Salesforce: Leader/Follower Relationships
At Salesforce the culture of the organization plays a significant factor in leader follower relationships. The company has grown significantly over the last few years and will continue to as it aims to grow from 30,000 to 60,000 people by 2022. As Salesforce has grown like a rocket, culture has become a significant focus. In terms of leader follower relationship that begins at the top with the CEO Marc Benioff. Marc is consistently rated in the top 5 CEOs in world by Forbes, USA Today, and other media outlets. As a leader internally he viewed with great reverence, respect, and is seen to be both progressive and an innovator. His leadership is a big reason Forbes ranked Salesforce as the #1 place to work in America.
From my experience the leader-follower relationship at the company is very unique. In this, I will focus on the relationship of the BDRs and their managers.
BDR-to-BDR Manager:
I observe this relationship as I support 5 BDR (Business Development Representative) Teams. The relationship between the managers and those they directly oversee is very supportive, yet transactional. Managers are very aware of what is going on with their teams and are responsible for their success or failure. The managers are interestingly positioned as supports to their team, they do not have the same deliverables in terms of actually selling things but they use their prior experience to help coach their direct reports.
The managers rely heavily on wealth of data to inform their decisions about their team as a whole and the individuals it comprises, all of which sits on our product, Salesforce. While the decisions they make are data-driven, there is a genuine effort on the part of the managers to make sure each member of the team can reach their fullest potential. In doing so, a manager will take feedback and adjust their approach in order to improve results, this creates for a manager driven culture where innovation in the leader-follower relationship isn’t just encouraged but a part of day-to-day operations.
Not sure if this is your 7/8 reflection posted earlier or perhaps a make-up post for the missing ones (6/17 and 6/24)? Sounds like an interesting environment with managers who do not have deliverables and who support their staff. You’ve indicated that it is transactional leadership at play, so it would be good to perhaps link behaviors/actions you observe to the different transactional factors you see employed (contingent reward, constructive transactions, management-by-exception (active or passive), and corrective transactions). The more specificity you can provide – the more examples you identify and discuss that illustrate different elements of theories, the better suited you will be to complete the academic assignments this fall. Members reaching their fullest potential seems a bit more transformational versus transactional? Not exactly sure what you’re saying in the last sentence.