Question

Hello, Could you please check for Grammar, punctuation, review if the paper makes sense and answers the relevant questions and also important is if the quotation marks are correct.

Introduction

There are many contemporary Business leaders that are inspirational and have played a big part in shaping how we operate and do things in the world today. I decided to use Bill Gates as an example of Contemporary Leadership. Throughout this paper, I will provide a small biography, discuss his leadership approaches, his greatest achievements and failures, the power bases he used as part of his management, offer a comparison to his predecessors, and include my personal reflections.

Identify a leader and justify why you selected that particular leader. With what organizations is the leader affiliated? In what industry is the leader recognized? How long was the leader in a leadership position?

I chose Bill Gates because I believe that he is one of the most influential, inspirational, and motivational leaders in the world. Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft Corporation, the world's leading software company of personal computers. Microsoft was started in 1975 and became popular through its operating system Windows, document processing and management software Office, and web browser called Internet Explorer. It was the first company who has successfully been able to bring computing to the mainstream and has pioneered the way we use computers in our daily lives today. Bill Gates retired from day-to-day operations at Microsoft on June 27, 2008, but stayed on in the role of chairman and adviser on important development projects until April 2020, when he decided to step down completely from the board and serve as tech adviser to focus on his philanthropy mainly. His philanthropic works include the formation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a “worldwide philanthropic organization helping all people lead healthy, productive lives and lift them out of hunger and extreme poverty (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2020)”.

Discuss which leadership theory best describes the chosen leader's approach to leading people.

Although best known for his authoritarian or autocratic leadership style, it would be difficult to build a successful company based on just one style alone. Bill Gates' leadership includes situational, transformational, and visionary styles. What made Bill Gates successful was to be able to use and adapt these different leadership styles situationally. This allowed the company to be successful in regards to innovation but still be rigid in its operations.

The transformational leadership characteristics Bill Gates exhibited were focus, big picture, creativity, caring, passionate, education (Miller, 2019). By leading by example, Bill Gates had the ability to motivate and drive his employees to achieve great success. It is important to note that authoritarian leadership still preserves the dignity and respect of all employees (Schermerhorn & Uhl-Bien, 2014).

The authoritarian style alone tends to not be conducive to innovation as the controlling aspect of it hinders a follower’s ability to be creative. It is very effective in emergency situations that require stern decision making. Even though this was the case in a lot of instances, Bill Gates was also a transformational leader in the sense that he led by example.

Bill Gates also believed in delegation. He believed that it was important to recruit and develop gifted people. He believed that by employing gifted people, he could improve the productivity and creativity of the teams by enabling knowledge sharing, familiarly with the products, and capacity to analyze and identify problems.

What was the leader's greatest career achievement?

Bill Gates greatest achievement is the invention of Microsoft. His innovation transformed the way people work and collaborate together. His invention made computers mainstream and affordable, his software made organization, collaboration, and management of information easier, and by developing internet explorer, a web browser software, allowed millions of people to access the internet in a much easier and organized way. In 1987, Gates was first listed as the youngest self made billionaire on the Forbes magazines The World’s Billionaires list and has consistently remained in the Top 10 since then. While Gates has certainly been recognized for his technological innovations and leadership, he has also served an important role as philanthropist. His greatest achievements in that area was the establishment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2005, which Time magazine acknowledged by naming Bill and Melinda Gates as one of the 100 most influential people in 2005. Bill Gates was also crowned as an Honorary Knight by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 and received a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his philanthropy in 2016.

Identify a significant career challenge the leader faced and how the challenge was handled. Did the response align more with a managerial role or a leadership role?

Gates has experienced many hardships and challenges during his career.

According to Marketwatch (2019), the greatest mistake Gates made was the mismanagement of the mobile platform, which Android dominates today (Fottrell, 2019). While Android has 75% of the mobile OS market; Apple’s iOS has 22.7%, Windows only has 0.24% of the market share.

In a Harvard Q&A to students, Bill Gates told students that the challenges he faced early on in his career helped him to become successful (Premack, 2018). Even before Microsoft became a household name, Bill Gates has struggled with self-confidence and feared the business world. Gates was an introvert, even, he has said, antisocial, and his original plan was to teach math.

These types of personal and leadership challenges must have and are to a certain extent visible at Microsoft. Gates faced difficulty that he had a hard time delegating and resisting micromanaging. He had to force himself to stop revising and perfecting his peers’ work, he told Harvard’s students. “I had to say to myself, ‘Ok, we’re going to ship code that I didn’t edit,’” he said. “And that was hard for me, but I kinda got over that (Premack, 2018)”.

A managerial challenge Bill Gates first was right from the start of the release of it’s operating system. Bill Gates also faced challenges when it first released its operating system. With a lot of bugs and issues, Because of his controlling management style, Bill Gates was being held responsible for the company’s failures.

In the 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, the court ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and was blocking others from entering the market to allow competition. Despite Gates deposition testimony, or perhaps because of it, Microsoft has had a hard time defending the decision. Gates was characterized as evasive. This type of failure showed an autocratic leadership style, which was not very good in that situation.

What power base did the leader use in handling or resolving the challenge?

Throughout his career, Bill Gates used different power bases to deal with certain situations. Referent base and expert power bases were both used by Gates within the organization. Expert Power is based on the leader’s skill and knowledge. An expert makes other people dependent on the leader. In Bill Gates' example, he was the master of his knowledge and subject, and his expertise was never questioned. Through his reverent power, he was able to establish personal and professional relationships with his employees. Even though he was known for his authoritative style, Bill Gates showed interest and concern for his staff and loyalty was very important to him. Furthermore, Bill Gates also led by reward power. Under Bill Gates, Microsoft was famous for incentivizing and giving out big bonuses. This in term motivated employees to be more motivated and work harder and more effectively.

Lastly, Bill Gates showed his legitimate power base by dealing with upper level management. Because of his expert powers and referent powers, and because Gates was a very rational thinker, he used logic and evidence as base for his arguments and decisions. One of the challenges that Bill Gates had to solve was the communication and collaboration with his team. Steve Ballmer, who was chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were struggling because of Gates' strong influence over every decision the company has made. While they were able to work together for 33 in different capacities, Ballmer only lasted 4 years as CEO of Microsoft. Ballmer's decision was primarily due to the pressures of the board.

In a business Insider article Ballmer justified his step down by saying that "No matter how fast I want to change, there will be some hesitation from all constituents—employees, directors, investors, partners, vendors, customers, you name it—to believe I'm serious about it, maybe even myself (Yarow, 2013)”.

All in all it is probably safe to assume that Bill Gates played a big part in his decision and his authoritarian leadership style led to a failure of their relationship. It appears that in this case, all the power bases were too strong for Ballmer to survive.

Compare the leadership style used by your selected leader against that of the leader's successor/predecessor (or competitor in the same industry if a successor/predecessor is not applicable). Was there a difference in the leadership styles? Which leader do you think is more effective and why?

Bill Gates was an autocratic leader who could retain nearly all powers to him. However, the current leader of Microsoft Satya Nadella is more of a participative leader than autocratic. The views of other stakeholders are considered during the decision making. In my own view, I consider Satya Nadella the most successful as compared to Bill Gates. This is because the business world has changed and it will continue to change. Therefore, the middle level managers and the lower level managers understand what is happening in the market and therefore helps the top management in making decisions. This will ensure that Microsoft will continue to be one of the dominant players in the world for the foreseeable future. This will increase the participation of all of the managers towards creating value in the organization.

It is difficult to say which leader in the end is more effective since both Gates as well as Satya Nadella ran the companies during different economic and customer demand cycles. I believe that a combination of both styles is very important but that effectiveness cannot be measured by leadership style alone. The way we look at running a business today is different from what people believed it was supposed to have been 20 years ago.

Include a personal reflection and identify two to three attributes you hope to emulate or avoid (based on studying this leader) in order to be a successful leader.

On a personal level, I admire Bill Gates for his professional and philanthropic work. As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I certainly aspire a lot of times to be able to operate like Gates. His determination early on to start a company and take a huge risk not knowing it would pay off was admirable, but his determination to work hard and do whatever it takes to make the company successful are even more so.

His hunger for success and the motivation to be able develop a piece of software that the majority of the world would use takes a lot of courage.

Furthermore, one attribute that I admire about Gates is his confidence. Even though Gates was very introverted, he did manage to operate a multi billion dollar company. This takes a lot of work and self-believe.

I also like the fact that Gates has always been a hard worker. He also led by example and had the ability to motivate and inspire his team by being an example.

But probably most important is the work that Bill Gates does on a philanthropic level. Personally I believe that it is easier to spend money than to make it, and spend money more foolishly than smartly invest it. Bill Gates has taken his large fortune and has invested it into new technologies and people, enabling millions of people to live better lives. There is nothing more rewarding to me than spending my money on something I know someone else is in dire need for. His selfless act not only made him a leader in the leader in business, but also established him as one of the most influential and powerful leaders and champions for the people and the world.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, Bill Gates' story is fascinating and perhaps this is only a small view into what appears to be a more complex man. Bill Gates has shown that leadership cannot only be one way, but that it is ever changing and leaders need to be adaptable. The diversity and challenges that Bill Gates overcame in a relatively small amount of time show his versatility and strong leadership characteristics. His desire for philanthropy and making a better world not only makes him a strong business leader, but also a good human being who does not only care for himself, but also for the rest of the world.

Answer 1

Introduction

There are many contemporary Business leaders who are inspirational and have played a big part in shaping how we operate and do things in the world today. I decided to use Bill Gates as an example of Contemporary Leadership. Throughout this paper, I will provide a small biography, discuss his leadership approach, his greatest achievements, and failures, the power bases he used as part of his management, offer a comparison to his predecessors and include my personal reflections.

Identify a leader and justify why you selected that particular leader. With what organizations are the leader affiliated? In what industry is the leader recognized? How long was the leader in a leadership position?

I chose Bill Gates because I believe that he is one of the most influential, inspirational, and motivational leaders in the world. Bill Gates is the founder of Microsoft Corporation, the world's leading software company. Microsoft was started in 1975 and became popular through its operating system-Windows, document processing, and management software-Office, and web browser called Internet Explorer. It was the first company that successfully brought computing to the mainstream and has pioneered the way we use computers in our daily lives today. Bill Gates retired from daily operations at Microsoft on June 27, 2008, but stayed on in the role of chairman and advisor on important development projects until April 2020, when he decided to step down completely from the board and serve as a tech advisor to focus on his philanthropy. His philanthropic work includes the formation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is a “worldwide philanthropic organization helping all people lead healthy, productive lives and lift them out of hunger and extreme poverty (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2020)”.

Discuss which leadership theory best describes the chosen leader's approach to leading people.

Although best known for his authoritarian or autocratic leadership style, it would be difficult to build a successful company based on just one style alone. Bill Gates' leadership includes situational, transformational, and visionary styles. What made Bill Gates successful, was to be able to use and adapt these different leadership styles situationally. This allowed the company to be successful in regards to innovation, but still be rigid in its operations.

The transformational leadership characteristics Bill Gates exhibited were the focus, big picture, creativity, care, passion, and education(Miller, 2019). Leading by example, Bill Gates had the ability to motivate and drive his employees to achieve great success. It is important to note that authoritarian leadership still preserves the dignity and respect of all employees (Schermerhorn & Uhl-Bien, 2014).

The authoritarian style alone tends to not be conducive to innovation as the controlling aspect of it hinders a follower’s ability to be creative. It is, however, very effective in emergency situations that require stern decision making. Even though this was the case in many instances, Bill Gates was also a transformational leader in the sense that he led by example.

He also believed in the delegation. He believed that it was important to recruit and develop gifted people. He believed that by employing gifted people, he could improve the productivity and creativity of the teams by enabling knowledge sharing, familiarly with the products, and capacity to analyze and identify problems.

What was the leader's greatest career achievement?

Bill Gates’ greatest achievement is the incorporation of Microsoft. His innovation transformed the way people work and collaborate. His invention made computers mainstream and affordable, his software made organization, collaboration, and management of information easier, and by developing internet explorer, a web browser software, allowed millions of people to access the internet in a much easier and organized way. In 1987, Gates was first listed as the youngest self-made billionaire on Forbes magazine’s “The World’s Billionaires list” and has consistently remained in the Top 10 since then. While Gates has certainly been recognized for his technological innovations and leadership, he has also served an important role as a philanthropist. His greatest achievements in that area were the establishment of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2005, which Time magazine acknowledged by naming Bill and Melinda Gates as one of the 100 most influential people in 2005. Bill Gates was also crowned as an Honorary Knight by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 and received a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his philanthropy in 2016.

Identify a significant career challenge the leader faced and how the challenge was handled. Did the response align more with a managerial role or a leadership role?

Gates has experienced many hardships and challenges during his career.

According to Marketwatch(2019), the greatest mistake Gates made was the mismanagement of the mobile platform, which Android dominates today(Fottrell, 2019). While Android has 75% of the mobile OS market; Apple’s iOS has 22.7%, Windows only has 0.24% of the market share.

In a Harvard Q&A to students, Bill Gates told students that the challenges he faced early on in his career helped him to become successful(Premack, 2018). Even before Microsoft became a household name, Bill Gates has struggled with self-confidence and feared the business world. Gates was an introvert, even, he has said, antisocial, and his original plan was to teach math.

These types of personal and leadership challenges must have and are to a certain extent visible at Microsoft. Gates faced the difficulty that he had a hard time delegating and resisting micromanaging. He had to force himself to stop revising and perfecting his peers’ work, he told Harvard’s students. “I had to say to myself, ‘Ok, we’re going to ship code that I didn’t edit,’” he said. “And that was hard for me, but I kinda got over that (Premack, 2018)”.

A managerial challenge Bill Gates first was right from the start of the release of its operating system. Bill Gates also faced challenges when it first released its operating system with a lot of bugs and issues. Due to his controlling management style, Bill Gates was being held responsible for the company’s failures.

In 1998 United States v. Microsoft case, the court ruled that Microsoft had committed monopolization and was blocking others from entering the market to allow competition. Despite Gates' deposition testimony, or perhaps because of it, Microsoft has had a hard time defending the decision. Gates was characterized as evasive. This type of failure showed an autocratic leadership style, which was not very good in that situation.

What power base did the leader use in handling or resolving the challenge?

Throughout his career, Bill Gates used different power bases to deal with certain situations. Referent base and expert power bases were both used by Gates within the organization. Expert Power is based on the leader’s skill and knowledge. An expert makes other people dependent on the leader. In Bill Gates' example, he was the master of his knowledge and subject, and his expertise was never questioned. Through his reverent power, he was able to establish personal and professional relationships with his employees. Even though he was known for his authoritative style, Bill Gates showed interest and concern for his staff and loyalty was very important to him. Furthermore, Bill Gates also led by reward power. Under Bill Gates, Microsoft was famous for incentivizing and giving out big bonuses. This, in turn, motivated employees to be more productive and work harder.

Lastly, Bill Gates showed his legitimate power base by dealing with upper-level management. Because of his expert and referent powers, and because Gates was a very rational thinker, he used logic and evidence as a base for his arguments and decisions. One of the challenges that Bill Gates had to solve was the communication and collaboration with his team. Steve Ballmer, who was chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014, was struggling because of Gates' strong influence over every decision the company has made. While they were able to work together for 33 in different capacities, Ballmer only lasted 14 years as CEO of Microsoft. Ballmer's decision was primarily due to the pressures of the board.

In a business Insider article Ballmer justified his step down by saying that "No matter how fast I want to change, there will be some hesitation from all constituents—employees, directors, investors, partners, vendors, customers, you name it—to believe I'm serious about it, maybe even myself(Yarow, 2013)”.

All in all it is probably safe to assume that Bill Gates played a big part in his decision and his authoritarian leadership style led to a failure of their relationship. It appears that in this case, all the power bases were too strong for Ballmer to survive.

Compare the leadership style used by your selected leader against that of the leader's successor/predecessor (or competitor in the same industry if a successor/predecessor is not applicable). Was there a difference in the leadership styles? Which leader do you think is more effective and why?

Bill Gates was an autocratic leader who could retain nearly all powers to him. However, the current leader of Microsoft Satya Nadella is more of a participative leader than autocratic. The views of other stakeholders are considered during decision making. In my own view, I consider Satya Nadella to be more successful as compared to Bill Gates. This is because the business world has changed and it will continue to change. Therefore, middle-level managers and the lower level managers understand what is happening in the market and therefore help the top management in making decisions. This will ensure that Microsoft will continue to be one of the dominant players in the world for the foreseeable future. This will increase the participation of all of the managers towards creating value in the organization.

It is difficult to say which leader, in the end, is more effective since both Gates as well as Satya Nadella ran the companies during different economic and customer demand cycles. I believe that a combination of both styles is very important but that effectiveness cannot be measured by leadership style alone. The way we look at running a business today is different from what people believed it was supposed to have been 20 years ago.

Include a personal reflection and identify two to three attributes you hope to emulate or avoid (based on studying this leader) in order to be a successful leader.

On a personal level, I admire Bill Gates for his professional and philanthropic work. As an entrepreneur and small business owner, I certainly aspire to be able to operate like Gates. His determination early on to start a company and take a huge risk not knowing it would pay off was admirable, but his determination to work hard and do whatever it takes to make the company successful are even more so.

His hunger for success and the motivation to be able develop a piece of software that the majority of the world would use takes a lot of courage.

Furthermore, one attribute that I admire about Gates is his confidence. Even though Gates was very introvert, he did manage to operate a multi billion dollar company. This takes a lot of work and self-belief.

I also like the fact that Gates has always been a hard worker. He also led by example and had the ability to motivate and inspire his team by being an example.

But probably most important is the work that Bill Gates does on a philanthropic level. Personally I believe that it is easier to spend money than to make it, and spend money more foolishly than smartly invest it. Bill Gates has taken his large fortune and has invested it into new technologies and people, enabling millions of people to live better lives. There is nothing more rewarding to me than spending my money on something I know someone else is in dire need for. His selfless act not only made him a leader in the leader in business, but also established him as one of the most influential and powerful leaders and champions for the people and the world.

Conclusion

Bill Gates' story is fascinating and perhaps this is only a small view into what appears to be a more complex man. Bill Gates has shown that leadership cannot only be one way, but that it is ever changing and leaders need to be adaptable. The diversity and challenges that Bill Gates overcame in a relatively small amount of time show his versatility and strong leadership characteristics. His desire for philanthropy and making a better world not only makes him a strong business leader, but also a good human being who not only care for himself, but also for the rest of the world.