Walmart Part 5_Leading

1.        What personality traits does Walmart look for in a job candidate? How might wrong perceptions lead managers to hire the wrong people?

• Personality of an individual is the set of characteristics that underlie a relatively stable pattern of behavior in response to ideas, objects, or people in the environment. The personality traits that Walmart look for in a job candidate is someone who are extroverted and love to deal with customer. Extroversion is the degree which a person is outgoing, sociable, assertive, and comfortable with interpersonal relationships. As a worker in Walmart have to face different types of customer, good in communication skills is important to communicate with customer to increase the company’s goodwill.
• Perception is the cognitive process people use to make sense out of environment by selecting, organizing, and interpreting information. People outward appearance will affect the way of looking of manages even manages decision. So, when manager look only people outward appearance will influence their decision and might hire the wrong people.

2.        How would you characterize the leadership of Walmart founder Sam Walton.

• Leadership describes the ability to influence people toward the attainment of goals. In our opinion, we think that Sam Walton’s leadership can be classify to authentic leadership. Sam Walton is a leader that show commitment in his job. When the employees of Walmart feel the commitment from the leader, this will automatically generate the momentum to achieve the goal of organization. He always care and keep on motivate his employees. Sam Walton said that “Just because we work hard, we don’t have to go around with long faces.” For example, when Mr. Sam losing a bet with top executive David Glass, he donned a grass skirt and did a hula dance on Wall Street. He is also an open-minded leader that respect the opinion from his subordinates. There have a statement state that “Listen to your associates” in Walton’s playbook. Sam Walton generate the new idea by listening to his employees well.

3.        What tools does Walmart use to motivate employees? How might a lack of motivation affect associates and how should managers respond?

• Walmart use a slogan as the symbol of the organization to build strong team spirit among the employees. Walmart cheer is now used by all the Walmart’s international store. Although they use different language to spell out the cheer, but the value is still the same. When all of the employees speak out the cheer, they will feel like gaining momentum in their job.
• Motivation is an important tool used by manager to inspire worker to work and achieve the goal of the organization. Motivation can be in many types such as incentives, bonus, holiday and others. Lack of motivation will affect associates in many ways like dissatisfaction from employees and poor performance that will affect the revenue of the associates. When employees are lack of motivation, there is no satisfaction in their job because no one will encourage or motivate them. This lead to poor performance among the employees such as fail to complete a task on time and then affect the productivity of the company. When managers notice a change in behavior of employees, managers have to try talk to them and give some motivation. For example, manager can reward the employees once they complete their assigned task on time. This will make employees feel that their work are worthy and being appreciate by the company.