Question

12. Cindy Szadokierski’s “interactive leadership” style has worked at United. A.. Describe her leadership style in a few words. b. Would this style work lead you and your peers in your current job? c. Why?

Cindy Szadokierski, United Airlines
Twenty-five years ago, Cindy Szadokierski quit her job teaching high school French and went to work as a reservations agent for United Airlines. Today, she is vice president in charge of operations for United’s largest hub at O’Hare International Airport.After joining the company, Szadokierski served in positions of increasing responsibility, including being general manager of United’s hub at Washington’s Dulles International Airport. From the beginning of her career with United, Szadokierski wanted to be in operations because she liked the idea of bridging the gap between what goes on in the field and what happens at headquarters. At O’Hare, where she oversees 4,000 employees and 600 flights a day, her favorite times are the weekly afternoon walkabouts on the O’Hare ramp and the weekly morning strolls through the terminal. Why? Because they give her a chance to connect with employees and customers. Pete McDonald, chief operating officer of United’s parent, UAL Corporation, says there were serious operations problems at O’Hare, so they put ‘‘the most communicative person’’ in the job. ‘‘She’s everywhere. She talks to everybody,’’ said Don Wolfel, president of United’s mechanics union at O’Hare.Szadokierski’s approach to leadership is more collaborative than command-and-control. In addition to learning from employees and customers, Szadokierski emphasizes regular meetings with her leadership team to talk about what’s going right, what’s going wrong, and how to collaboratively fix any problem

Answer 1

12. Cindy Szadokierski’s “interactive leadership” style has worked at United. A.. Describe her leadership style in a few words. b. Would this style work lead you and your peers in your current job? c. Why?

A. Describe her leadership style in a few words.

Definition of Interactive Leadership Style:

Interactive Leadership is a style of leadership wherein the leaders engage with followers and communicate with people to increase the understanding of the goals and tasks. It is basically a quality of having reciprocal interactions with employees.

Ms. Cindy’s leadership style

Ms. Cindy’s leadership style is absolutely the interactive leadership style which is very clear and apparent from her style of handling her operations profile and related tasks. She developed the skill of interaction through her experience of working as a teacher in a high school. This skill helped her further to serve as a good leader, developing her leadership style and serving the goals of United Airlines.

Her strategy is to communicate with employees and customers present at certain interactive points and timings, at the headquarters of United Airlines to understand the issues and problems with them. She further gives attention to fix regular meetings with her leadership team, to discuss with them the gathered issues and to solve them. She is always counted by her top management to handle tasks related to serious operations problems which needs most interactive and communicate persons in the organization.

Question B. Would this style work lead you and your peers in your current job?

Yes definitely, this type of interactive leadership style will help me and even my peers in my current job.

Question C. Why?

Because, this style encourages reciprocal communication between two people in a very effective manner which eventually leads to finding out the issues or problems at the other lower levels of the organization.

As, until the top management would not know and solve the issues prevailing at the ground level. It cannot be solved for the smooth functioning of the organization.

And, for the smooth functioning of the organization towards achieving its objectives and goals. The top management and leadership has to understand and solve the issues of the employees working with them.