Leadership Interview and Reflection Paper Grand Canyon University LDR-600 Leadership Styles and Development Tiffany Helton April 24, 2013 When interviewing a leader in an organization in order to discover their leadership style one must ask critical questions. I had the opportunity to interview Casey Aguirre who is a Team Manager at the Salem Call Center for T-Mobile. Casey has been with T-Mobile for over 11 years. In this interview we discussed her leadership style, the steps she took to become a leader, her biggest challenges, and her greatest achievements among other things.
While interviewing Casey I kept in mind the connection between women in leadership and the cultural disadvantages and advantages that women in leadership roles are faced with every day. T-Mobile Culture At T-Mobile the culture is high energy and pressure. The mission statement for the company is to win back the hearts and minds of the customer. T-Mobile centers their culture on values and motivation through incentives. Becoming a leader at T-Mobile is a difficult task. Not only does a person have to perform at a high level, the candidate must also navigate what sometimes feels like a gauntlet of social mazes.
Exposure is key to being successful at T-Mobile. A silent culture at T-Mobile is that turnover is expected and that certain leaders in the organization are there just to eliminate those that cannot perform. This is a perception of the culture; whether or not it is accurate perception can become reality. Casey Aguirre Team Manager Casey has been with T-Mobile for 11 years. She started in the organization as a representative answering phone calls from customers. She was in this role for approximately 1 ? years. She then was promoted to a Senior Representative and maintained that position for another 1 ? years.
As a proven leader she was again promoted to Coach. She led her team to number one in the nation. She stayed in that position for an addition 3 years. She then promoted to Team Manager and has been in that position since. Casey describes her leader ship style as motivational with accountability being her main focus. She self-professed that she has a Myers Briggs personality type of ESTJ which stands for Extroversion, Sensing, Thinking, and Judging. She focuses on clear direction and setting expectations. She describes herself as competitive in nature and is always looking for areas to become the best in her field.
Her biggest challenge that she faced was setting action plans and expectations. She found that her judgmental nature made her somewhat unapproachable. Once she became a Team Manager she had to become more of a hard nose to people that she had built relationships with over the years. She has dove head into developing coaches and site projects to ensure that she retains the title of #1 Manager in the Nation through 2013. Her greatest achievement was claiming this title in 2012. She welcomes feedback from employees and uses that feedback to improve the Salem Center and herself.
Reflection I have learned that in this high pressure environment a woman must be at the top of her game to achieve success. She is the only women Team Manager at the Salem, Oregon location. She uses her thinking portion of her personality to gather metrics and calibrate team successes. What surprised me most about Casey, though I have never worked with her personally, she comes across abrasive, but warms quickly to the probing questions that I had for her. In regards to any nuances that I observed, she looked me in the eyes when answering my questions.
She also allowed me to take the leadership role in the interview. This was refreshing because I could clearly detect that she wanted me to get everything I needed in order to report accurately about the interview. I could see that she was genuine interested in my success while talking about hers. Overall, I received a clear understanding of the dedication and hard work that it takes to succeed at T-Mobile. It is one thing to perform, but the balance is performance and exposure. References Aguirre, Casey. Team Manager. T-Mobile Interview of Women in Leadership. April 5, 2013.
