Brief background of Christian Holgate

Work history, family, and educational background

Christian Holgate is a famous Australian CEO, businessperson and director of Australian post. Earlier, Holgate remained as a CEO, executive director, and Managing director of Telstra corporation ltd. Apart from this, Christian Holgate worked as CEO of nutritional supplementary corporation “Blackmores” in 2008. She is well known for her leadership skills. The chairman of Australian Post “John Stanhope” was very much convinced with her experience and her expertise was very helpful to the organisation to accomplish business goals in Asia (Samad, 2015). Christian was selected to head one most Australia`s oldest and structurally financially challenged corporation. Colgate has announced that Australian Post would spend 300 million dollars while creating the capability and capacity to get available with them the track position of parcels.

This leader has an experience of leadership at international level in several sectors such as telecommunication, media, healthcare, and finance. Apart from this, Holgate has the experience of twenty years of both executive and non-executive member of several corporates. The prime responsibility of the Holgate is to lead the team in such a way so that she can regulate to deliver the expansion and growth to an organisation in a sustainable way. In addition to this, she was positioned in the senior management team in Australia, Asia, and America (ABC, 2018). Although basic education qualification is necessary but Holgate has positioned herself in such a way that her skill set defines her personality. Therefore, Holgate has completed post-graduate diploma and masters in Business administration (MBA). She has been invited for the inaugural ceremony of ASEAN council of Board of Australia. Holgate has encouraged international trade relationships between member countries of ASEAN and Australia. Holgate has proved to be a great and explicit business leader. Apart from corporate leader, Holgate has served the Board of Collingwood Football and has also remained non-executive director of Ten network holding limited. Holgate was awarded in 2015 and was recognised as best women CEO of the year. Moreover, she was named among the top 100 women who received recognition in financial reviews of Australia. In 2013, she was honoured for her adorable charitable work (EY, 2016).

Elaboration of leadership theory where traits are associated with Christian Holgate

 Leadership is a skill set of practical skills that can create a motivational, influential, and positive effect on behaviour of employees. Renowned business leader “Christian Holgate” claims passion that can solve the difficult challenges of an enterprise especially when it is concerned with decision for a massive change. These traits of a leader help the organisation to decrease the frequency of complaint letters (Siecap, 2015). Apart from a business leader, Christian Holgate emerged as a charismatic leader too who focused to give importance in generating emotions within the team. Holgate has a strong understanding of social objectives and goals. This leader values continuous learning, authenticity, and kindness. Apart from this, leader serves the social issues very well and she calls herself “free market socialist.”

The market share of the company increased since she joint the work as stock price of the “Blackmores” has increased in such a way that it has increased to five times after 2014. In approximately nine years of her career, she has represented the company as profitable profit by supporting a sustainable growth and promoting the products in Asia. Nevertheless, she was also honoured as the CEO of the year and she shared her personal experiences that has led here to become most respected person amongst business leaders (Evans, 2016). Christian has also discussed the importance of culture and morale while undertaking business operations. Holgate also discussed key strategic challenges faced by Australian Post when during tackling the new stages of transformation in E-business market in Australia and Asia. Even after a huge work experience, she has never been a part of logistics department but this time she strived to take some decisions as a manager of Logistics department. She has spent her most time in several careers such as health, manufacturing, and financial sector.    

Description of Christian Holgate’s leadership approach using leadership theory

While choosing a leadership theory, authority has not enforced the building of traits in Holgate but she carries a charisma that is reflected in her behaviour while communicating to different personalities. Holgate follows a charismatic leadership who encourages a particular form of behaviour of influencing the employees in a particular way. This leader is a persuasive individual whose deeds are driven by both commitment and conviction. Charismatic leader not only thinks on the part of organisation`s profit but it has different visions and ideas that will help organisation to grow as well as the society. Holgate is a warm-hearted, authentic, creative, and innovative woman who keep motivating the employees (Meuser, Gardner, Dinh, Hu, Liden, and Lord, 2016). She is a strong business women who wants to serve business and society. She has built a new business strategic plans for the logistics department in which she has never worked before. Holgate as a leader cannot predicted by delegating the power in the hands of the person but it is his personality traits that have made him a leader. At the same time, Holgate is a conformist leader, who was appointed by the board of directors. This leader has strong knowledge base, which she applies to make the plans for business strategies. Holgate has competitive advantage over other leaders such as she is abled for global e-commerce knowledge when pursuing the Asian Strategy. Holgate is passionate leader to seize the chances and opportunity for its employees, shareholders and community. The aim of Holgate was not only to earn money but also to serve people very well especially its employees. She also has great impact to promote equality of women (Dovey, Burdon, and Simpson, 2017).

Two major obstacles faced by Christian Holgate

Before she started working in Australian Post, Christian had worked in Blackmores for few years, which has result to achieve a considerable growth in company. Challenges associated with Holgate is to regulate the business activities so that they can pace the same growth in the market. The challenges for the leader to maintain the same long-term sustainability because of inflation and large hike in the share prices. When share price decreases drastically, it becomes difficult for the leader to maintain the level of sustainability for the growth (Antonakis, and House, 2014). The challenge is encountered since last two years when the share price of the blackmores has reflected an increase from $27 in 2014 to $217 January 2016. Holgate uses path goal theory, which will lead to maintain a healthy relationship among its workforce. This will lead to hyper growth for an organisation that has reflected a raise in the share price of Blackmores (Holgate, 2016).

Apart from considering the leadership theory, Colgate ardently follows the traits of all leadership theory. Other challenges reviewed as when behaviour of Holgate is believed that he is an autocratic leader because she does not consider employees and stakeholders that has sometimes led to wrong decision-making. This business leader has become successful in its way to execute the work. Various leadership ability of Holgate (women business leader) that has affected the profound effect that have made financial plans strategically. Christian also got a chance that led to expansion strategies for China (Johnston, 2018).

Key challenges faced by Christian Holgate and how they were managed

Learning about the leadership after researching the leadership style of Christine Holgate

With the changes in the external environment of business, leader plays an important role to achieve the organisational goals and objectives. After studying the related leadership style, it is to be considered that only delegating the power among the leaders is not sufficient to make the deeds efficient. Leader is goal-oriented when being announced by CEO at Australian Post. Holgate have started strategizing the plans for executing successful business plans. A leader should work in various industries and he should be a subject matter expert (Miner, 2015). Although, Holgate never worked in a logistics industry but still she could work in services as efficiently as possible. Moreover, the leader has worked in manufacturing and financial service industries. It is not any less than undertaking and managing the business risks( Keating, 2014).

Most influencing trait that should be reflected in a leader`s personality should come with strong passion for the work. At first, Holgate remained a manager of Telstra`s marketing team which further undertake to form the strategies for the business sales and the channels that will ultimately serve SMEs. “Blackmores” faced financial crisis in 2008 that was related to debt. Holgate focused on expanding and manufacturing the business by starting Blackmores pipelines in Asia by supporting the local management and ultimately offering the diversified portfolio product range to the local market (Maak, Pless, and Voegtlin, 2016).

References

ABC (2018) Australia Post names Christine Holgate as new CEO, replacing Ahmed Fahour. [online] Available on: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-27/christine-holgate-new-australia-post-boss/8654762 [Accessed on 27/09/18]

Antonakis, J. and House, R.J., (2014) Instrumental leadership: Measurement and extension of transformational–transactional leadership theory. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(4), pp.746-771.

Dovey, K., Burdon, S. and Simpson, R., (2017) Creative leadership as a collective achievement: An Australian case. Management Learning, 48(1), pp.23-38.

Evans, S. (2016) Cod liver oil and family tragedy shape Blackmores CEO Christine Holgate’s destiny. [online] Available on: Sydney Morning Herald: https://www.smh.com.au/business/retail/cod-liver-oil-and-a-family-tragedy-shape-blackmores-ceos-destiny-20151214-gln4hf [Accessed on 27/09/18]

EY (2016) EY Strategic Growth Forum China. [online] Available on: https://www.ey.com/cn/en/services/strategic-growth-markets/ey-strategic-growth-forum-china-2016-speaker-christine-holgate [Accessed on 27/09/18]

Holgate, C. (2016). Other People’s Business: Blackmores CEO Christine Holgate. Radio National (RN) Drive. (P. Karvelas, Interviewer) ABC.[online] Available on:  https://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/11/rnd_20151104_1835.mp3 [Accessed on 27/09/18]

Johnston, D. (2018) Australia Post’s positive result from Deloitte Access Economics report, but mail delivery delays on CEO Christine Holgate agenda. [online] Available on: https://www.thecourier.com.au/story/5592093/australia-post-ceo-wants-faster-deliveries-and-more-post-offices/ [Accessed on 27/09/18]

Keating, E. (2014) Gail Kelly retires: Five leadership lessons from the first woman to lead one of Australia’s big banks. [online] Available on: https://www.smartcompany.com.au/people-human-resources/leadership/44621-gail-kelly-retires-five-leadership-lessons-from-the-first-woman-to-lead-one-of-australia-s-big-banks/ [Accessed on 27/09/18]

Maak, T., Pless, N.M. and Voegtlin, C., (2016) Business statesman or shareholder advocate? CEO responsible leadership styles and the micro?foundations of political CSR. Journal of Management Studies, 53(3), pp.463-493.

Meuser, J.D., Gardner, W.L., Dinh, J.E., Hu, J., Liden, R.C. and Lord, R.G., (2016) A network analysis of leadership theory: The infancy of integration. Journal of Management, 42(5), pp.1374-1403.

Miner, J.B., (2015) Organizational behavior 1: Essential theories of motivation and leadership. US: Routledge.

Samad, A., (2015) Towards an understanding of the effect of leadership on employee wellbeing and organizational outcomes in Australian universities. The Journal of Developing Areas, 49(6), pp.441-448.

Siecap (2015) Australia Post’s Christine Holgate discusses leadership. [online] Available on: https://www.siecap.com.au/australia-posts-christine-holgate-discusses-leadership/ [Accessed on 27/09/18]