21st Century Leaders

This article discusses the leadership styles of Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Richard Branson in the 21st century. It explores the challenges faced by leaders in the modern business world and offers valuable lessons for success.

Running head: 21st CENTURY LEADERS
21ST CENTURY LEADERS
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

121ST CENTURY LEADERS
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Discussion..................................................................................................................................2
The new era and the changes.................................................................................................2
Bill Gates and his leadership style.........................................................................................2
Warren Buffet and is leadership style....................................................................................3
Richard Branson and his leadership style..............................................................................4
Lessons learnt.........................................................................................................................5
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6

221ST CENTURY LEADERS
Introduction
…..
Discussion
The new era and the changes
There is nothing in this world that remains the same, particularly in the business
world. Along with the changes and development in society, the challenges in regard to
workplaces do change and develop continuously. The twenty-first century was long been
predicted to be bringing a highly competitive landscape. The practitioners and the scholars
argued that the leaders and organisational managers have to develop and make use of unique
potentials and capabilities for being successful strategic leaders in such a challenging
competitive environment (Day et al., 2014). As more number of workers are aging out of the
current job market, skilled talents are becoming highly scarce. For the managers who attract
the skilled workers to the company or retain the existing one and motivate the ones that they
already have, the human leadership plays a key role, despite of the continuous advance of
automation and digitalization. Some of the significant leaders of 21st century including
Warren buffet, Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates (Bishop and Green 2015). Their contribution
in the business and the world as a whole is significant and immense.
Bill Gates and his leadership style
The rise of Bill Gates, the owner of Microsoft has proved that he is a born
conundrum. Although no one can claim for sure that he was a born leader, but his life works
depicts a pattern of actions that showcase how he has become a legend among all the
historical business leaders. He is at present listed as the richest man in the world. “Life
always turns to be exciting when one follows the road that is less travelled by” (Brown and

321ST CENTURY LEADERS
Duguid 2017). People usually think that a bird in hand is worth the two in the bush but, in
fact, it is not actually correct, at least not always. Bill Gates pursued what he loved and was
passionate about. He was always fascinated by the computers and hence, chose to excel in the
same. As per him, “If you have to work, make sure it is something you truly love doing.”
Being a leader he worked tirelessly in order to achieve what he wanted. He knew that success
does not happen overnight and that, it will be the sum of lots of hard work. According to Pech
(2015), “Gates never ever let the team of Microsoft become complacent, even when they held
the market leaders position and were achieving multibillion dollar revenues”. He was
Harvard drop out and he credits a significant part of his success to Warren Buffet, an investor
and businessman, whom Bill Gates considers as his mentor. During an interview with the
CBC news channel, Bill Gates credited Warren Buffet saying that he has taught him the way
of dealing with tough situations and the ways of thinking about long-terms business plan.
Warren Buffet and is leadership style
Warren Buffet is a highly influential leader (Spring and Oswald 2018). At the age of
11 years, he started selling newspaper and is now 84 years old with no intention to retire.
Like, Bill Gates, he is also very passionate about his job and used to love whatever he do. As
per him, this passion gives a competitive edge in a business. Furthermore, he has also focused
on the importance of effective communication throughout the business. He himself was
terrified of public speaking once and even enrolled in a course in order to overcome this
public speaking fear. Furthermore, one of the other lesson that people learn from his
leadership is that of choosing the business associated wisely before engaging with them as he
claimed that “It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose
behaviour is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction”. He himself was able to spot
the talented and successful people and made use of few basic skills of networking for keeping
up the contact and being inspired by their growth and success. With the same, he always

421ST CENTURY LEADERS
looks proactively for the opportunities and takes each and every chance that he gets in order
to create a new viable company.
Richard Branson and his leadership style
Furthermore, the third effective leader of 21st century in the list is Richard Barnson,
the founder of Virgin group. He understand the vitality of mentorship to a great extent and
asked the British airline entrepreneur named Sir Freddie Laker for his guidance at the time of
his struggle to get the Virgin Atlantic airlines off the ground. He never afraid to learn from
falling. Once in one of the British newspaper named ‘The Sun’, he wrote “It’s always good to
have a helping hand at the start. I wouldn’t have got anywhere in the airline industry without
the mentorship of Sir Freddie Laker” (Pultarova 2015) Hence, he credits a significant part of
his success to Sir Freddie Laker. He believed that the first step in finding a great mentor is to
admit that one can benefit from a mentor. Having ego, parental pride and nervous energy are
the things that resist individuals from trying and facing challenges passionately. They are the
enemy of success and therefore, in order to get success in life, one must leave the hands of
ego and pride. Richard Branson is a leader who always puts the interest of his employees
first. One of the most significant things that make him an effective and fantastic leaders is
that he always has a strong situational and contingency leadership skills. He always looks
proactively for the opportunities and takes each and every chance that he gets in order to
create a new viable company. With the same, it is also to note that Branson is also a
transformational leader. He very easily adapt to the changes that exists and need to
incorporate in the organisational cultures. One of the key nature of Branson that makes him a
transformational leader is the fact that he is able to rise in the times of distress and the major
changes (Lamb and Branson 2015). Such kind of leadership also reflects social values. And
since Richard’s company Virgin is a focused on growth and adaptability to change, the
transformational leadership style works the best.

521ST CENTURY LEADERS
Lessons learnt
Being an organisational leader, one should always be able to adapt to all the
technology related advancements as well as the various economic forces which have a direct
impact on the team. The challenges faced by the organisational leaders in the 21st century
would continue to be the pace of global change as well as the rate at which technology related
changes take place. These two are a very cruelly matched pair which would challenge the
judgement and the decision making process of any leader (Yates and de Oliveira 2016). This
is due to the fact that they both notably impact the scalability of a company, along with the
time frame to scale as well as the value that it gives and its growth and development
spectrum.” “The greatest and the latest technological tools from few years ago have now
become completely obsolete. Today’s business leaders might find it very difficult for
adjusting in this scenario.” However, staying ahead of the curve simply means making use of
all the gadgets for one’s advantage. As per Corodeanu (2015), the Generation Y (the
generation that is born in 1980s and 1990s) is generally very tech-savvy, particularly with the
social media. Their presence is also increasing in the contemporary workplace. Until and
unless proper security controls and administrative control are in the place, the younger
workers could help in ensuring that the business is staying current. According to Fallows
(2016), “The more experienced leader may never feel comfortable with technology. If you're
not, allow your younger staff to help lead your company into a more technology-friendly
direction”. Furthermore, it is also to note that the internet today has opened up the doors for
the global business opportunities in several different industries. On one hand, the rapidly
increasing global economy has undoubtedly given the business today the opportunities to
enter into the earlier untapped markets and on the other hand, it also has made compulsory
for the organisational leaders to become more conscious and aware of all the happenings in
those markets. As said by Charan (2017), “You're impacted by the globe, whether you're an

621ST CENTURY LEADERS
individual consumer, a business owner or a Fortune 500 executive. What happens
everywhere else affects you.” As more number of workers are aging out of the current job
market, skilled talents are becoming highly scarce. For the managers who attract the skilled
workers to the company or retain the existing one and motivate the ones that they already
have, the human leadership plays a key role, despite of the continuous advance of automation
and digitalization.
Conclusion
Hence, from the above analysis it is clear that success does not come knocking our
doors. The life story of these 21st century leaders depicts that the “key secret for overcoming
the challenges of 21st century is too anticipate these challenges to the point that the inherent
complexity of these challenges are minimised to a significant level. It simply means that the
organisational leaders should get ahead of all the power curved instead of looking at it from
the low ground, which is something that most of the organisational leaders delay until and
unless it is too late.” The future leaders require to think ahead regarding their successors and
how they would be groomed for the success in life. It is of no surprise to learn that it is
because of the leaders of successful companies who have predicted the models in place for
their encouraging and skilled talent for long term. With the same, they also place significant
emphasis on the development of skills within the organisation.

721ST CENTURY LEADERS
References:
Bishop, M., & Green, M. (2015). Philanthrocapitalism rising. Society, 52(6), 541-548.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2017). The social life of information: Updated, with a new
preface. Harvard Business Review Press.
Charan, R., 2017. What the CEO Wants You to Know, Expanded and Updated: How Your
Company Really Works. Currency.
Corodeanu, D.T.A., 2015. Consumer's Protection from the Generation Y's Perspective. A
Research Based on Scenarios. Procedia Economics and Finance, 20, pp.8-18.

821ST CENTURY LEADERS
Day, D.V., Fleenor, J.W., Atwater, L.E., Sturm, R.E. and McKee, R.A., 2014. Advances in
leader and leadership development: A review of 25 years of research and theory. The
leadership quarterly, 25(1), pp.63-82.
Fallows, J., 2016. How America Is Putting Itself Back Together Most people in the US
believe their country is going to hell. But they’re wrong. What a three-year journey by single-
engine plane reveals about reinvention and renewal. The Atlantic, March 2016. Atlantic.
Lamb, J. and Branson, C.M., 2015. Educational change leadership through a new zonal
theory lens: Using mathematics curriculum change as the example. Policy Futures in
Education, 13(8), pp.1010-1026.
Pech, R.M., 2015. Achieving the innovative edge in technology, engineering design, and
entrepreneurship. Journal of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 5(1), p.6.
Pultarova, T., 2015. Telecommunications-space tycoons go head to head over mega satellite
network [news briefing]. Engineering & Technology, 10(2), pp.20-20.
Spring, Ú.O. and Oswald, S.E.S. eds., 2018. Risks, Violence, Security and Peace in Latin
America: 40 Years of the Latin American Council of Peace Research (CLAIP) (Vol. 24).
Springer.
Yates, J.F. and de Oliveira, S., 2016. Culture and decision making. Organizational Behavior
and Human Decision Processes, 136, pp.106-118.