Leadership Styles within FlyDubai

Leadership Styles within FlyDubai
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Introduction
Employee’s effort in tasks is as a result of the type of leadership that a particular organization adopts. Usually, organizations use a combination of leadership styles to influence their employees to achieve results. However, one style may dominate over others and it is often linked to the organization’s achievements and successes. Leadership attains three common results in the employees, teammates and followers. Some leaders hope to inspire their followers to achieve the laid down objectives, others take a supervisory approach in their leadership while others lead by focusing on the organization’s strategy. The inspirational leader is seen to lead by heart, the strategic leader leads by head and the supervisory leader by hands. This paper shall assess Fly Dubai Airline’s leadership style in light of the factors that determine the particular styles. It will also seek to evaluate how effective the leadership styles are and unravel how the styles allow or facilitate the way in which the company handles change. It shall also make recommendations on how the company can benefit from effectively blending the leadership styles to achieve its objectives.
Strategic leadership is a style that enhances the long-term viability of a company through articulation of a clear vision, which is maintained through financial stability. Strategic leaders share values with their employees to make decisions with minimal monitoring and they also encourage innovation (Rowe & Nejad, 2009). Supervisory leadership is concerned with the completion of day-to-day activities or tasks by individuals and teams. Supervisory leaders seek subordinates’ commitment to decisions which is essential for goal achievement (Pechlivanidis & Katsimpra, 2008). Inspirational leadership is about inspiring people to achieve, be innovative and committed to the goal of the organization. It inspires forming of relationships based on trust and openness where employees do the right thing because they want to and not because they have to. They nurture, guide and encourage employees through values and significant purpose to achieve success. They see human resource as assets and aim to achieve success through them (Timothy, 2008).
Fly Dubai’s Background information
The Government of Dubai established FlyDubai in March 2008 with a view to provide a low cost air travel facility for the growing airline market share. The company made purchase of its first aircraft the Boeing 737-800 in May 2009 and commenced flights to Beirut in June of the same year. The main goal of the company is to sustain its leading position in provision of low cost airline services in the United Arab Emirates and overall in the Middle East (Flydubai, 2013). The airline has a network of routes to over sixty destinations in the Middle East, Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, Central Europe and Indian subcontinent (PRNewswire, 2013). In the 2012 financial year, Flydubai registered significant growth with $756 million in revenue and $41 million in profits (Arab Times, 2013). It has registered tremendous growth in operations where it had a 78% increase in the number of flights, 100% increase in aircrafts, 150% increase in routes and 200% increase in the number of passengers in 2012. Its leadership has obviously committed to leading the employees to steer the company toward growth. The company is committed to enhancing staff’s skills as well as training them to acquire new ones through its comprehensive training programme (Flydubai(a), 2013).
The airline is the second largest carrier that flies out of Dubai International Airport. It thrives on innovative ways of operating and it encourages all the staff to come up with new ideas (Flydubai(a), 2013). To facilitate stimulate staff to generate new ideas, the company provides access to training, learning and leadership development. It also provides an e-learning portal where staff can access a wide selection of online courses where they can learn from intellectually stimulating material and foster innovation (Flydubai(b), 2013).
Flydubai has an open and vibrant culture that has innovation at its core. The leadership is committed to foster staff confidence through allowing the staff to take on challenges. For instance, the leadership allowed the business development to successfully establish Flydubai cargo from scratch. The leadership allowed team members to participate in each of the steps and different departments interacted to complete the project. This indicates that the airline provides a good atmosphere for work and there is effective communication among the different departments that allow good flow of communication. The staff also praises the organization as a place where people are viewed as true assets and their potential and capabilities nurtured. In as much as the FlyDubai is a big organization it has managed to develop and maintain strong interpersonal communication that is a privilege commonly reserved for smaller organizations (Flydubai(c), 2013).
The company enjoys full support from the government and privileges in airport services. It also enjoys having more customers as it is a low cost carrier. As the developing world is recovering from the effects of the recession, there is growing concern about lowering expenses and thus many prefer using FlyDubai’s low cost airline services. This is because low prices and better service persuades consumers in the Middle East who switch their preferred airline carrier for a cheaper price (McKechie, Grant, & Katsioloudes, 2008). Leadership styles in Fly Dubai
Strategic leadership is main leadership style in in FlyDubai. This is because the company is geared by a pricing strategy. Companies use the pricing strategy to maintain a competitive advantage over others in the same industry to remain profitable and for continued growth. Flydubai’s leadership considers the pricing strategy in all their decisions. The leaders understand that pricing plays a primary role in consumer behavior and hence it influences their decision making process. This is particularly influential particularly because the company was established during the global economic downturn era (McKechie, Grant, & Katsioloudes, 2008).
Apart from pricing strategy, the airline’s leadership also places a high premium on good customer service and customer satisfaction. The leadership realizes that giving customers a unique customer experience is one of the primary ways of sustaining customer loyalty. The company has used its strategic leadership style to prioritize and implement their customer’s preferences in their service offering. One example is whereby Flydubai launched a new hotel offering that gives passengers the opportunity to plan their entire holiday on the flydubai.com platform (PRWEBME Adline Media Network, 2013).
The CEO indicated that the leadership listened to its customers who were requesting to book hotels as they booked their flights. The leadership established this as a strategic way of increasing customer satisfaction while increasing chances of customer loyalty or stickiness. They pursued a partnership with Tourico Holidays to provide a platform where the customers can book hotels.
The airline is also committed to providing value added services and thus it ensured that the customers could also book cruises, transfers and tickets to numerous attractions around the world. It has also partnered with hotels such as Accor Hotels, Intercontinental, Hotel Group Hilton Worldwide and attractions such as Walt Disney world. The leadership is strategic in ensuring that customers are able to access travel packages easily and conveniently on the Flydubai website which gives the airline a competitive advantage over the other low cost airlines by exceeding customer satisfaction (PRWEBME Adline Media Network, 2013).
The airline’s strategic leadership has also incorporated other value added services such as car rental, travel insurance and visa facilitation. Visa facilitation is reserved for the passengers that travel to Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Russia as a complimentary service for travelling to the UAE. It also has a flexible pricing that allows customers to pick from a variety options such as entertainment, refreshments and duty free items depending on their purchasing power (PRWEBME Adline Media Network, 2013).
Flydubai’s strategic leadership has also partnered with Citibank to increase its strategic competitive advantage using the Citi Life Credit Card. This is a smart way to allow its credit card holders to have direct access to Flydubai flights. The partnership also allows Flydubai’s customers to enjoy services such as City Miles and CitiDollars loyalty programs. This way, they are able to convert them into Flydubai vouchers with which they can purchase Flydubai products and including travel plans. This is an ingenious strategic leadership initiative that propels the company towards increased customer retention and thus increased profitability (CITI for Cities, 2013).
Strategic leaders focus on the ways in which they can intelligently position the organization for increased profitability. They assess the customers’ needs and preferences and tailor their services to address those needs. They solicit for improvements in training, facilities and hiring of new personnel that will provide strategic support to the organization’s strategic products and services. They rely on the vision to influence the key decision makers within the organization to support strategies that profit the organization.
Inspirational leadership is the other leadership style adopted at Flydubai. The leadership in the airline values the staff input and it openly declares that the staff ideas are what drives the company. The leadership promotes a spirit of inclusion where employees have an open invitation to approve or disapprove decisions within the company. They are encouraged to put a stamp on what the company does. Fly Dubai acknowledges that the achievements it has made so far are because of the passion, dedication and skill of its staff (Flydubai(a), 2013).
Flydubai’s leadership also demonstrates openness in its hiring and training decision-making. It has entered into a contract with CTC Aviation Group plc to assist in recruiting pilots and expanding fleets with. These are global leaders in the airline industry particularly in training and management (CTC, 2012). This is characteristic of inspirational leadership that is essential in developing the organization’s capacity and skills. This way, the employees are empowered to deliver on targets and to learn from the best in the industry, and to become innovative. Inspirational leadership recognizes that people are assets and seeks to build their skills and boost their morale to work towards the vision. They train them in seeing how they can succeed when the organization succeeds. This kind of leadership is essential in motivating people and leading by example when the leaders are committed in offering the best training and participating in the activitie...