1) Evaluation of Rudi Gassner as a Leader
Rudi Gassner is a very effective leader. His leadership style can best be described as a transactional one although he also displays some qualities of transformational leadership. His transactional leadership characteristics are displayed decision to prepare a yearly business plan for each Managing and Regional Director. His focus on clarifying goals and providing rewards and bonuses contingent on performance is a typical behavior associated with transactional leaders.
He also had displayed the four key sets of leader behaviors associated with transformational leadership, namely: inspirational motivation, idealized influence, individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation. His great vision for the future of the company; his ability to instill his values and vision in the subordinates; his provision of career counseling to some underperforming subordinates; and his continued advice to his direct reports to make decisions by themselves taking full responsibility for them are some good examples of the above mentioned four sets of transformational leaders behavior he displayed at BMG international.
Amazingly enough, Rudi Gassner has most of the positive leadership traits identified by researchers. For example as it is described in the case: he is intelligent (understands the industry inside-out), he is self confident, determined and has high ethical integrity.

2) Power and Influence Tactics
Rudi Gassner is a very powerful person. This can be explained by the variety of bases of power he has at his disposal. He used his power in the most appropriated manner in different circumstances to effectively influence his subordinates and obtain the desired result. For example, he used his reward power to urge his subordinates exceed the challenging annual targets with a promise of getting an attractive bonus; he used