FDA Theories in Action part 2
My boss came back from leave today after not being at work for a long time. As I interacted with her more, I began to notice how different her interactions were with others. With myself and the other interns, she is always extremely pleasant, always willing to talk with us to help us learn, and also patient with us when we occasionally make mistakes. However, there is an actual FDA employee who has had a tremendously different experience. She is a new employee working under the same boss as I am and doing pretty similar tasks but has had a very different experience with our boss. While my fellow interns and I view our boss as a laid-back leader who cares about our development, she views our boss as a leader who only steps in to reprimand once something has been done wrong. This past week they had a meeting to catch up from lapses in communication and got into a pretty serious argument. Both were telling the other they hadn’t been doing their job and needed to step up.
It was crazy to me to see such a different side of her, and made me think her leadership style might actually be very transactional. As long as things get done in a timely manner, she seems to be on good terms with the employee. However, in some cases, if someone is behind on their work or consistently making the same mistakes, she can get frustrated with them. I think another factor to take into account is the type of employee. Maybe she’s just being so patient with us because we’re interns and, because the fulltime employee doesn’t seem to be living up to expectations in her eyes, she gets frustrated. I think this would make a lot of sense but at the same time I don’t understand the full situation. It could be that she just doesn’t use the same patience she has with us with the employee or it could be that the employee simply is not living up to expectations. Regardless, I think it’s safe to say that my boss treats us in very different ways, hinting at the concept that people can display different types of leadership styles in different situations.
Sounds like a really interesting dynamic. I think it would serve you well as you continue (and after you finish) to think of specific actions/behaviors your supervisor takes/displays that represent the transactional leadership factors (contingent reward, management-by-exception – passive and active). You offer a broad example, but more specificity will aid you when completing your assignments this fall. Perhaps she uses situational leadership; she is aware that you (the interns) and the employee are at a different developmental level (different levels of competence and commitment) and that is why she uses different styles? Not sure how radically different her behavior is with interns; would you say she employs transformational leadership with the interns? if so, I would encourage you to think of concrete examples of how she illustrates/embodies the four transformational factors (idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration).