Speaker: . . . leadership styles, that’s a great question, because you sure see a lot of leadership styles out there, and we have experienced a number of different ones. My view is that the most effective leaders can adapt, can recognize what’s appropriate, and use the right style at the right time, and that different situations call for different styles. If you have a crisis situation where time is of the essence, you have to be pretty directive. And people will want you to be pretty directive, and hopefully you can use good judgment, and get things moving whatever way they . . . so I don’t know, if you have a house that’s on fire or something like that, you are not going to take a vote, and have group participation and reach a consensus, and, I mean, you have to act now or there won’t be any house. The real challenge for leaders, I think, is to be able to diagnose which leadership style is appropriate for each situation, and then be flexible enough and have a broad enough range of leadership styles that they can use, that they can match up the right style to the right situation, and sometimes that changes multiple times during a day, depending on the people with whom you are working. So that is my approach to the leadership styles, as opposed to picking one.

Dr. Reimann: Marie, want to take a shot?

Speaker: A silver tongued devil, wouldn’t you say? [laughing and talking]. I can’t add to that, it really is situational leadership what’s called for. I think a key issue with me, from my perspective is there must be some part of that charismatic issue that has established the trust and the communication skills so when it is time to say, fire, get out, that there is not discussion. People are looking for a leader, and so that with the trust issue and with the appropriate skills at the appropriate time, they trust you to use the right skills to drive the organization forward.

Dr. Reimann: Jessie?

Speaker: It’s hard to improve upon what Jack said to start, but the thing that I would like to add to it is that as you leave here and go out into a career, you need to understand your leader’s style. You need to understand it and learn how to perform effectively working with that leader. Odds are you are not going to change your leader, so you ought to learn to be able to work well with him.

Speaker: I would like to add one other thought also, that is really important, and really hard, and that is to understand yourself well enough to know where you can be effective, and where you would be less effective, so that not only can you diagnose the situation, understand your leader style, built the trust and so on, but understand what you are comfortable with, and what you can pull off and what you can’t, and then challenge yourself to stretch your limits, and I mean I certainly have over my career, I know, and in terms of ability you can grow and stretch, but recognizing where you are and who you are and what you are comfortable with is really key to what style is appropriate also.