Chapter 2- Recognizing your Traits: There are six key traits the chapter mention

Question

Chapter 2- Recognizing your Traits: There are six key traits the chapter mentions; Charisma, intelligence, confidence, determination, sociability and integrity. Many successful leaders throughout history have exhibited these traits, and Pablo Isla is not an exception. Mr. Isla rarely does interviews, but when he does, he conveys intelligence and confidence. It is clear he knows plenty of information about the subject in question, and he gives clear, concise answers. When asked about his management style, he responds by saying he prefers informal conversations to formal meetings. He’d rather walk around his company headquarters than give a formal presentation, showing his sociability trait. He also credits his employees for accomplishments, instead of taking the credit for himself. In one interview, he was recorded saying “everything always is the result of the work of a team of people” (1), which is a good example of his integrity. He displays many of the traits known to produce successful leaders.

Chapter 5-Attending to Tasks and Relationship: Pablo Isla attends to tasks using a production orientation behavior style. This style means the leader stresses the production and technical aspects of the job (5). Isla has chosen winning strategies like integrating the online and in-store shopping experience to feel seamless and focusing on the ability to quickly react to fashion trends with an integrated supply chain (4). Looking into Isla’s style of relationship task, it’s been recognized that he has an emotionally intelligent leadership style (4). Isla is known for rejecting a meeting culture and the use of hierarchy to command, control, and ego-feed, instead favoring making decisions informally in partnership with his people as he "manages by walking around" (4). This strategy gives his employees a feeling of a fair working environment and constitutes a sense of empowerment and self-motivation.

Chapter 7-Creating a Vision: Pablo Isla is very clear on the vision he creates for all of his brands, while stressing the fact that everyone’s opinion matters, whether it be the customer, the lateral management team or the chairmen. Pablo Isla’s vision encourages and enhance “…its unique management model, based on innovation and flexibility, and its vision of fashion (creativity and quality design, together with a rapid response to market demands) …[enabling]... its rapid international expansion and excellent performance at its commercial concepts (2).” With the ever-changing fashion industry, Isla ensures everyone within the organization is aware that the company needs to continuously evolve with the industry, keeping up with trends and being quick with innovations beating the competition to punch. The ethical values of the organization have been questioned on several occasions, including examples of overseas working conditions, human resources controversy and even bad press based on copyright infringements and racial awareness. The chairmen however show up to work faithfully every day, hold informal meetings with participative conversations, keeping employees motivated, involved with decision making, all while creating innovative and creative work cultures. Isla provides end values to his employee by promoting within and means values by really working with his team creating an open, hard-working, sustainable work culture and environment. Isla shows his charisma by setting high expectations, showing that he really understands the industry through successfully adjusting to technological changes, tying together physical shopping and online shopping. With Isla clearly stressing the customer being the focus of everything done by Inditex, challenging the company through informal influence to be creative and innovative while also adapting to the industries changes, it allows the organization to really thrive in providing fast fashion internationally feeding the consumers “appetite for fashion”.

Chapter 8: Establishing a Constructive Climate: To foster a constructive climate, Pablo Isla has provided structure, clarified norms and built cohesiveness. Promoting standards of excellence and giving constructive feedback supports this constructive climate. Inditex’s mission is centered around giving customers what they want and getting it to them faster (6). Customer feedback is extremely important in gauging trends. This can give Inditex and its brands a distinct advantage over the competition. Pablo Isla has created structure for employees by empowering them to take charge of customer research. They listen and intently pay attention to customer comments. They know that this supports the company mission, so they feel a sense of stability and direction. Clarifying norms also contributes to the constructive climate at Inditex. Norms are the rules of behavior which are set and shared by a group (5). Inditex employs young talent who can be promoted fairly quickly. They give responsibility to younger employees and urge risk taking, as long as learning occurs (6). It is not unusual that talented employees can be selected for promotion and put into comprehensive training programs and this shows their commitment to employee development. Pablo Isla treats his employees well and they respond by displaying loyalty. Developing cohesiveness is another way in which Zara builds a constructive climate. At Zara, there is a culture which encourages people continuously talking to one another. For example, the sales and marketing teams communicate with the designers and merchandisers. There is a constant two-way communication process which supports constructive feedback. Various departments deal directly with each other and make decisions in less time. The employees feel empowered to make decisions based on data (6). Standards of excellence are reflected in the benchmark Isla sets for his team. The word “impossible” does not exist at Zara (6). The interdependence of departments support working together towards Zara’s common goal.

Chapter 12- Overcoming Obstacles: Most of the obstacles Pablo Isla had to overcome his first year as the CEO and Chairman of Inditex were related to the financial well-being of the company such as fixing the rising of raw materials and supply chain costs, dealing with the subdued consumer spending in Europe and other similar issues (7). However, as a leader inside Inditex, he seemed to be in control of the obstacles a leader may encounter in his path. For this reason, Pablo Isla leadership style reflects how he works out his strategies to avoid the 7 obstacles presented in Chapter 12. The first obstacle, “Unclear Goals”, is overcome when Pablo Isla makes the company goals clear to the employees by expressing the sustainability vision of the business. The second obstacle, “Unclear Directions”, is avoided by Pablo when he gives clear directions to his employees on how to do their work. The third obstacle, “Low Motivation”, is overcome when he empowers his employees to take initiative on making important decisions and uses the expectancy theory. The fourth obstacle, “Complex Tasks”, is evaded when he sets high standards and expresses what is expected from employees, and how things need to be done. The fifth obstacle, “Simple Tasks” is overcome when Pablo supports his employees and acts with humility around them. The sixth obstacle, “Low Involvement”, is overcome when Inditex’s employees express their thoughts and opinions to Pablo Isla in a climate that is open. Finally, the seventh obstacle, “Lack of a Challenge”, cannot be possible since Pablo Isla has said that challenges are part of everyday tasks (8).

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS

A vision from a leader provides a picture, challenge, map, value(s) and change; how would you rank the importance of these characteristics and how do you think Pablo Isla is able to portray his vision so successfully using them?

Discuss how Isla aligns structure, clarifies norms and build cohesiveness in the organization. Reflect on your leadership for this class and share how you created cohesiveness to build positive results?

Discuss the leadership traits that Mr. Isla shows. He doesn’t do many public appearances and he keeps a low profile; why do you think that is?

Explanation / Answer

A vision from a leader provides picture, challenge, map, values and change. In this case, I would rank all these equally as each one is co related to the other. Mr. Isla prefers informal conversation to formal presentations.He credits the employees. He attends to tasks using production orientation behaviour. He stresses on production and technical aspects of job. He manages relationship task by using emotionally intelligent leadership style. He believes in taking decisions informally by talking to his people which gives his people (employees) a sense on fair working environment. It gives a feeling of empowerment and self motivation.

Isla's vision encourages and enhances by using its unique management model.Which is based on flexibility and vision of fashion.He keeps the company updated with the latest fashion trends and makes sure they are beating the competition. He shows that he really understands the industry by successfully adjusting to technological changes. He stresses that consumer should be the focus, informally influencing the company to be creative and innovative while also adapting to the industry's changes.

Mr.Isla develops cohessiveness to build a constructive climate.There is constant communication between departments which promotes constructive feedback. Many departments communicate directly to take decisions. This gives the employees a sense of empowerment which in turn supports working towards the company's goal.

LEADERSHIP TRAITS OF MR. ISLA

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