In every organization, success depends on, among other factors, the leadership exhibited by its management. Leadership may be defined as the behavioral act of creating conducive environment whereby people exploit their full potential with a view of realizing organization’s vision and mission. There are four key leadership styles, commonly referred to as Dimensional Behavioral Model, and illustrated as Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4 representing dominant-hostile, submissive-hostile, submissive-warm, and dominant-warm respectively. In the case of mountain west health plans Inc., the leadership styles displayed by Quinn, Rasmussen and Evelyn are very elaborate and reflect directly to the performance of the organization.
Evelyn Gustafson’s leadership style reflects Q3 whereby there is low concern for productivity but a very high concern for people. Being experienced and knowledgeable on the tasks, her main objective was to make sure that the whole of her department’s staff was comfortable, happy and gave satisfactory informationto subscribers. The latter was achieved through training and the end result was customer satisfaction and a very peaceful working environment. The style is useful in coordinating and harmonizing people in the firm.
However, Evelyn’s overfriendliness to subordinates had a negative effect to the firm’s efficiency. She gave them too much freedom and breaks, the end result being few calls being made and complaints of customers hold-up. This style of management tends to be unstructured, decisions are made based on popularity, conflicts resolved on smoothing-over and there is likelihood that someone with, say Q1 behavior, may take advantage of the Q3 submissiveness. Evelyn derived her influence from happiness and comfort of subordinates around her with no complaints whatsoever. Her main desire was to satisfy her social