the company that they must demonstrate these behaviors (Kinicki & Williams, 2018). This type of use of coercive power can have negative impact on the