Running head: LEADERSHIP AND MOTIVATION 1
Leadership and Motivation: Stand Alone Project
Antwuan Flemons
Ashworth College
LEADERSHIP AND MOTIVATION 2
Leadership and Motivation: Stand Alone Project
Part A
I chose to collect information concerning Sylvia Metayer, who is the former CEO of
Sodexo and currently serves as Chief Growth Officer in the company. The information I
collected concerning her enabled me to examine personality and leadership style by discussing
her leadership traits, five personality dimensions, servant leadership, charismatic leader, Path-
goal theory, culture and values, power and influence, communication, and vision and strategic
direction.
Metayer has been serving in Sodexo since 2006, and she implemented several strategies
when she was the CEO. During her term, the company became the most admired firm for over
five consecutive times. She is a down to earth leader with her outstanding core values, including
respect, making a difference, authenticity, courage, humility, wisdom, and integrity. During her
leadership as the CEO, she transformed the workforce by changing the physical environment,
health, and well-being, social interaction, enhanced personal growth, and eased the work of
employees.
Metayer is a leader and not a manager based on her future-focused leadership. Besides,
she possesses the five personality dimensions. Her personality made her fit for the leadership,
making her more influential. She adopted the servant leadership style where she led as an
example, developed a collaborative relationship with employees and put her employees first
(Sorensen et al., 2019). From her personality and leadership style, it is evident that she is a
relationship-motivated leader.
The former CEO of Sodexo has the courage and moral leadership. Her courage and moral
leadership mix are evident from her core values, accountability, and leading as an example. She
LEADERSHIP AND MOTIVATION 3
stood by the core values of Sodexo and contributed through her core values. Her accountability
and her excellence in walking the talk had a huge impact on the company (Sorensen et al., 2019).
She changed the culture of Sodexo from a traditional culture with a huge power difference to a
collaborative culture. She enhanced collectivism in the allocation of resources and decision
making. Besides, she enhanced human-oriented culture values, where she promoted the well-
being of the workers. Moreover, she supported future performance culture values by aligning
workers to the vision of the company.
Metayer is a charismatic leader due to her confidence, excellent expressiveness, and
communication skills, and her natural ability to influence people (Waldman & O’Reilly, 2018).
She possesses exemplary persuasion skills and can pass a crafted message with ease. She is
listening, complementing, positive, and does not fail to make recognition where necessary when
communicating. She motivates her followers as much as she can (Sorensen et al., 2019). Her
motivation techniques involve removing obstacles by training and guiding followers. However,
she assesses her employees before guiding to ensure that those who require autonomy are left to
challenge themselves. Her motivation and empowerment techniques include involving workers
in decision making, soliciting advice from workers, rewarding performance, recognizing
excellent performance, and free communication (Waldman & O’Reilly, 2018). Metayer is a
visionary leader and had a strategic direction when she was Sodexo’s CEO. She developed the
company’s vision and committed herself to achieve it. She developed strategies to guide the
company to the vision. The strategies involved the allocation of resources, core competence,
developing synergy and creating value for consumers.
Part B
LEADERSHIP AND MOTIVATION 4
Metayer is the Chief Growth Officer for Sodexo, responsible for digital innovation, group
strategy, marketing, and sales effectiveness (Metayer, 2020). That is, she aligns all growth levers
to strategic intent. She is a member of od Sodexo’s Group Executive Committee. He was the
CEO of Worldwide Sodexo’s corporate service segment until August 31, 2019 (Metayer, 2020).
The segment serves all Sodexo’s clients in business, industry, and services sectors in sixty
countries. Metayer first joined Sodexo in 2006 as Group Financial Controller and was CFO for
the company’s on-site services operations in Europe (Metayer, 2020). She then became the
president of large international accounts, developing and supporting partnership with Sodexo’s
top global clients.
Before joining Sodexo, Metayer was the chief operating officer at Houghton Mifflin, a
Boston-based educational publisher and president of its assessment services division (Morgan,
