Week 2 at Comcast: Transactional and Transformational Work Environment
From my observations so far, it seems like my office has a pretty good mix of transactional and transformational leadership and guidance. Certain divisions within my department (Call Center Sales) are transformational by nature, like the Channel Development team for example. Their goal is to map out the next 3-4 years and what they might look like for our department. The Development team hosts weekly brainstorming sessions, and the manager encourages his employees to be creative, to think outside the box, and to add their own unique touch to their work. There, the manager-employee relationship is less about getting things done by a set time and more about aligning the department vision and getting the rest of the teams on board with it.
My team, the Voice Analytics team, is focused on more on short-term problem solving. We receive requests from other divisions that want an answer to a question they’re curious about. We need to explore the data and come up with an explanation for their question as quickly as possible. On a day-to-day basis, my job is inherently transactional – fulfilling tasks handed down by my manager by a set deadline. For my situation, my manager’s leadership style works. He always likes to get down to business and focus on the task at hand.
More recently, however, I have been assigned a project that will require myself and my team to lead in a transformational manner. We have noticed that most of the requests we receive are random and follow no set-pattern, but the same 4-5 recommendations we make appear for 80-90% of the requests. Our goal is to get our Senior Vice President on board to help us define our own team’s vision and convey that vision to the rest of the department. Much like the Channel Development team, the Voice Analytics group is hoping to map out our future at Comcast and present it to the rest of the department so they can understand where we are headed. That way, the requests that come in will be much more purpose-driven and better aligned with Channel Development team’s vision for the future of CCSales. My job here has proven to be incredibly cross-functional and one that requires both transactional and transformational coordination.
You’ve done a good job here providing some examples to illustrate the transactional elements at Comcast. I encourage you to consider more concrete examples that illustrate the transformational element (e.g. identify behaviors/actions that illustrate the factors of transformational leadership – idealized influence/charisma, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration). The more specificity with your reflections, the better equipped you’ll be to complete the academic assignments this fall.