Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Bill Gates-Transformational Leader



Bill Gates is a businessman investor and computer programmer. He is the co-founder of the Microsoft, which is the world’s largest PC software company. Gates has held various positions in the Microsoft Corporation i.e. chairman, CEO, and chief software architect. He stepped down as CEO in 2000 and created the position of chief software officer. Microsoft brought the personal computer revolution making gates one of the wealthiest people. Through his career in the Microsoft Corporation, Bill gates practiced transformational leadership helping the corporation to stand out as one of the best personal computer software company in the world (Gates).
            Transformational leadership is a type of leadership style where the leader causes a change in individual and social systems (Hawkins). Bill Gates used idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individual consideration to manage the Microsoft Corporation. This paper will seek to analyze the transformational approach that bill Gates practiced.
Idealized influence.
            Bill Gates used idealized influence on his followers thereby gaining trust, loyalty and respect from the followers; he did this through the application of charismatic vision and behavior. He is known to have created the state of idealized influence by articulating the vision of Microsoft to the staff and explaining how the vision was to be attained in an appealing manner. He leads by example and Acts confidently and optimistically. From laying down the rules and following them, bill gates shared the risks with his followers. Microsoft is considered to one of the best corporations to work in this is because he let the staff have shares in the company. By giving the employees generous stock options, Gates made the employees millionaires in the process.
            Gates showed a high level of ethical and moral conduct as a leader of the Microsoft Company. This was demonstrated by the way he handled the staff in a personalized way i.e. by writing employees a thank you notes. His actions emphasized values of transformational leadership; he showed that every employee was outstanding in his capacity by thanking them for every action that they did.
Inspirational motivation
            As a leader of the Microsoft Company, bill gates inspired his followers towards new idea and goals. He did this by articulating a clear and appealing view of the future through his quotes. Gates has several inspirational quotes that help his followers to have a clear picture of the future developments in the software business. For instance, he quoted thatsuccess is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”. Here he is motivating the business people not to embrace know that failure is part of winning, and those successful should not believe that they can’t fail at one time in their businesses.
            Gates is known to encourage followers to integrate and become part of the organizational culture and environment. He has been quoted to sayif you can’t make it good, at least make it look good." This quote motivates his followers not to be lazy but try to do the best in everything that they assigned to do. He developed a shared vision in both economic and ideological terms in a manner that his followers would see a meaning in their work. He appreciated even the lazy people by encouraging them. For example, he is quoted to say that he would choose a lazy person to do a job because the lazy person would find an easy way of doing the job.
Intellectual stimulation.
            Bill Gates use transformational leadership to bring change through intellectual stimulation that aims at a self-reflective change of values and beliefs. He developed a climate of intellectual stimulation and nurtured it within the organization. He does this by making his followers think in rational ways and be both creative and innovative. The employees of the Microsoft Corporation are encouraged to come up with new ideas that will help the company to grow. This led to the staff coming up with new applications that were adopted by the Corporation.
            Several Microsoft windows apps created by the corporation are as a result of ideas adopted by the staff of the organization. This intellectual stimulation has earned bill gates as one of the leaders practicing transformational leadership.
Individual consideration.
            Bill gatesapproach in transformational leadership includes individual consideration i.e. he treats every follower as an individual rather than as an employee, he takes into consideration every individual’s talents and levels of knowledge, hence deciding on what best suits the individual. This leads to the attainment of high results from the individual.
            Gates is known to have interacted with the employees on a personal level i.e. by writing thank you notes whenever an individual did him a favor. He made private notes of congratulations to the employees to boost their self-confidence. Microsoft Corporation also is voted to be the best company to work in; this is because gates ensured that there is a fair distribution of the workload.
Conclusion.
            Transformational leadership is necessary to change the way in which organizational leadership is to be practiced. In transformational leadership, the leader identifies the need for change, creates a vision to guide the change through inspiration, and he executes the change with the commitment of the followers. Bill gates is a business entrepreneur who is attributed to having practiced transformational leadership during his time as the CEO of the Microsoft Corporation. The success of Microsoft as the leading company in the provision of the software made gates one of the wealthiest people in the world as listed by Forbes. This is due to his genius practice of transformation leadership.










                                                            References

            Gates, Bill, and Lisa Rogak. Impatient optimist: Bill Gates in his own words. Hardie Grant, 2012.
            Hawkins, Peter. Leadership team coaching developing collective transformational leadership. Kogan Page, 2011.

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