Leadership Case Study: Solitaire Jewellers Ltd.

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Introduction
Solitaire Jewellers Ltd. (Solitaire) are a Takapuna based jewellery retailer and manufacturer, owned and operated by John Goodman. Solitaire aims to provide high quality pre-made jewellery, as well as exceptional custom-made jewellery which meets precise customer specification. Despite early successes in his managerial tenure, in 2008, John saw Solitaire’s profits diminish which it is still yet to recover from. John has begun to assess the state of Solitaire in terms of its leadership and motivation of employees in an effort to identify potential issues. He has applied a variety of frameworks and theories.
Leadership
“Leadership is the process of arousing enthusiasm and directing efforts towards organisational goals” (Schermerhorn et al., 2014). There are three key leaders in Solitaire; John Goodman; Richard White; and Willem Vickers.

As per the Universities of Iowa, Ohio State and Michigan leadership studies, John has a democratic, low structure, high consideration, employee-centred leadership style (Needle, 2004). Richard has an autocratic, high-structure, low consideration, production-oriented
…show more content…
This is because he has concern for both employees and productivity, however his priority has certainly been creating a positive environment for his staff. For John to improve to ‘team manager’, he could focus on improving relationships in the business, specifically Richard’s relationship with the jewellers, to create a better business both in terms of productivity and employee enjoyment. Richard operates under authority-compliance management, as he focuses all of efforts on interacting with customers, while having little regard for Julie, which is shown in his frequent stealing of Julie’s customers, as well as passing on the roles he does not want to do to

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