Taran Swan Essay Example

to lead and her instinct, which she correctly followed, never lead her in the wrong direction.Taran Swan is put in a very difficult situation having to cope with limited budget and shared resources with MTV Latin America. Furthermore it is extremely important for her business that she has a perfect understanding of the culture and the environment of some very diverse societies. She is on her own with a number of opponents on the market that have already established themselves as brands in Latin America. However, Taran Swan successfully identifies her main recourse and advantage – the Nickelodeon brand and philosophy.

Although her managers at Nickelodeon where unsure about the success that can be achieved in Latin America, she took the challenge to try and convince them that the market is ready. As she noted there were not that many opportunities to enter the competition and she fails most probably there won’t be another shot. Quickly she manages to overcome what proves to be her greatest challenge – the unfamiliar environment. Starting with a brand and full of ideas, the first key step that Taran Swan executes is the establishment of her great team. Her strategy of recruiting talented, open minded people is a very firm base of the future company.Her personal involvement with all of her staff is vital for her future style of leading who foster communication between people in a very productive environment.

She has faith in the people she has chosen to be part of Nickelodeon Latin America and firths for every single one of them, as in the case of McCarty and Friedman. She is extremely successful in creating the perfect

environment for people to discuss, question and reason their ideas and views. She rarely applies her authority and at the same time by adjusting small pieces of the machine that she has created the company leaps forward.In such a hostile and unfamiliar environment most leaders would follow more totalitarian approach but she choose what I believe is the best approach.

Her decision to allow freedom of ideas and views in Nickelodeon Latin America was successful mainly because they managed to overcome the competition by thinking big – as she puts it herself to “make a splash”. Taran Swan manages to combine success in the short and in the long run by applying new ideas with combination of established shows from the history of the Nickelodeon.Instead of trying to satisfy the community she tried to shape their interests - an approach that only natural leaders are strong enough to follow. Her calm and consistent style of leading the company is in contrast with a few of her very risky but also very successful decisions. Furthermore she shows that she can not only adopt her company to the difficult and different environment of Latin America but she can adopt and respond to problems inside her own team by changing her leadership strategy and event the organization of her company as in the case of the conflict between Neuhaus and Byrne.In my opinion, by far her greatest advantage and her best quality is her transformational style of leadership.

At the macro level she is rarely using her authority in decision making because she allows her employees to discuss and convince each other and herself what is the best

path that the company should follow. Furthermore she allows certain individuals of her team to be in charge of different tasks even organizational meetings. She is devoted to her team and she doesn’t hesitate to pay some of the employees more than herself as in the case of Grieder which guilds this idea of team before self.Both of those arguments come together to form what I believe is the reason why any doubts that she is a manager but not a leader are irrelevant.

She is a great long-term thinker at any level, from picking the people and creating the structure, to allowing everyone to be in charge which builds solid company that can sustain itself even without key figures, including Taran Swan herself. In the future, if we assume that she is just about to leave the company, there is a great challenge in front of her – keeping her leadership position from distance.In the case of an ordinary manager this would have been impossible but in the case of Taran Swan it is possible. She managed to establish trust and loyalty to the team in Nickelodeon Latin America.

She doesn’t have opponents that might want to challenge her authority while she is away but the same fact doesn’t come as a disadvantage in terms of restricted number of views or opinions. As in the case of a true leader, her authority is never challenged because the employees themselves understand her great contribution to the team. Arguably her professional position in the structure of Nickelodeon Latin America can only be executed by her.What I’ve learned from examining Taran Swan’s leadership is that a leader

needn’t be popular or distinctively on top, as Robert Moses for example, in order to be a true leader. What I mean by that is the fact that she purposefully tries to be at the same level in many regards as her employees but it is not the case that she goes down to their level – she makes the raise to her standards.

The community is formed in such a way is extremely successful in the long run. Furthermore the team is firmly built and in case someone is missing it can sustain itself.