Leadership Styles and Bill Gates

This assignment provides an in-depth analysis of the leadership style and qualities of Bill Gates. It highlights his participative and consultative nature, his focus on achieving company vision, and his ability to inspire and motivate employees. The assignment also discusses how Bill Gates' leadership style is characterized by a willingness to listen to others, respond to employee queries, and create an open environment for discussion and innovation.

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Reflection: The below mentioned report is a reflective study of the skills that are involved in a
good leader and what are his/her responsibilities to achieve target driven with cost effectiveness.
Moreover it also include how a leader is developed and what motivates them to be so. In
addition to this, it also include the best approaches and models applied by those famous leaders.
Albert Einstein stated that everything must be made in a very simple way but it should
not be simpler. However, it all depends on the thinking capacity of an individual that think that
the leaders and made to lead and followers are made to follow and that came into the mind
because of the relationship between the leadership, management and followers (Kruse, 2013).
Leaders are the people who leads or commands and directs a group of people especially works as
a head in an organization. They are the one who inspires others and motivate them to achieve a
desired goals or objectives. They influence others and make something extraordinary happen
(Galbraith, 2015).
As per my opinion, Bill gates is one of the admiring leader in 21st century. William Bill
Gates is co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corporation. He was born on 28th October, 1955.
He is considered to be one of the top most admirer and leader in today’s generation. He is also
ranked as one of the richest person in America. The contribution and innovativeness of Bill gates
has turned out to be one of the best example today. He dropped out from his university in order
to start his own company which has been successfully introduced and established and well
known to everyone (Boggs, 2011). He was retired from company in 2008 but he created a
demanding and abrasive boss legacy after his retirement. He was able to achieve huge number of
recognition and awards for the skills he had. All the engineers and designers who used to visit
him daily used to say that he often manage to face the challenges so well and he has always been
able to set an example for others. The leadership qualities of Bill Gates are focused, passionate,
clear vision and mission, continuous learner and risk bearer (Covey, 2013).
In addition to this, Bill Gates followed authoritarian leadership style. He stated that he
was liable to take the charge of every activities that are involved in an organization and others
must be aware of it. Other employees and subordinates working in an organization must know
about the authorities that were assigned to them. Later, he knew that this style of leadership was
slowly not able to work well because this style never gave an opportunity to innovative skills.

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This style always created an obstacle in creativity. It was stated that in those days, Bill Gates
required so much control which forced him to sign off all the expenses as well (Gates, 2013).
But despite of this, he was also able to follow other leadership style as well. Later, he
decided to follow transactional leadership style. Transactional leadership style is also commonly
known as managerial leadership. It basically aims on the idea and concept of a transaction that
take place between a leader and his team members. He is a transactional leader who tends to
motivate others and develop positive changes among his followers. He keeps on doing his work
with full dedication and stand with a sound organization vision. The subordinates follows him
and tends to perform task at their best. Likewise, Bill Gates also focuses on reward-punishment
strategy. This strategy state that every employees in the organization must be rewarded and
motivated if he/she performs a good job and on the contrary, every employees must be punished
if he/she fails to do the assigned task (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 2011).
Major criticism
Microsoft was working well but despite of celebrating success, it is more important to
heed the lessons to be learnt from failures. There were many people who were not happy with the
success of Bill Gates and they were trying to pull down the efforts but he was continuously stuck
to his dedication and proved himself. He was aligned with the commitment “The stronger you
stand the bolder you get the faster these negatives wither”. It was later found that IBM made a
contract for Operating system which will combine IBM clone PC’s. But Bill Gates continued to
work and was focused on creating and developing windows. There were lots of hinders and
obstacles that hampered the company but he managed to cover all those issues very well (Manes
& Andrews, 1993).
Bill Gates said “Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic
Competitors and it keeps us on our toes”. It was always a motivation for him to compete
with his competitors like Google and Apple despite of lowering down oneself. He became more
focused towards building more range of products and earning more satisfied customers. He did
not only focused on enhancing the knowledge but also focused on making people understand the
needs of windows (Northouse, 2017).

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Similarly, Bill Gates also stated “Google kicked our butts.” Google was launched in 1998
by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. At the same time, Gates also introduced an innovative search in
1998 known as MSN search. Google, being a well-known company is fast and focused on
accurate results. The search engine of Google stood out to be one of best thing in those days.
Later Nick Scheidies wrote in Income Diary, ‘MSN Search was none-of-the-above’. Even after
this, Gates did not bothered about creating a better search engine. He continued using the
existing search engine but did not made any efforts in creating new search engine that could
compete Google. Despite of having all the necessary resources, Gates did not find focusing on
search engines and he let that opportunity slip from his hand which could make Microsoft stand
in the top today (Shah & Mulla, 2013).
Who motivated Bill Gates?
There is always someone who stands by your side and motivates you to perform a certain
task and achieve success. Similarly, bill gates was also inspired and motivated by Roberts and
his childhood friend Paul Allen.
Bill gates met Paul who was his senior and they became best friends. They has common
interest in computers though they were not similar by nature. Paul was introvert and Bill was
extrovert. They always used to spend time working on computer programs. They also used to
argue over computer programs and claimed who was right and who was wrong. Bill gates later
introduced payroll program with the help of Paul (Brown & Duguid, 2017). Likewise, in 1970,
they both panned to start a business by creating a program called “Traf-o-Data”. It is a computer
program which aims at controlling and monitoring traffic patterns that are involved in satellite. It
costed them $20,000. Then they started to introduce their own company but Bill parents wished
to complete his studies first instead of getting involved in any business. They also wished Gates
to become a lawyer. When it comes to me, I have also faced this problem in my real life when
parents and child have two different opinion about one’s career. My parents also wanted me to
become a doctor which I totally disagreed with because I had no interest. Anyways, later, Bill
and Paul moved to different city and worked separately. But they both were able to create an
opportunity in the field of computer so well. Paul inspired Bill to work for computer programs in
his early childhood. Then, later they both met Ed Roberts who asked both of them to write about
software program for his company. They both gave a test together and they worked as per the

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instruction. Later, they both were hired and soon they were able to find Microsoft together
(Pandey, 2017). In 1983, Paul suffered from cancer and resigned from the company but he
always made a footprint on Bill’s entire life.
Leadership style followed by Bill Gates
Bill Gates has ranked himself by creating a direction for other employees in a company.
He always had a specific vision in his mind which helped him to move in particular direction and
achieve success. He had a vision “A computer on every desk and in every home”. For it, he
started working hard those times when personal computers were rare in use. He always had a
belief that he can do something very good and was always committed towards his goal. This
proved him to be a transformational leader. He always had faith on his values that were created
by him and that pushed him to achieve the committed goal. He has proved himself to be business
icon and everyone’s desire to win such position. He has successfully made a remarkable vision in
today’s generation which made him a different leader from all the other leaders. He not only
wanted to make such company which will impact the world rather than he focused on “driving
the bus” which he did (Gilliard, 2017).
Bill Gates is also directive in nature because he always expect his subordinate to get what
he wants. He always focused that his main role in the company is to achieve the company’s
vision at any cost. He never wanted to get things done in private because he had a belief that if
things are done in private, it can never be resolved. Every activities must be done in open so that
one must know about the changes that take place in the market (Al-Asfour & Lettau, 2014).
He is also participative and consultative in nature. He refuses to seek advises form others
and makes his own advices. He also used to respond to all the emails of the employees within 24
hours and get their queries resolved at time. Gates also participated in “Think Week” which gave
Gates an opportunity to read all the 100 documents written by his employees about the issues of
the company (Gera, 2015). This made him to earn trust and build healthy relationships with his
employees. He always used to care about his employees and took their advices. The employees
working in his organization are always free to express their ideas and advices which were heard
by Bill (Bel, 2010).

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As a result, it can be concluded that some people are predisposed from their childhood
from the very early stage so that they can either stand as a leader. This is just a way how a person
would be attracted in a very natural way either by being a leader. Bill Gates was also inspired
and motivated by Paul and Robert which made him become a successful leader today. Moreover,
a leader can be any person who motivates other people and the title may not be match according
the particular management position.

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References
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workforce. Journal of Leadership, Accountability and Ethics, 11(2), p.58.
Bel, R. (2010). Leadership and innovation: Learning from the best. Global business and
organizational excellence, 29(2), 47-60.
Boggs, G. R. (2011). The American community college: From access to success. About Campus,
16(2), 2-10.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2017). The Social Life of Information: Updated, with a New Preface.
Harvard Business Review Press.
Covey, S. R. (2013). The 7 habits of highly effective people: Powerful lessons in personal
change. Simon and Schuster.
Galbraith, J. K. (2015). The new industrial state. Princeton University Press.
Gates, B. (2013). Bill Gates: My plan to fix the world’s biggest problems. The Wall Street
Journal.
Gera, D. (2015). Bill gates leadership style. Retrieved from:
https://www.slideshare.net/Dinesh_gera/bill-gates-leadership-style
Gilliard, M. (2017). Bill Gates Leadership Style. Retrieved from: https://leadership-and-
development.com/bill-gates-leadership-style/
Kruse, K. (2013). What is leadership. Forbes Magazine, 3.
Manes, S., & Andrews, P. (1993). Gates: How Microsoft's mogul reinvented an industry-and
made himself the richest man in America. Simon & Schuster.
Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (2011). The wise leader. Harvard business review, 89(5), pp.58-67.
Northouse, P.G. (2017). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Sage Publications.
Pandey, B. (2017). Leadership Style of Bill Gates. Retrieved from:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/134042780/Leadership-Style-of-Bill-Gates

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Shah, T. & Mulla, Z.R. (2013). Leader motives, impression management, and charisma: A
comparison of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Management and Labor Studies, 38(3), pp.155-
184.