Leaders Background
Discuss about the Bill Gates’s Leadership Skills.
Leadership is a gift that is highly desired by many. It may be defined as a process and a trait. Bill Gates is one of the most inspirational and charismatic leaders witnessed by the 21st century. The knowledge and skills possessed by Bill Gates make him the most persuasive transformational leader throughout the world. The reason I chose this leader is because he proved to be a good transformational leader in the software industry. He has always been focused on change and very determined on what he wanted to attain. Indeed, he has been proven to be both a visionary and a charismatic frontrunner. The objective of this paper is to address the leadership skills of Bill Gates that made him successful.
Bill Gates was rated as the richest man in America. Besides, he has recently been featured in Forbes Top 100 lists often. Gates has been bestowed with numerous awards such as Bower Award involving Business Leadership, Mary Woodard Lasker Award concerning Public Service, National Medal of Technology and Innovation and many more. It is indisputable that Bill Gates has had a big impact on the whole world in different ways, always leading from the front. In fact, it is Gates vision and foresight in regards to personal computing that has enabled the victory of Microsoft as well as the whole software industry. Microsoft Windows still stands out as the Globe’s most effective OS. Bill Gates has been acknowledged as the person behind such success and indeed an exceptional leader. How Bill Gates dropped out as a student in Havard University is a story well known to many. However, he dropped out of school to begin a very successful company also known to many.
Bill Gates was captivated by computers while he was growing up. He, therefore, spent a lot of time learning ways of programming. His passion towards computers and programming led him to work very hard(Menzel, 2015). He knew every success required hard work and could not be achieved within a day. As a result, he spent many years operating from his garage, writing programs and coding. Gates continued to work more even after he had set up the Microsoft Windows. He did not relax since he needed to understand his target group and invent products that would help their businesses(Shamim et al. 2016).The man understood that being a leader he should be dynamic in terms of thinking ability. However, Microsoft continued to advance which made Gates remain relevant in his work. Regardless, Gates knew he had to advance Microsoft more to counter competition and still maintain its leadership position. As a result, Bill Gates and his people added a web browser, Microsoft Office and provided enterprise solutions to all their commodities. Bill Gates was the person behind the expansion of the Microsoft invention line (Northouse, 2014). Evidently, Gates was innovative who brought new ideas to his company thus making it victorious. Bill Gates has also been a humanitarian and a philanthropist. He has used billion dollars to help people all over the world. Along with his Wife Melinda, Gates has managed to tackle global issues such cancer, malaria, and AIDS. His ability to visualize humanitarian goals can be viewed in malaria treatment. Gates has a vibrant goal towards doing away with malaria which made him lay a distinct strategy (Verma et al. 2025). Certainly, his abilities to foresee and plan things are some of the things that make him an exceptional leader.
Leadership Style and Theory
Bill Gates has possessed the transformational leadership style. Being a visionary leader he has managed to introduce and change a lot in the software industry (Mauri, 2017). Changes he has done at Microsoft transformed the whole computing industry. Therefore, the trait approach theory can be used to expound Bill Gate’s leadership style. The trait theory proposes that some individuals have leadership qualities that they are born with. Bill Gates some of the leadership traits he was born with such as determination, intelligence, competitiveness, skillfulness, sociable and high integrity(Bel, 2010). Looking at his leadership style, Bill Gates is transformational, Autocratic, delegation and task-oriented. Besides, Fielder’s model denotes that there are two kinds of leaders such as relation-oriented and task-oriented leaders. Bill Gates is a task-oriented leader referring to what he has done with his life (Al-Asfour and Lettau, 2014). He has already proved to be one of the task-oriented leaders by the way he works with his employees. He expects good performance from his workers.
Additionally, he believes that work comes first before relation building and that way, can achieve company’s goals. On the other hand, he has presented an Autocratic leadership. Bill Gates possesses control trait in nature from the way he takes care of management. He also has good knowledge concerning his work. As result, he always wants to make decisions and decides on every main decision. Bill Gates possesses more technical competence compared to interpersonal skills (Yoffie and Cusumano,2015). Due to his experience, he has managed to adopt traits possessed by a transformational leader where he attempts to appeal his workers through support and motivation.
Bill Gates is one of the exceptional leaders in the world. Regardless, he also experienced some challenges as he tried to pursue his dreams. His exceptional leadership skills have been faced with some difficulties. Notably, Gates is of dominating nature. As a result, the character blocked his followers from relating with him (Bel, 2010). He also exerted pressure on his juniors constantly due to the results which made him unpopular amongst the staff. Regardless of him having the traits of transformational and charismatic leader he did not have employee relation. Therefore, Bill Gates needed to improve employee relation being one of the important aspects of leadership(Allio, 2015). Bill Gates is said to be less concerned with employee welfare, and more concerned with work hence it’s another aspect he needed to improve.
Challenges Faced by Bill Gates as a leader
Gates also faced criticism as another major challenge. His Microsoft Company is often said not to be innovative. Several people have always argued that Bill Gates updated the existing products only rather than inventing new ones. Gates also faced criticism that he never allowed competition to build since he was more focused on winning only. When another company seemed to compete with Bill Gates, he never allowed it hence he could buy that company at the initial stage or kill the competition altogether (George, 2010). As a result, Bill Gates never allowed other companies to be innovative in their own way. This idea made him receive criticism from people thus needed to improve on that.
Bill Gates is a focused person. This is maybe a quality that a leader should possess. He has been a focused leader towards his goal till he made everything a success in the Software industry (Singh, 2015). Ideally, a leader should focus on his or her goal to enable success and remain competitive. It is also through his clear thinking that made Gates achieve his dreams of inventing Microsoft. Basically, he had clear thoughts on what he desired to achieve. Therefore, he pursued his goal with great determination as he also wanted to compete with the biggest companies in the world. Besides, Bill Gates is passionate and innovative. His passion towards computers and software is highly recognized (Halsall, 2016). Till today, Gates continues to chase his passion with great energy. He is always willing to learn and generate new products. Gate’s leadership skills incorporated with passion made him attract the best latent till to date since many believed in him. He managed to create a global operating software industry which many companies could not manage.
It is can also be learnt that a leader always has many followers that help in judging the success. Ideally, a leader should have followers who can criticize everything hence, it upon the leader to prove them wrong by being focused and doing the right thing. Gates pursued his dreams of being a programmer by all means. He exerted all his energy on what he loved doing till it became a success (George, 2010). He has also been a humanitarian and a philanthropist which made him a global citizen. He has touched the lives of many people in the world through his big-heartedness a quality that people should embrace.
Lessons learnt From Bill Gates Leadership Qualities
Conclusion
To sum up, Bill’s leadership skills can be of great help to many. His leadership style which is labeled as transformational acts as an example to many entrepreneurs of today who are focused, determined and passionate about their businesses. He also offers a good example of how transformational attributes may help build a successful leader. However, Gates also proves that a person’s human spirit is what makes us exceptional. Besides, the influence of mentors and parents can play a crucial role towards making legends. In fact, his passion and determination made him achieve all he wanted while making him the richest person in the world for many years. Being an innovative person, Gates managed to transform a lot in the software industry that has made him relevant even today. He is one man who can be said to have ruled the world through his leadership skills. Leaders have constantly been seen as essentially different from other individuals. Some of them are ambitious, extroverted and smart. However, Bill Gates leadership traits go beyond these elements that only might be part of his DNA.
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