The standard image of a good manager
Cynthia Montgomery touches upon one of the burning issues nowadays in her article The Myth of the Super-Manager. There are a lot of disputes concerning the image of a perfect leader-manager. Confident, imaginative, and visionary leaders are sought after by several companies hoping that a good leader guarantees success for the company (Bennis, 2010). Montgomery presents the real strategies guarantying the success of the company in her article. She points out that the so-called super-managers may be destructive for the company. The image of the manager who is confident that there is no problem he cannot solve and anything he cannot do makes the company stop developing. A good manager should know the business he deals with well and adjust to the changes in the world market in time.
The failure of the standard descriptions of a good leader
The author provides several successful and unsuccessful managers in her article. These examples include “Starbuck’s revolution in the coffee house, Southwest’s success in discount airlines and IKEA’s high profits in the normally unattractive furniture industry” (Montgomery, 2012). The success of these companies is based not on their perfect managers, but the innovations realized by them. Companies should be flexible in the world market to achieve success. Starbucks has achieved success not only with the help of better recipes for coffee or attractive houses but the development of unique corporate skills. The company had to try a lot of times before achieving success. The leaders of these companies are not known for their confidence in their forces or their belief that they can do everything or nothing. Their success is based on the development of strategies adding “new value to old games” (Montgomery, 2012).
The examples of successful leaders
Montgomery provides the example of the company Apple to demonstrate the importance of innovations and changes. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak aimed at creating “insanely great technology” founding their company (Montgomery, 2012). In the beginning, their strategy worked well. Further on, when Microsoft’s operating system has become available, the customers have been interested more in cheap hardware, compatibility, and application software. Apple’s strategy of production should be changed otherwise the company fails. Steve Jobs understood this point, while Steve Wozniak rejected to realize these changes. As a result, the company was on the way to bankruptcy. Steve Jobs saved the company reinvented it and provided the necessary changes.
The necessity of reconsideration of the notion of leadership
From the above said, we may conclude that the notion of leadership has become quite complicated to be explained fully. It is not enough to describe the leader with a list of qualities. More than that, every leader has peculiar qualities and skills that are necessary for his area of business. Montgomery points out that a good manager, as well as a good leader, should be assessed not according to their qualities and pure descriptions, but according to their skills to develop the company referring to the current changes, innovations, and customers’ needs (Bennis, 2010).
There are a lot of researches concerning the image of a perfect leader nowadays. These researches are relevant for the notion of leadership, and many employers use the standard characteristics of the leader searching for the specialists for their company and as a result, they fail to do it. The question is that these descriptions are not enough to find a good leader. The notion of leadership needs to be reconsidered nowadays. To my mind, it is impossible to create a general standard as far as the image of a leader depends on several facets including the kind of business where he works, the kind of company, the working staff, the current state of the market, and a lot of other conditions requiring the leader to develop new skills and adjust to these changes.
Reference List
Bennis, W. (2010). Character and Traits in Leadership. Web.
Montgomery, C. (2012). The Myth of the Super-Manager. Web.