The manager interviewed is the head of marketing department to the international company whose head quarters are in Japan, the United States Branch sells automobiles and offers financial services, and rent a car business to customers. The company has 317,734 employees all over the world however, in the United States; the employees are slightly over 70,000.
According to the manager, the success of a business is a function of the quality of its management. There are different roles and functions of management that the manager described; they are;
Planning
Planning ensures that activities are well thought and coordinated. Strategic decisions of various functions of an organization are considered when planning. It involves reflective thinking that consider an organizations goals and deriving methods to attain them. This is the initial function of management.
Organizing
Organizing is structuring of function in an organization to ensure that goals in the organization have been attain effectively. Functions must be planned in a way that there is high in production. The function also involves ensuring that experienced human resource is deployed in various sections.
Leading
To get things done, a manager must provide good leadership in the organization. He must understand various functions at his level and lead by example. People are more likely influenced by set examples by mangers instead of given directions. A good manager should ensure that he offers good leadership to the business.
Controlling
This is overseeing functions in the organization and ensuring that they are well conducted. It involves monitoring of activities in an organization.
According to the leader, the most dominant function that he does is leading people, he is of the opinion that different situation calls for different approach that need to be mastered and applied effectively.
Being a leader cuts across all the functions of a leader, it covers all areas in the leadership. The manager noted that there is a growing change in people’s perception, needs and drives; it calls for managers to lead their teams in the path that can result to success of an organization.
When asked about the main characters and attributes that he feels all great leaders have, the manager was quick to point out the following traits; decisiveness, good communication skills and visionary/futuristic.
The manager observed that what differentiates a good manager and ineffective managers is their decisiveness, secondly the effect of the decisions are only felt if the manager can make orchestrate teams, orchestrate teams are only developed through good communication. Businesses operate in perpetuity thus; effective leaders need to be visionary/futuristic.
The manager was quick to emphasize the need for effective communication strategies among teams; the manager feels that communication should be a two way where managers feel free to listen and be heard by the juniors and the same happens with the juniors. With good communication, the manager felt that organizations could attain high and build positive organizational culture.
When the manager was talking of his experience in management, he said that it feels good to see transformation occurring within an organization because of decisions made, the manager feels rewarded when he pioneers a successful project. It gives him self-confidence and raises his self-esteem.
The most frustrating times in a managers life according to the Toyota marketing manager is when top management and junior staffs fail to offer him support needed to perform a certain duty. It feels disappointing in such times since the manager feels he is going to fail but can do nothing about it.
In his final remarks, the manager advised that to become an effective and successful leader, a leader must have constantly been reading relevant materials from scholars, periodicals, dailies and books. The manager noted that leadership evolves with time so being updated is the secret to effective leadership.