Leadership and Entrepreneurship in Hospitality and Tourism

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Table of contents
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….2
Leadership characteristics……………………………………………………………2
Entrepreneurial characteristics………………………………………………………7
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..10
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………11

Introduction:
For the purpose of this essay, the author has decided to use these characteristics to analyze leadership style of Mr. Walt Elias Disney who had earned a good reputation in the entertainment and tourism industry in the 19th century.

Leadership Characteristics:
Academic literature on leadership has suggested some important characteristics which an effective leader should reflect in a particular situation. These characteristics can help one recognize a particular leadership style of an individual. The prime characteristic of a leader is to put his or her followers’ and organization’s need ahead of his own wishes (Kakabadse and Kakabadse,1999). Leadership style is not something which one can adopt according to his or her taste or interest but it is something to be adopted depending upon the situation that people or the organization is into (Horner, 2003).

Walt Disney had laid the foundation of his company Walt Disney Corporation in the year 1923. Today the company is successfully executing several entertainment and tourism ventures such as movies, story books, costumes, clothing, toys, channel and theme parks. Disney world has become one of the most popular holiday destinations globally. Disney Land is Disney’s dream project where he has tried to enliven the imagination of his stories. It also displays his exemplary capacity to incorporate detail in his ideas, plans, and works.

Visionary: A leader should be a good visionary to be able to take his or her organization in right direction. It is the responsibility of the leader to convince people about the rightfulness of the new path and get them move in that direction with a view of organizational and personal growth (Northouse, 2010). Goleman (2000) suggests that a good leader is the one who only sets direction and lets people decide how to reach there and thus allows and encourages them to innovate, experiment, and take risk.

If we look for this quality in Walt Disney, he had been a visionary since when he was a teenager. He pursued his passion of drawing cartoon to make a career in animation and created a unique character called ‘Mickey Mouse’. This was when he set a vision to become a global player in entertainment industry (Thomas, 1966). Mr. Walt wanted to be one of the most creative, innovative and profitable entertainment producers in the world by offering varieties of products and services. It was his ability to act upon his dreams to bring them to reality which made him successful in all his endeavourers (Thomas, 1966).

Coaching: A leader is the person who invests in people to improve their capabilities and shows them personal growth in the fulfillment of organizational goal (Sadler, 2003). According to Goleman (2000) leaders should provide for necessary skill development of their employees and help them to convert their deficiencies into efficiencies. According to the author, the deficiencies should not be a criterion to undermine an employee’s capabilities or confidence.

Walt Disney was also aware of this fact and was always open to help his subordinates improve their efficiencies by sponsoring training programs for them. For example he offered his employees to join art classes to improve their skills in animation. Many of employees used this offer and their performance improved significantly. This of Walt’s attempt also improved workers’ loyalty towards the company (Thomas, 1966).

Affiliative: This of the leadership style is reflected in a person’s ability to promote team work and develop harmony among employees. According to Goleman (2000) this ability of leaders improves morale of the employees, motivates them to work together for a common cause, encourages communication among workers, and improves their faith on the organization. According the author, this trait alone may not work effectively but does well if adopted and executed with other leadership skills.

Research suggests (Walt Disney Company 2013) that Mr. Walt Disney believed that an organization can become the best performer in the industry only if its employees are working together to reach one organizational goal. He was of mind to hire right person, and then develop their skills to meet organizational requirements, and then having them work together to achieve given goals. For example, while forming his firm in 1936, he had recruited 700 skilled individuals from different parts of the country paid for their training to improve their skills. This is said to be the trait of good leaders to help others improve (Thomas, 1966). Mr. Walt Disney attracted employees with his friendly gestures and behaviors. He encouraged them to perform to the best of their capacities and offered several extra performance based benefits in exchange such as Sunday barbeque, gaming and swimming at his own home. This improved sense of oneness in employees. He even encouraged his employees to call him by his name ‘Walt’ or ‘Uncle Walt’ instead of Mr. Disney. This of his openness instilled warmth in his association with employees. These of his efforts had created a friendly and faithful work environment in his company and made his employees willing to work extra hours without extra payment. This was the result of these joint efforts that Snow White could be released in 1936 and earned 8 million dollars revenue. This was the biggest move of the time. This money enabled Mr. Walt to develop new production facilities at a new studio. This success was only a result of hard work and loyalty of his employees. This proved to be a major turning point in his journey to success and many excellent projects started to roll out from the new studio. They also introduced innovation in the form of multi-playing cameras to introduce 3D pictures. It was here that his workplace had turned into animation factory (Thomas, 1966).

Democratic: This of the leadership styles is considered in improving individual’s knowledge, skills and their commitment towards organizational goals (Shackleton, 1995). This leadership skill is said to be effective when managers need to take workers’ views about a particular situation before making a decision (Murray, 2013). According to Goleman (2000) this leadership skill is of no use when there is an immediate decision is required.

Literature suggests that Mr. Walt Disney lacked this leadership trait very much. He was in fact a practitioner of autocratic style (Gitman and McDaniel, 2009). An example of this is that Mr. Disney is known to fire subordinates if they disagree to his decision. He used to seek their views on matters though which reflects his participative trait but ultimately he was an autocratic when it came to making final decision.

Pacesetting: The possessor of this leadership style is said to be purist by nature; always seeking better and faster performance from everyone in the team (Murray, 2013). Goleman (2000) suggests that excess of this practice might result negatively on the performance and morals of employees. According to the author this leadership style, in most of the cases, has had negative impact on employees’ performance.

Commanding: This is also known as military type leadership and is the most practiced but least effective one (Murray, 2013). Herein leader rarely praises but frequently criticizes to the workers and thus affects their morals and satisfaction from the job. Even military men have started to realize limitations of this approach. Goleman (2000) suggests one to use it only in decisive situations requiring quick results.

Walt Disney’s leadership style is said to have been converted from participative to autocratic after his first significant success which took him to new studio. He had started to become an autocrat, exercise control and dominance more prominently than ever then. The person who was treating his employees as family members earlier had started to refute and fire them on any disagreement. There was no room for consolidation, compassion or consultation. He got even harsher with the time to the extent that his people started running out of his way where he passed from. This was the time he accepted and expressed his aversion towards Jewish, African Americans, and Blacks. He even fired a Hindu employee only because of his skin color (Gitman and McDaniel, 2009).

Entrepreneurship Characteristics:
The entrepreneurship analysis of Mr. Walt Disney suggests some key characteristics of him as under:

Learning: A good entrepreneur often possesses a good network and always tries to learn new things and avail of them, be it a new technique from an institution or organization or new ideas from other persons; he is always open to learn new things (Lee-Ross and Lashley, 2009).

This spirit has been found to be deep set in Mr. Disney too. For example his first cartoon movie ‘Plane Crazy’ was a Walky only (no sound) wherein he had introduced Mickey Mouse first. But by the time it was brought to theaters, the trend had changed from mere to Walky to walky-talky. Mr. Disney did not want to stay behind in the race hence he postponed launching of ‘Plane Crazy’ and started work on another Mickey Movie ‘Steamboat Willie’ with sound in it. This became the first animated film with synchronized sound. It was zeal of Mr. Disney to present superior output to the public and this of his pursuit had made him a good learner (Walt Disney Company, 2013).

Self Confidence: Good entrepreneurs always believe in their own abilities and ideas (Burns, 2005). Mr. Disney was rich with this property. Mr. Disney had strong futuristic vision power and he always believed and worked on them and earned profit. For example he was sure about the success of feature-length films and produced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the year 1937. The movie earned handsome $1.5 million business. It was when America was facing extreme financial recession (Thomas, 1966).
Innovative: This is also a special characteristic of successful entrepreneurs that they always try to generate newer ideas about products and services or find newer ways to produce or use things for better results (Drucker, 1994).

Mr. Walt Disney possessed this trait very much. He was always willing to adopt newest technology in his films and strived to achieve them. For example he had bought exclusive rights to apply Technicolor in his animation movies for 2 years. He was the first recipient of Academy Award for producing first full-color short cartoon movie ever Flowers and Trees (Thomas, 1966).

Self Motivation and determination: This is an essential and important characteristic which help entrepreneurs keep going despite of all odds and achieve success in their endeavourers (Drucker, 1994). Mr. Disney was the proud owner of both self-motivation and determination to achieve what he wanted. He persisted undeterred to execute his, plans to the end and worked hard to make them successful (Walt Disney Company, 2013)

Taking initiative: Having good ideas is not enough for an entrepreneur but he must also possess a good plan to achieve his targets and should be capable to execute them (Lee-Ross and Lashley, 2009).

Mr. Walt Disney always dared to dream big and then get his plans ready to reach there. For example while starting his WED Enterprises, he had dreamt of creating a huge theme park to be called ‘Disneyland’ and had chalked out plans to bring it into reality. It proved to be one of the best theme parks in the world when it was launched in 1955, which it still is (Walt Disney Company, 2013).

Analytical abilities: An entrepreneur should be able to conduct appropriate research on every possibility of business and should be able to evaluate each aspect of business such as development, finance, production, marketing and sales (Burns, 2005).

Mr. Walt Disney had this capability to visualize upcoming aspects of business and act accordingly. For example he had developed good strategies to make his theme park successful. He approached for corporate sponsorships and allowed other manufacturers sell food and other merchandise within the park to reduce cost of the project initially. But, as soon the park started earning profit; Mr. Disney repurchased those rights to further increase its revenue resources. He soon started planning for his second park. It was brought to reality in Florida in 1960. Here again he displayed his futuristic views by creating ‘Experimental prototype community of tomorrow’, known as Epcot Center today (Walt Disney Company, 2013).

Make decisions and take risks: A good entrepreneur should be able to make decision and take calculated risk to be successful (Lee-Ross and Lashley, 2009). Mr. Disney had reflected this ability early in his twenties with the launch of his first cartoon venture ‘Laugh O Grams’ in partnership with his friend. He was first offered $11,100 for the film but he got only $100 for his efforts. He reinvested this money in creating another movie Alice’s Wonderland but could not complete it due to lack of money. Instead of completing this movie, he sold his movie camera to move to Hollywood (Thomas, 1966).

Conclusion:
When we look at both leadership and entrepreneurial characteristics of Mr. Walt Disney we find that he did possess some good leadership skills initially such as participative, charismatic, friendly, and open to his workers but it all had changed into autocrative with his growth. He started behaving as a dictator to his employees and wanted them either to obey him or get out of the job. These of his latter characteristics do not define him a good leader at all. However he did reflected all the qualities of a good entrepreneur and kept investing into diversified interests successfully. He dreamt big and did everything to make them real and successful.

The analysis suggests that Mr. Walt Disney was a good entrepreneur but had lost effective leadership skills when he really needed them. Bibliography
Burns, P (2005) Corporate Entrepreneurship - Building an Entrepreneurial Organisation. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Drucker, P. (1994) Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Butterworth Heinemann, London.
Gitman and McDaniel, (2009). The Future of Business: The Essentials. South-Western: OH
Goleman D. (2000). Leadership That Gets Result. Harvard Business Review
Horner, M. Leadership Theory Reviewed, in Bennett, N., Crawford, M. and Cartwright, M (eds.) (2003) Effective Educational Leadership, Paul Chapman Publishing, London.
Kakabadse, A., and Kakabadse, N. (1999) Essence of Leadership, International Thomson Business Press, London.
Lee-Ross, D and Lashley, C. (2009). Entrepreneurship and Small Business Management in the Hospitality Industry. Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford.
Murray A. (2013). The Wall Street Journal Guide to Management. Harper Business
Northouse, P. (2010). Leadership Theory and Practice 5th ed. Western Michigan University. Sage Publications Inc.
Sadler, P. (2003) Leadership (2nd ed.). Kogan Page, London.
Shackleton, V. (1995). Business Leadership, Routledge, London
Thomas, B. (1966). Walt Disney: Magician of the movies. New York, NY: Grosset & Dunlap
Walt Disney Company (2013). Disney Leadership Team. Reviewed October 24, 2013 at < http://thewaltdisneycompany.com/about-disney/leadership >