Question

1. What leadership and personality traits does Bill Gates possess?

2. How have they enabled him to be successful?

3. How would you describe his leadership style? What role does charisma play?

Answer 1

Bill Gates:-

The actual name of Bill Gates is William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is the co-founder of Microsoft and is an American investor, author and philanthropist.

Below are the professional and personal attributes of Bill Gates:-

He has been the Chairman, CEO and Software architect of the company Microsoft he co-founded with Paul Allen.

He is the mind behind the every new product of the Microsoft. He is also influential person behind the business strategies. Bill Gates is one of the best known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. With his wife Melinda Bill Gates formed the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Since year 2008 Gates has worked full time on his philanthropic activities. It is estimated that in total of $28 billion via their charitable foundation which includes $8 billion to improve global health of mother earth.

Being the odd man out has always helped Gates to be the successful person in the world. During the early days of Microsoft Bill Gates was the person who oversee the business details of Microsoft but along with that he also worked to write code for Microsoft. It is well known fact that for first Five years of Microsoft Gates personally reviewed every line of code the company shipped and often re-wrote the unfit parts of code. He always remained interested in technical details of the product which was delivered.

Hence the quality being remaining in the touch with the technology and personally reviewing the code before delivering has helped him to achieve perfection in the work delivered which eventually helped Microsoft to earn good name in the market.               

The reason of his success can be summarized by below points:-

a) Entrepreneurship

b) Confidence

c) Technical mind.

d) He always learned from failure:-He once said “It is fine to celebrate success but it is more important to learn from failures.

The leadership style of Bill Gates includes following traits:-

Bill Gates is Autocratic i.e leader is competent enough and knowledgeable enough to decide for company policies.

He has always been task oriented demanding performance from his sub-ordinates

Also Bill Gates was more into technicalities rather than management which helped him to understand the product better.

The most important style of Bill Gates is the charismatic nature i.e connecting employee’s emotions though motivation and support.

And also it is seen that Charismatic leaders are very skilled communicators i.e both verbally eloquent, and are also able to communicate to followers/subordinates on a deep, emotional level. They are able to articulate a vision, and are able to arouse strong emotions in followers/subordinates. The Charisma is not something person is born with. It is a gradual process where interaction between the leader and follower happens and a situation which demands a leader who can arouse or boost up the confidence in people and it is where the charismatic leader comes into picture.