Fictional Character for a Management Position

Fictional Character for a Management Position

The best way to learn about managerial effectiveness is from actual managers. Managers in both reality and fictional perspectives can present great examples of the qualities and processes that create managerial effectiveness. In this case, The fictional character is an airline executive, and examining the character’s traits as a leader will show how they can be applied to improve leadership effectiveness in real life.

About the Character

The character that I have created for this activity is a female CEO. She has recently been promoted to the highest position in a large airline. She started her career young, working with the company, and had a decade of military experience. After her military service, she started working for the airline and has worked her way up the corporate ladder over the years. As a woman, she has had to experience some challenges going up, but her great leadership skills and traits have enabled her to stay on top for longer.

Describe the personality of your character (this is to help the reader understand the challenges your leader faces).

This character is very resilient. She has the ability to withstand strong pressures from her workplace and quickly recover when she is challenged. This trait has been the main factor helping her break the glass ceiling to achieve the top position at the company, making her the first woman to achieve that. She is also very respectful of others. She respects her teams so much. She acknowledges the efforts that everyone makes to help the organization. Her respect is demonstrated in the way that she collaborates with people and accommodates their contributions to achieve the best performance in the organization. This character is also very confident. She is assertive in her views and goals for the organization. Her confidence has allowed people in the organization to believe in her ability to help the company achieve success. Lastly, she has great critical thinking and decision-making skills. Her ability to effectively assess situations and make the best decisions is one of the reasons why she has been able to rise to the ranks of the CEO. She often uses these skills to help the company out of organizational challenges.

How did your character develop their management traits?

This character has developed her skills through education, training, and experience. She has an MBA, which has helped to develop her leadership skills. Through her MBA education, she learned a lot of leadership and management skills that make up a successful organization. She has applied these skills to develop her traits, such as good critical thinking and decision-making. She has also developed these skills through experience. From her days in the military, she has been forced to assume the role of a leader. In that experience, she developed her resilience as a leader, respect for others, and decision-making skills. Lastly, she has developed her skills through training. She was mentored by the previous CEO of the company, who helped her learn some qualities of a great leader. She has also attended some executive training workshops that help to prepare company executives for their leadership positions.

Identify three management traits that the leader possesses, and explain why they are necessary to a successful manager.

Three management traits possessed by this character are good interpersonal and communication skills, technical skills, and decision-making skills. These are three very important traits for a successful manager. Communication and interpersonal skills help managers to effectively collaborate with their teams (Renz, 2016). Through their communication, they can articulate their goals for the teams they lead and the approaches they wish the team to use to achieve them.

On the other hand, technical skills are important for the performance of specialized tasks. Technical skills include field-specific capabilities and knowledge that are often developed through education and experience. These skills are important for managing tasks specific to an organization’s activities (Amanchukwu, Stanley, & Ololube, 2015). Therefore, managers need these skills to understand their organizations’ needs and the strategies they can apply to achieve them.

Lastly, decision-making skills are important for making rational choices when managing an organization. Through decision-making, the leaders can choose the best solutions for problems facing the organization (Helfat & Martin, 2015; Anzengruber et al., 2017). Their decision-making skills can also help them be proactive in dealing with issues that affect their organizations.

How you can develop each skill or trait in your own life? Training, education, experience, etc. – but be specific (if you create goals, they should be SMART).

I can develop my interpersonal and communication skills through experience. I would like to improve my interpersonal interactions with my current workmates to improve how I communicate with them. My goal for this will be to learn at least five approaches to effective communication in the workplace within a period of six months. I will develop my technical skills through education. I will get my Master’s degree and work on a PhD to further develop my technical skills. My goal is to get a PhD within the next five years. Lastly, I will improve my decision-making skills through training. I would like to be an apprentice of a leader who I have seen being a good decision-maker. Under their guidance, I will learn how to apply different rational approaches to make the best possible decisions. It is my goal to learn at least three approaches to analyzing complex issues in a year of apprenticeship.

What are the possible disadvantages of having these traits?

Interpersonal and communication skills, technical skills, and decision-making skills are mainly important for managers, but sometimes, too much of something can be poisonous. Great interpersonal skills often make leaders form bonds with their subordinates. These binds can be a disadvantage when they cause the leader to put too much trust in the followers on issues that they may not handle efficiently. On the other hand, technical skills and decision-making capabilities can make some situations very complex when a leader likely needs to use their gut. Over-evaluating a problem may sometimes lead to making the wrong decision.

How have you seen the selected traits utilized effectively in your own experiences in life?

However, I have seen each of these traits being utilized successfully in life. I have seen leaders who have been successful because of their great communication and interpersonal skills. For example, my immediate supervisor in the military has been one of the best leaders I have worked with. One of the ways that he shows great managerial and leadership skills is through interacting with his team and learning more about our needs. He uses this knowledge to make positive improvements. Technical and decision-making skills have also been leading causes of success for managers and leaders. For instance, Steve Jobs, one of the most successful leaders in technology, had great skills in his area of work and made the right decisions to create a brand that remained superior in the industry even after his death. That is a show of good leadership.

How can you market the traits (for this I would like to see resume bullets for each of the traits)? – Put yourself in your character’s shoes, as if they were writing a resume.

• Communication and interpersonal skills: One of my biggest strengths is my people skills. I am great with communication, collaboration, and conflict resolution.
• Technical skills: I have a degree in aviation, experience working in military aviation, and years of leadership at XYX Airlines.
• Decision-making skills: I am a great decision-maker, a skill that I have developed through more than two decades of experience working in the military and later as a leader in an airline company.

How do you relate to your character? Could you be managed by him/her/it?

 In general, the character developed here is a great leader. She has both the team management and technical leadership skills that would lead to success. I would work best under such a leader because I love a manager who respects and values my contribution. The fact that this leader is willing to involve her teams in her decision-making creates an opportunity for members of her team to thrive.

References

Anzengruber, J., Goetz, M. A., Nold, H., & Woelfle, M. (2017). Effectiveness of managerial capabilities at different hierarchical levels. Journal of Managerial Psychology.

Amanchukwu, R. N., Stanley, G. J., & Ololube, N. P. (2015). A review of leadership theories, principles and styles and their relevance to educational management. Management, 5(1), 6-14.

Helfat, C. E., & Martin, J. A. (2015). Dynamic managerial capabilities: Review and assessment of managerial impact on strategic change. Journal of Management, 41(5), 1281-1312.

Renz, D. O. (2016). The Jossey-Bass handbook of nonprofit leadership and management. John Wiley & Sons.

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MGMT 100 Week 4 Management Style Short Story Paper

You are to write a 3-6 page paper (not including title and reference pages) in proper APA format. For your paper, you will create a fictional character for a movie. The character should be in a management position. Your paper should utilize appropriate course material (and from your own research).

Fictional Character for a Management Position

Ensure you address the following topics in your paper:

• Describe the personality of your character (this is to help the reader understand the challenges your leader faces).
• How did your character develop their management traits?
• Identify three management traits that the leader possesses, and explain why they are necessary to a successful manager.
• How you can develop each skill or trait in your own life? Training, education, experience, etc. – but be specific (if you create goals they should be SMART).
• What are the possible disadvantages of having these traits?
• How have you seen the selected traits utilized effectively in your own experiences in life?
• How can you market the traits (for this I would like to see resume bullets for each of the traits)? – Put yourself in your character’s shoes, as if they were writing a resume.
• How do you relate to your character? Could you be managed by him/her/it?

The paper must include (all in proper APA 7th edition format):

• Cover Page
• Body
• Reference Page
• Two additional resources from APUS online library
• Two additional resources from the internet
• Wikipedia, or similar sites are NOT acceptable sources for this paper

NOTE:

One of my previous discussions we had to give an outline of what we were going to write about so here is what I put:
For my fictional character, I’m going to be writing about a woman that recently got promoted to CEO for an airline company. She has prior experience working with aircraft when she was in the military for 10 years. After separating from the service she began working for the airliner and started to work her way up the chain. My character is a big people person that is able to network with different people from a variety of work spaces within the company. She’s never afraid to help others and has mutual respect with her employees. I find this important because my goal when I separate from the service is to have some sort of managerial role in an airline company, not necessarily CEO, but for this paper I thought might as well go big!