Angela Ahrendt Research Paper

Angela Ahrendts is an American businesswoman born on June 12, 1960 in Indiana. She attended Ball State University and graduated in 1981 with a degree in merchandising and marketing. Ahrendts then moved to New York City, because she had always wanted to pursue a career in the fashion industry. In 1989, she became president of Donna Karen International where she worked for six years, and later went on to work at Henri Bendel, Liz Claiborne, and Kate Spade. Her most well-known position has been her role at Burberry, for which she became the CEO in 2006. Ahrendts is credited with tripling Burberry’s revenue during the time that she was there, after working to make the company more modern, efficient, and relevant. She encouraged the use of technology

She believes that happier employees are more productive ones, and regularly engaging lower level employees and collaborating with them in making decisions will ultimately lead to better results. Her strategy has been successful so far, and Apple has seen great improvements in its retail operations (Reingold, 2015). Employees have a positive outlook towards the new policies that Ahrendts has helped to implement. If I were in her position, I would use the same strategy. I agree with her leadership attitudes, especially her view that real, authentic communication between employees, not matter what level, will lead to a better outcome for everyone

In terms of personality traits, Ahrendts would be considered extroverted and firm, but is also capable of actively listening to her followers as was demonstrated by her initial leadership style when first taking on her position at Apple. Based on the four dimensions described within the Myers Briggs Type Indicator psychology test, she would also be classified as a perceiving leader, rather than a judging one. When Ahrendts first started at Apple, she held off on making any operational changes at all until she had visited over 100 retail stores to gain employee feedback on how the company runs. Leadership behaviors are a combination of not only personality traits, but also intelligence, emotional intelligence, values, attitudes, interests, knowledge, and experience. The two dimensions of leadership behavior are thought to be consideration, which is how supportive the leader is to his/her followers, and initiating structure, which is how much emphasis the leader puts on meeting work related goals and finishing tasks. Out of these two dimensions, Ahrendts shows more characteristics of consideration, although she also makes sure to accomplish concrete and measurable tasks. This is because at the core of her leadership and management philosophy is the importance of listening to employees at all levels, gaining feedback from them, and making sure that the company is a desirable