Case study management approaches and applications

¶ … Management)

Sherri Heckenast seems to be extremely self-efficacious. There are several reasons for which she manages to achieve her goals with a high level of success. First and foremost, it could be stated that she is a person who knows what she wants. Establishing one's objectives in a clear manner is helpful afterwards, when one has to decide the best way to approach the road to reaching them. And this is what Sherri does.

Another aspect which helps her on the way to success is her mentality. She is a person who thinks big. Just as she states it, she would rather not get involved in something if that something is not meant to be successful at high level. Setting herself high goals is a challenge for her and she loves challenges.

The fact that she has succeeded in reaching important goals from an early age has given her self-confidence, showing her how capable she is. I believe that this motivated her and that she finds support in her previous accomplishments.

A further factor which aids Sherri in being so self efficacious is represented by the education she received from her father. Just like stated in the text, she was taught to set her priorities straight. And business is the number one priority. It is obvious that this is the manner in which she thinks, it can be noticed in the choices she makes. What her father actually taught her is to be pragmatic.

The circumstances in which she got involved in running the family business are also an important element. The fact that her father had serious health problems meant that the well-being of the entire family was threatened. She had to do the best she could to prevent this thing from happening. And despite her young age, she managed to do things right.

In addition to having the right education and having been put in a limit situation, she has benefited from practical experience. she became CEO of the family business before the age of thirty. She had to interrupt her studies and got involved into the process of solving problems on a daily basis. This contributed to the building up of her strength and her character.

As far as consciousness is concerned, it could be stated that Sherri is a person who is well aware oh the way she thinks and of her own capacities. She seems to be self-conscious and she has a lot of self-confidence (self-confidence supported by the previous important successes). She is also a person willing to take risks, but the experience she has in the area of business allows her to be like that (all the potential risks are calculated in a rational manner).

She is a proactive personality, a person who has the courage to have all sorts of initiatives. When the issue of control is to be taken into consideration, there are several aspects which might be brought into discussion. She likes to maintain control upon things and this is normal, taking into consideration the fact that she is a business woman.

On the other hand, she is inclined to control herself. This is proven by the fact that she turned back to taking care of business when she was doing very well with her racing, because she knew it was the pragmatic thing to do.

One of the things that could be stated about Sherri Heckenast is that she possesses practical intelligence. It was her father who tried o bring her up in a pragmatic spirit. And then she was taught the same lesson when she got involved in the running of her family's business.

Her approach to the future business project of the race track is a proof of the manner in which she thinks. Instead of trying to conceive small steps to take at a time, she already imagined the big picture, assuming that investments will bring further investments in a situation where everybody wins.

Nevertheless, practical intelligence is not the only asset that one needs in their lives in order to be successful. Emotional intelligence is a key resource for everybody, regardless of their field of work. Sherri seems to have a strong emotional intelligence as well. The fact that she was the only woman to be passionate about and get involved in racing cars did not affect her negatively.

On the contrary she did what she had to do. She has proved to be a person who is able of self-control when she chose not to get involved in racing after she came in second, but focus on business again. It is important that she makes the distinction between what business is supposed to be and to what extent she can get involved in the development of a hobby she is extremely passionate about.

There is nevertheless, a strong connection between her hobby and the way she runs business, in the sense that each of them supports the other. The success she obtains running her family's businesses gives her emotional support for her actions in racing. This could be potentially risky, since she could happen to fail at some time in one of the mentioned areas.

Some recommendations could be made to Sherri in order to allow her to improve her emotional intelligence. One of these recommendations could be to focus a both on analyzing how she thinks about things and why she does it like that and not in another manner. A deeper self knowledge could be achieved by her writing down, on a daily basis, the way she feels about situations, in order to notice if there is a certain pattern and if so, what are the reasons for this pattern to be created. In addition, Sherri could allow herself to use fore feeling in the process of making decisions and not be afraid of letting her emotional side show as well in the way she conducts business. However, the fact that she getting involved in the race track business is a sign in this direction.