Rosalind G Brewer Leadership Style Analysis

The Selected Leader – Rosalind G Brewer

Rosalind Gates Brewer is the current CEO and president of Sam’s Club warehouse retail chain. Sam’s Club is one of the three main Walmart Stores, Inc. divisions. Brewer was appointed as the CEO of the Sam’s Club in 2012 and since then she has been holding the position and making great difference in this division of Walmart. Brewer is the first African-American and first woman to lead Walmart business unit. Sam’s Club has 100000 workers working in the club’s warehouse. These warehouses are situated in 648 locations in Puerto Rico and the U.S. The club records a revenue of $58 which is huge enough for the section to be featured in fortunate 500, if it was a standalone firm (Forbes, 2014).

As the President and the CEO of Sam’s Club division, Rosalind has implemented strategy of growth that centered on innovation and technology, local merchandise and exciting, as well as an expanded footprint, aspects that have increased new clubs growth. She has highly advocated for involvement of a number of small business members to the Sam Club, and also centered on growth of e-commerce, providing members with shopping convenience anytime, anywhere. Rosalind has also introduced services suite that include insurance exchange for private health, and access to legal services and payroll system via membership to Sam’s Club as a way of making up foe Costco competition and lagging sales to small enterprises. Rosalinda is also integrating the digital offerings of the company, introducing Sam Club pick-up, wherein members can use the online system to order goods and pick them up at the store the following day (Forbes, 2014).

Organization – Walmart Stores, Inc

Rosalind works for Walmart Stores, Inc. Walmart Stores, Inc. is the world leading retail stores. It is found in retail industry. It has retail stores in different formats across the globe. The retail formats managed by Walmart in the US include neighborhood markets, supercenters, discount stores as well as other small formats store, with retail operations in all 50 states of the US. The company is internationally situated in Mexico, Argentina, Africa, Brazil, Central America, Canada, the UK, Chile, Japan, India, and China. The company’s headquarters are situated in Bentonville, Arkansas. Walmart also provide its products via a number of e-commerce websites, which include samsclub.com and Walmart.com. The company has employed about 2.2 million employees worldwide. Walmart is divided into three main divisions which include Walmart International, Walmart US and Sam’s Club (Market Line, 2015).

Walmart was founded in 1969 and turned to be publicly held in 1969. The company was in 1972listed in the stock exchange of the New York. Walmart started its warehouse clubs also known as Sam’s Club, diversified into grocery, and started its international operations in 1980s.Sam’s Club was established in 1983, and its operation was founded on the membership-only, cash-and-carry warehouse format that was pioneered by the California company known as Price Company though it is currently known as Costco Wholesale Corporation. Since then, the company has been growing exponentially to where it is today (Market Line, 2015).

Walmart contains a functional hierarchical organization structure. The structure contains two features which include function and hierarchy based definition. The hierarchy aspect relates to the vertical lines of authority and command in the entire organizational structure. Apart from the CEO, each worker contains a superior. Mandates and directives originating from the Walmart’s top levels management are implemented via middle managers down to the file-and-rank workers in the company’s stores. The function-founded definition on the other hand features the organizational structure of the company that engages employees’ groups fulfilling specific functions. For instance, the company has department for human resource management function, and marketing function among others (Lombardo, 2015).

Walmart organization culture contains four major components that guide the behavior of the employees. These components are also regarded as beliefs of Walmart. They include customers’ service, individual respect, acting with integrity and striving to excel. The company has adopted a culture of prioritizing on customers while doing its operation. It also acknowledges each employee’s contribution to its business success. It also employ measures to ensure personal, group and organization growth and success. The company also endorses the virtues impartiality, fairness, and honesty in decision making (Lombardo, 2015).

Brief History of the Rosalind G Brewer

Rosalind is a 53 years old Detroit native black American woman, who is marred woman with two children. She went to Detroit Prestigious Technical High School and later joined Spelman College where she completed her Bachelor Degree of Science in Chemistry. She graduated at the University of Chicago, School of Business/Stanford School of Law from Director College, and also took classes for advanced management in University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School (Black Executive Profile, n.d.). Brewer joined Walmart as a regional vice president in 2006, where she was responsible for Georgia operations. Brewer was quickly promoted to Southeast operating division president, and later operated in the south Walmart business unit of US as executive president and president before she was appointed to her current position.

Rosalind Brewer was appointed as the Sam’s Club CEO and President on 1^st of February 2012. She has since been serving as the CEO and the president of the Sam’s Club also known as Sam’s West Inc. Brewer, before joining Walmart worked for Kimberly-Clark Corp where she similarly progresses through different positions (BloombergBusiness, 2016). She began as a scientist in nonwoven product development and technology, prior to becoming the global nonwovens sector vice president in 2004. As nonwoven fabrics business vice president, Rosalind managed to increase the company sales by over 30%. Brewer has been a Molson Coors Brewing Company director since 2006, where she operates on the Compensation/Human Resource Committee. She also serves in the Spelman College board of trustees and in the Atlanta Westminster Schools (Black Executive Profile, n.d.).

Rosalind Brewer Personal Leadership Style

Rosalind has embraced transformational leadership in her work as a CEO of the Sam’s club. This can be demonstrated by her effort to employ innovation and technology to better services and techniques used to offer services in the Sam’s Club. She introduce a number of digital technology to enhance the number of sales and the quality of services to all. She also employed various strategies to include small businesses into club membership and to enhance their business with the club. Introduction of services suite which offer unusual services that include payroll services, legal services and insurance services to the club members.

The recent pick-up system and the online shopping is another innovative strategy that Rosalind has introduced. All these new and innovative strategies have highly enhanced growth and development. Brewer has manage to transform the Sam’s Club to a profitable division of Walmart. Its rate of profit growth is higher than the other two divisions and thus, her transformational leadership has really bared fruits. Brewer leadership focuses more on customer satisfaction and revenue growth. She has a strong ability to develop strong teams, passion in bettering communities and inspiring mentorship networks (Yammarino & Dansereau, 2002).

Three significant Challenges Rosalind Faced

Although Rosalind has highly demonstrated great performance for the short time she served in Sam’s Club as a CEO, this was not without challenges. One of the major challenge that Rosalind faced was feelings the shoes of a prominent man who used to serve as Sam’s Club CEO. She was the first woman, and black-American in such a big position in Walmart. Brewer was standing on behalf of so many individuals that include Black American and women. Her success would boost women and black American reputation regarding their leadership ability. Thus, Brewer had a big responsibility of enhancing the company performance and build faith in black Americans and women in big position.

Another major challenge that Rosalind experienced was adapting to the retailing speed. Retailing according to Brewer is a swift-paced job, with a very short cycle. She was initially used to consumer products which have a long cycle. However, in this case, she needed to hit it very fast. Unlike operations in Walmart mass retail stores, Sam’s Club warehouse model, members pay to shop. In this regard, Brewer had to keep up with the new model and employ strategies that would suit this new model that was different from mass stores that she was used to in her previous position. This was not very easy. The third challenge involved fighting competitors. Sam’s Club model was pioneered by Costco Wholesale Corp, which was the major Sam’s Club competitor. Costco remained the main competitor in this business model and despite of having less outlet shops as compared to Sam’s club, it was making higher sales than Sam’s Clubs and thus remaining the best in this category. Costco managed a revenue of $87.1 billion with 600 outlets in 2011 while Sam’s Club was around $50 billion with 1400 outlets. The main challenge faced by Brewer when she was appointed for this role is establishing the amount of work that need to be done to match Costco sales volume in the competitive market and also to overtake Costco in this business. Another major competitor that Brewer had to watch was BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. Brewer had a challenge of lifting the Sam’s Clubs operations and standards to be able to compete with these two major competitors in this division (Alleyne, 2012).

Rosalind Greatest Achievement

Rosalind has made great achievements as a leader in her life. The first achievement is getting a chance to be nominated as the first black American, and woman in the role of CEO in The world leading retail stores. This demonstrated her strong ability as a leader which was noted from her previous position in Walmart and also in her previous company. Qualify and being selected for this position demonstrated that the company’s board had faith in her ability and that her previous performance as a leader and a manager was outstanding.

The other great achievement is the transformation Brewer has performed in the Sam’s Club and her great ability to enhance the club’s revenue growth rate to be marked as the best among the three company’s division. Brewer is doing very well in her position as Sam’s Club CEO, her effort to maintain and promote the work of her predecessor have highly contributed to her great achievement. The club recorded a revenue of $58 billion with a considerable growth of the revenue from the previous year in 2015. Positive trend has always been noted in Sam’s Club since Brewer took over and thus her success in this division is considered as a great achievement.

Three Leadership Concepts

The three leadership concepts to be considered include behavioral trait where two classes of views are reflected. One leaders are born and thus, no training is needed while the other states that leadership skills can be acquired through training. The other concept is collaboration where a leader can never attain the organization set goals if a leader will fail collaborating with subordinates or employees in attaining these goals. The other concept is path-way theory where a systematic way of employing leadership style is enhanced and outcome measured to ascertain the effectiveness of the applied strategy (Northouse, 2007).

Concept to Describe Brewer Leadership

Brewer was initially trained as a scientist in chemistry field. However, she later realized her ability as a leader and considered improving her skills as a leader. This was done by taking a course in advance management and also graduating in Director’s College. This demonstrates the concept of self-improvement in leadership where a leader employ different effort to acquire the needed skills to be a true leader (Yammarino & Dansereau, 2002). In her Profile, Brewer demonstrates that she shifted from one management or leadership position to another after a certain period of time to the current top position she is in today. Brewer worked to perfect her leadership skills and did not shy off from taking a more challenging leadership task (Charan et al., 2001)). This has highly built her as a leader and a person and has therefore contributed greatly in her current achievements as a leader. It can therefore be said that Brewer was guided by a vision and she remained true to her vision and hence the exponential growth in her leadership. This can be matched with behavioral theory where leaders are made through personal determination.

Brewer constant achievement and growth in leadership demonstrates her ability to team up with her subordinates to enhance great performance and credible outcomes. A good leader is she who can manage to work with others to attain the organization’s goals. Brewer had a high ability of mobilizing and motivating workers in her level of operation to enhance outcome. This is what has made her to be highly recognized in all sectors she has worked in and also to grow exponentially, since promotions are only given to those who demonstrate ability to handle more tough tasks (Bennis, 1989).

Reflection on Aspects Learnt Regarding Leadership

From this research, I have learnt that leadership can be acquired through learning leadership skills and employing leadership strategies effectively with a vision and goals. Although some individuals may have inborn ability to lead, skills and experience is very necessary. Brewer manage a higher position by climbing up the career ladder step by step. However, she managed this since she made it her duty to improve herself and to learn from previous experienced. Remaining true to one’s vision is also important.

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