A Famous Contemporary Leader - Anna Wintour PDF

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MGTA FAMOUS CONTEMPORARY LEADER:ANNA WINTOURPREPARED BY:NUR SARAH DAYANA BINTI KAMARUL ZAHRINBA2491APREPARED FOR:MADAM MUNA WADHIHA BINTI MOHD FAUZIContents 1. BACKGROUND 2. ANNA WINTOUR’S LEADERSHIP STYLE ANNA WINTOUR’S LEADERSHIP TIPS 3. LEADERSHIP TRAITS AND BEHAVIOURS 4. CONCLUSION 5. REFERENCES...

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MGT420

A FAMOUS CONTEMPORARY LEADER: ANNA WINTOUR

PREPARED BY: NUR SARAH DAYANA BINTI KAMARUL ZAHRIN BA2491A

PREPARED FOR: MADAM MUNA WADHIHA BINTI MOHD FAUZI

Contents 1.

BACKGROUND ........................................................................................................................... 3

2.

ANNA WINTOUR’S LEADERSHIP STYLE ............................................................................ 4 ANNA WINTOUR’S LEADERSHIP TIPS .................................................................................... 5

3.

LEADERSHIP TRAITS AND BEHAVIOURS .......................................................................... 9

4.

CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................ 11

5.

REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 12

1. BACKGROUND Born on November 3rd of 1949, Dame Anna Wintour, also famously known as, Anna Wintour, is a former journalist and now currently served as Editor-in-Chief and Global Editorial Director of Vogue. Vogue is an American monthly fashion and lifestyle magazine that mainly discusses matters regarding fashion, beauty, living and runway. Anna Wintour becomes Vogue’s Editor-in-Chief since 1988 and on 2020, she becomes Global Chief Content Officer as well as Artistic Director of Condé Nast, a global mass media company. The British-American fashion icon was born in Hampstead, London. In her teenage years, she attends North London Collegiate School where her interests in fashion begin. Growing up, Wintour is surrounded by people who works in the journalist industry. Her father, Charles Wintour was an editor of the Evening Standard, a local free daily newspaper in London and her brother, Patrick, a journalist, also works as a diplomatic editor of The Guardian. Her other two siblings, James and Nora Wintour worked in London local government and for international non-government organizations back then. Anna Wintour’s leadership skills is visible ever since she was young when her father often consulted her regarding matters to increase leadership in the youth market.

2. ANNA WINTOUR’S LEADERSHIP STYLE Over 45 years of being active in the fashion industry, Anna Wintour been recognized and acknowledged by the mass public for her incredible leadership skills. Her calm and strict demeanour is well-respected among her fellow peers. Anna’s leadership skills have been shared through multiple articles and also inspired a Hollywood movie, The Devil wears Prada. Her tips on leadership has been shared in the form of an article on MasterClass, an American online education platform. (MasterClass, Business, 2021) Below are the tips that has been shared: i.

Own your vision

ii.

Be a changemaker

iii.

Be strong in decision making

iv.

Cultivate new leaders in your industry

v.

Build a diverse team

vi.

Don’t micromanage

vii.

Stay engaged with the wider world beyond your industry

viii.

Use your position to make an impact

ANNA WINTOUR’S LEADERSHIP TIPS i.

Own your vision -

To be a leader that can be followed, Anna stated that one must build a strong vision that the followers can believe in. Once you have a solid and clear vision, own it, share it with the team and give feedback quickly. As a leader, one must also believe in their decision making to execute the vision successfully for the company grow and move in the right direction. Anna claims that she always urges the managers to not sugarcoat the feedbacks but instead be direct and straightforward. By being direct, her and her team would not waste their time on unnecessary matters and proceed with the next issues.

ii.

Be a changemaker -

At a certain point of your career, you will have to face an inevitable situation where your decision making will be taken into account and make bold innovative choices. If you want to bring the attention to your company, you must know when to break the limit and do the unexpected. By doing this, you will be an influential leader that will be respected by others as Anna has always apply this tip in her works when she works with Vogue.

iii.

Be strong in decision making -

When it comes to being a leader, they will have to make bold decisions despite the disagreement from everyone else. You can be a better leader if you stay true to your own vision if you accept the possibility of this to happen, said Anna. This will sharpen your observation skills as well as critical thinking. Anna has always hold to her principle where as a leader, she must be decisive and trust her instinct. She recalls her former boss being indecisive as a lesson for her to be always the opposite of it. By making decisions with full clarity, there will be no misunderstanding with the subordinates and the information is delivered smoothly. It is better to make wrong decision instead of being indecisive with no self-confidence.

iv.

Cultivate new leaders in the industry -

Since Anna has been the pioneer leader in the fashion industry, she felt a sense of authority to guide the new generation of designers and polish their talents in the industry. This will ensure the future of the industry to continue to be successful as well as inspire ourselves with the different ideas from the new generations.

v.

Build a diverse team -

Having a team that are sync with each other is one of the keys on being a great leader. As for Anna, she is supported by her team consists of writers, editors and photographers as well as her personal assistants. Anna believes that as a leader, she needs to surround herself with people she enjoys, whose opinions, minds and taste she respect. Having a diverse team, albeit from different backgrounds, ages or experiences, it will help you to make a better judgement on the content you are planning to put out considering it comes from different opinions in the team.

vi.

Don’t micromanage -

Micromanaging is where the managers observes their employees closely and criticise their works. By avoiding micromanagement and putting your trust in your employees, it will encourage the employees to make better decisions on the brand’s behalf. Anna admits that she is a very good delegator whereas she always delegates the works to her team because she believes that people work better when they have responsibility. Although it is advisable to not micromanage the employees, Anna still monitors her employees work without constantly double-checking on their work.

vii.

Stay engaged with the wider world beyond your industry -

Another tips in becoming a leader is to be aware and stay engaged to the world around yourself, not only in your industry but also beyond that. According to Anna, it is essential for a leader to keep your eyes and ears open to the world as well as encourage your subordinates to do the same.

viii. -

Use your position to make an impact Anna states that, as a leader, it is important to use your position in a way that it will be positively impactful to others in the industry and lend a hand to those in need. Using your platform in a good way is the way of a great leader. A leader must always stay alert with whatever happens around the world and stand up on what you believe is right. This will inspire our audiences and subordinates to fight for the right thing.

Alongside Anna’s personal tips on being a great leader, the article also shared on five traits of being an effective leader. The traits are great communication skills, authenticity, emotional intelligence, adaptability and recognition.

i.

Great communication skills -

Being a leader is all about communicating and interacting with others especially with your employees. Having great communication skills can help you to have discussions about your vision with clarity and gain confidence when making decisions. Being good in communicating also includes on how good of a listener you are towards your employees when they propose their ideas to you. This will help building trust between the leader and the subordinates.

ii.

Authenticity -

Being a leader means you need to be straight-forward and honest to have a clear communication with your subordinates. This is to avoid any misunderstanding to occur. Hence why, being your most authentic self is important as a leader.

iii.

Emotional intelligence -

Although being a leader means you need to be strict, there are times where you need to be emotionally intelligent and have a high level of interpersonal skills. This is to allow leaders to have a connection and understand their subordinates on human level. Empath, self-awareness, a

positive attitude and creativity are a few of the traits of an emotional intelligent leader. iv.

Adaptability -

Being a great leader means you need to adapt and resilient in any new situations. This is because there will always be an unexpected obstacle coming our way that we are not prepared for. Having the ability to adapt in these situations will helps us to make a clear decision while keeping everything under control.

v.

Recognition -

To create a cooperative and active team, a leader must boost their subordinates’ morale through recognition. This will inspire them to be better and increase the productivity of your team as well as the engagement in your team.

3. LEADERSHIP TRAITS AND BEHAVIOURS From Anna Wintour’s leadership style, we can identify a few noticeable leadership traits and behaviours in her. Anna is highly intelligent. As the main figure in Vogue, she has to lead her subordinates and manage them to reach her vision and goal. That aspect of being a leader can be really difficult and overwhelming as they have to carry any burdens if there’s any mistakes. However, Anna manage to lead her subordinates well because of her knowledge; albeit regarding issues within the team or regarding her expertise in the fashion industry. Her intelligence helps her subordinates to understand the issues occur and solve them while at the same time help the managers to make good decisions. Furthermore, Anna is also really confident when it comes to being a leader. Numerous articles and videos on the internet have highlighted the confidence oozing from Anna Wintour. As we all know, being a leader requires you to be confident all the time, especially when it comes to decision making. Owing to the fact that Anna is a confident person, this has influence and inspire her team effectively to produce great results. Her self-confidence helps her team to be prepared whenever they faced with any obstacles. Leading from self-confidence, Anna’s dominance shines through as she is very meticulous and thorough in her job. Being a confident leader without any ounce of dominance, will provide results although the results will most likely are not the goals that the leader is targeting. On the grounds that Anna, a workaholic woman who is also a goal-oriented person, achieve the goals of the organization, which in this case is Vogue, is really important as this will be a stepping stone to future goals. Anna assert her dominance as Vogue’s Chief-Editorial to her team to influence them to achieve Vogue’s goals. This is why being dominant is crucial when it comes to being a leader.

Apart from that, Anna Wintour is also a person with integrity. As has previously mentioned in the previous paragraph, Anna is a goal-oriented person. She influences her subordinates to produce results that will help them to achieve their goas. However, she also lets her subordinates to make decisions on which choices would benefits Vogue better without diminishing the brand’s reputation because of the trust she has in them. This will improve the dynamic in the relationship between the subordinates and the leader because of the trust within each other. Moreover, the trust between Anna and her team. It is clear that Anna puts her utmost trust to her team to deliver great results up to her and Vogue’s standard. She trusts her team enough to delegate the work among them and consider the job done. Also, she would involve her teams’ decisions and respect their opinions on certain matters. This shows that being a leader does not mean that your opinions are always right because at times, your subordinates’ opinions can be right. That is why having trust between the leader and subordinates is important. It shows how much they understand and respect each other. The way successful leaders act will make those who are associated with them be proud.

4. CONCLUSION Not everyone is lucky enough to have a great leadership skill. Most of the human beings are born as leader material, but some of them are born as follower material, some are ultimately not meant to be in a leadership role, and some are just not capable enough to do a good job as an employee. Some avoid the role of a leader being too successful and intense. Anna Wintour has proven herself to be an exceptional and capable leader to the eyes of the public, especially in the fashion industry. Her accomplishments and achievements had been recognized since the start of her career, not only in the fashion industry, but also beyond that. Her leadership traits and tips has leads her to become a respectable figure that will continue to encourage the new generations to be creative and confident in themselves. The success that Vogue has today is all because of Anna Wintour’s leadership style that influenced on how the brand operated today. While other brands are afraid to do something different, Anna embraced all the challenges and risk as an opportunity for improvement and changes for Vogue. With Anna Wintour’s leadership skills and traits as our references, it proves that we can become a great leader just like Anna herself. Her achievements soon will be a legacy to be remembered and appreciate in the next few decades that will soon inspire the new generations of leaders in the fashion industry.

5. REFERENCES MasterClass. (2020). Anna Wintour’s 9 Tips for Effective Leadership. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/anna-wintours-tips-for-effectiveleadership#quiz-0

Getting the Work Done: Anna’s Management Tips. (2020). MasterClass; MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/classes/anna-wintour-teachescreativity-and-leadership/chapters/getting-the-work-done-anna-s-managementtips

https://www.facebook.com/ElleMuseCanada. (2019, September 13). 7 Leadership and Creative Lessons from Anna Wintour - Elle Muse. https://ellemuse.com/7-leadership-and-creative-lessons-from-anna-wintour/

Feloni, R., & Business Insider. (2016, January 5). 6 strategies Vogue editor Anna Wintour uses to run her empire. Business Insider; Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/anna-wintour-on-leadership-andmanagement-2016-1

Weiss, D. (2014). " That's Part of What We Do": The Performative Power of Vogue's Anna Wintour. Journal of Magazine & New Media Research, 15(1).

7 Leadership Behaviors that Build Success. (2018, May 10). Notre Dame. https://www.notredameonline.com/resources/leadership-and-management/7leadership-behaviors-that-build-success/...