Week Three: Transactional Leadership at The New York Times

At a company with over 3,000 employees, I keep finding myself in the elevator with people I have never seen before or being introduced to someone new everyday. I have found that at such a large company like The New York Times, teams are an incredibly important aspect of day to day functions of the office. As I have said in an earlier blog post, while my team consists of 5 people in total we touch many other teams throughout the building. However, as my third week at The Times comes to a close I have shaped strong relationships with the members of my team, especially my manager. I believe my manager displays many elements of transactional leadership and I think that is because of some of the mentors she has at the company.

The intern program at The New York Times is very well thought out with each intern paired with a manager in their department who oversees our time at the company. From day one my manager as been friendly and inviting and clearly excited to have me on the team. Within the first week on the job she had outlined my projects for the summer and set up coffee dates for me with individuals on different teams throughout the company. Just after the first week on the job it was clear to me that my manager’s leadership style was transformational.

In Theories and Models we learned about transactional and transformational leadership, transactional being of a “carrots and sticks” mentality and transformational being more inspirational. I have defined transformational leadership as an individual who is a role model for followers in order to inspire them and raise their interest in the project. As my manager outlined my projects and explained to me what I would be doing while at the company it was clear to me that she was not about the “carrots and sticks” way of leading but rather wanted to inspire me to want to accomplish all of my projects to the best of my ability. She schedules one-on-one meetings at least twice a week so that I can update her on the progress of my projects and at each meeting she provides me with great constructive criticism that she believes will help me put forward my best work. At the end of this past week I checked in with my manager to show her the progress I had made on my project. She inspired me to continue to put so much effort into it by telling me how proud she was of me and that she wanted me to present my progress to the rest of the team this upcoming Monday. There was no punishment or reward for my work rather I felt ownership over my work and felt excited to continue to work on my projects.

My manager reports to the Executive Director of Client Relations at The New York Times and says that she has learned so much by having her as a mentor. After watching them both interact with one another I can see the importance of having a mentor at any company whether it be large or small. I think mentors can instill their own leadership qualities in those who look up to them. I am looking forward to learning more from my manager and seeing what other leadership styles are displayed through different individuals at the company.