Leadership and Team Management Qualities of Bill Gates

This report provides an overview of one of the most famous business leaders, Bill Gates to analyse his leadership and team management skills through the findings gathered from external online sources and media.

Student Name
Institutional Affiliation(S)
leadership and team management
Bill Gates

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Findings......................................................................................................................................2
Leadership and team management qualities of Bill gates......................................................3
Analysis......................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion/Summary.................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Organisations’ are increasingly considering leadership and team management
investments to remain competitive in business environment. Over last few decades, many
leaders and organisation have experienced critical changes in workplace like globalisation,
technological advancements, organisation structure and changes due to dynamic of career.
Leader is a person who creates team, manages, organises and motivates them to perform well
in the organisation (Sohmen, 2013). This report aims at providing an overview of one of the
most famous business leaders, Bill Gates to analyse his leadership and team management
skills through the findings gathered from external online sources and media. Bill gates is
recognised as an inspirational and charismatic leader of 21st century and has been reported as
richest American by a renowned magazine, Forbes. From early childhood, Gates has been
conferred with many awards including National Medal of Technology and Innovation and
Bower Award for Business Leadership along with various others (Biography.com Editors,
2019). The personal programming language created by him became central success for one of
the most renowned company, Microsoft Windows. There are many fascinating things that
makes Gates one of the most preferred leaders which will be discussed further in this report
along with discussing theories and models relevant to Gates.
Findings
Bill Gates, according to Silva (2014), is a great teacher of his people and shows great
passion and love for his work. He spends significant time appreciating people along with
communicating them. Gates is been famous for hiring best individuals and forming great
teams who represents his company and thus Microsoft is often called as knowledge company.
He is never afraid of accepting his mistakes and tries to learn out of them. From very

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beginning, he established a proprietary position in his company and protects his position in
every possible manner. Due to this, Microsoft was once accused by US government for
enabling monopoly actions. However, Gates management style revealed deep social
responsibility and consciousness as he soon implemented ways through which issue could be
sorted in best possible manner (Entrepreneur Media Inc. , 2019).
Born on 28 October, 1955, Bill Gates early childhood findings discloses that he was
always fascinated by technology and computers and thus used to spent most of his time in
learning various way about computer programming. Gates believed that success can never be
achieved overnight and as Mukherjee (2016) says, “A real entrepreneur is a person who
generally motivated by intrinsic psychological and also economic rewards” (p. 26), Gates
possessed every feature that requires to be present in an entrepreneur. Even, the setting up of
his company and initialising early processes made Gates spend considerable time and effort
along with investing long hours of hard work that made him understand his targeted
audience. This showed effective team management style whereby he developed a product that
spoke his business.
Leadership and team management qualities of Bill gates
Vision: Gates is a man with strong visionary power that inspired him to pursue an innovative
and creative graphical interphase, also known as Microsoft Software. As per media news and
development seen in his company, Gates always knew that he wanted to create more than a
single product. For the same, he formed a team of talented people who knew how to develop
products according to his instructions and hence was able to create a successful product line.
Passion: Gates passion for developing a computer software is known to the world. Even after
so many successful years, Gates still pursue his passion with vigour. His hunger for
innovation and perfection keeps him in top list of business leaders. Thus, his leadership style,

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mixed with passion helped him grow in constant manner and attracting every talent who
believes in Gates leadership techniques (Business Alligators, 2017).
Focus: This is one quality that requires to be present within every leader as focus is the
paramount for achieving goals and objectives. Gates always remained focused on his work
along with asking his followers to focus upon something specific that can make them
successful in their expert area. Although he got many offers in his early years to move into
some significant ventures, due to his strong determination he chose to focus upon being the
best in what he desired.
Clear thinking: This quality is very significant for leaders as clear thought always help
person to focus on what they want to achieve more clearly. Gates dream to pursue his
objective with determination made him considerate for competing with companies that never
believed in him (Sattar, 2017).
Learning and growing: After achieving tremendous success, Gates never showed a sign of
stoppage and always kept on exploring something new while seeking advice from other
strong referral powers like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. Neither he showed pride in him and
always highlighted keen efforts to improve his communicational skills along with public
speaking (Biography.com Editors, 2019).
Caring nature: Gates showed humanitarianism qualities as he likes to donate as much as
possible to charitable trusts and NGOs. The kindness and empathy shown by Gates causes
him to become of the most inspirational and preferred leader. He is a kind of leader who not
only works for achieving his goals, but also motivates and inspires his team to grow
efficiently (Hedayati, 2014).
Knowledge: Gates possessed some exceptional knowledge related to computers and
programming knowledge. At a very tender age of thirteen, he started working for his dreams

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and excelled the field. Since he knew that he had potential to create a new product for this
world, he spent three years in university for learning computer programmes.
Authoritative: Gates had assertive nature which he admitted himself also. Various times he
has shown his bad temper in board meetings and in front of his team members. He tries to
foster the environment with constructive criticism, therefore, enables and encourages all his
team members for considering effective actions whenever they face any technical issue.
Competitive: Gates is often defined as a competitive leader possessing unique and effective
team management style. He never lags behind in his desire and always have a close look at
his business competitors. Money act as a motivator for him and his love towards the nation
retains and puts in more interest to give America a competitive edge (Sakthikumaar &
Kiruthika , 2014).
Analysis
An effective, inspirational and successful team leader is known for his/her virtuous,
genuine and charismatic leadership style like that of Bill Gates which makes him one of the
most preferred leaders. Gates shows traits of transformational leader along with well-
organized team leader. He has great visionary power and thus was able to bring successful
changes in Microsoft. According to Uzohue, Yaya & Akintayo (2016), “Good leaders are
born, not made” (p. 19). Similarly, traits theory signifies that great leaders have few common
characteristics which makes them remain effective. Trait approach can be applied to Gates
after finding his leadership and team management traits (Astrum People, 2019).
Looking upon Gates leadership style, he looks more autocratic, task-oriented,
transformational and delegative type. According to Fielder’s model, two types of leaders who
leads the industry are relation-oriented and task-oriented leaders. Gates shows more task
oriented as per his determination and hard work seen for developing Microsoft. He expected

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his team members to work in dedicated manner as he believed that work is more significant
than building relationships for achieving goals for the company. Gates autocratic leadership
style can also be displayed in the above findings as he used to control every element required
for his company to grow. The team management style adopted by Gates reveals that he liked
to take every decision by himself and over-ruled decisions made by board of directors. In
fact, he never took orders from the others and used to delegate works to his co-workers and
thus formed a capable team of managers whom he could delegate jobs as per the company
requirements (Business Alligators, 2017).
Managing teams was never difficult for Gates and enjoyed his position because he
uses Rational Persuasion while dealing with his team members present in higher posts of the
organisation. Gates powers influenced him to enjoy rewards and he uses to influence others
by rewarding them for performing expectedly. His management technique, therefore includes
an important aspect called reward management for which he instilled in his company a
systematic appraisal and rewarding activities that motivated his employees. From leaders’
centric approach, Gates skills shows that he is very strong leader comprising unique skills
required for effective team leaders who undertakes planning, communication, motivation and
teamwork spirits (Entrepreneur Media Inc. , 2019).
Contingency theory in team management focuses on a particular element that is
related to the workplace environment thereby determining best leadership style that needs to
be adopted. On the other hand, situational theory proposes to choose best action course
according to the situation or circumstances. Contingency theory can prove more applicable in
Gates as he displayed task-oriented approach and focused more on completion of his tasks.
After deciding upon the choice of management skills, person’s leadership can be categorised
into democratic, autocratic or laissez-faires styles (Khan, et al., 2015). Gates displayed more
of an autocratic leadership style as he established chain of commands within his organisation

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to direct his team members for a specific goal. He usually directed his people and said what is
needed to be done rather giving them freedom to work as per their own thoughts.
The objectives of transactional leader are to ensure any barrier between goal
achievement is eliminated to attain stated goals and thus they are bound to follow the system
of punishments and rewards. On contrary, transformational leaders are the ones who not only
looks at day to day processes, but also care for upcoming years and therefore looks for
crafting new and enhanced strategies that can enrich company according to future trend
(Uzohue, Yaya, & Akintayo, 2016). Gates displayed a mixed characteristic where sometimes
he proved to be transactional while other times he looked more like a transformational leader.
During his initial years at Microsoft, he looked more like a transactional leader and focused
on day to day operations while managing his team to direct them constantly. However, with
time he realised significance behind working in teams and strategizing according to changing
business requirements which instigated transformational approach in his leadership style.
The analysis revealed some exceptional leadership qualities of Gates, but his
leadership also has few limitations to it. Gates has always been found dominating and
directing work to his team members that hindered their ability to follow up with him. His
perfectionist nature kept pressure boiling within Microsoft’s management systems and many
employees became uncomfortable due to this attitude which made Gates unpopular among
them. Although Gates show transformational and charismatic leadership style, his
relationship with his teammates could have improved better along with enhancing his team
management skills (Sattar, 2017). Again, the litigations suffered by Microsoft due to playing
market monopoly made company loss several cases that made Gates management techniques
a questionable one. Although Microsoft is a great company, there had been many criticisms
in the past which says that the company is non-innovative and always keep on trying to
modify whatever is present in the market. Other than this, Gates has been accused of not

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letting competition in market and to win, he always killed the competition in early stages or
would purchase the rivalry company thereby showing monopolistic nature (Entrepreneur
Media Inc. , 2019).
Conclusion/Summary
The above paper identified that leadership is a personal relationship within which an
individual supervises, controls and directs others to perform a common task. Leadership
seems to be a person’s character through which he/she aligns team members to attain a
common shared goal along with empowering them to actions for achieving desired goal. The
above paper also reveals that team management is a relationship between teams and
organisations in which teams works within prescribed roles and organisational structure
which is manged by a team leader. The findings of Gates leadership qualities show that he
poses charismatic and visionary trait along with many others that is required by a person to
become an efficient team leader. The review of Gates execution and strategy like autocratic
to transactional and then getting transformational leadership style provides inspiration for
others that makes him one of the most preferred leaders. His shift in mindset according to
business requirements had made many people admire him along with being motivated to
chose his style for gaining success effectually. Although Bill Gates poses few negative
qualities, his mindset and skills makes him most influential leaders in 21st century.

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References
Astrum People. (2019). Bill Gates Biography: Success Story of Microsoft Co-Founder.
Retrieved from https://astrumpeople.com/bill-gates-biography/
Biography.com Editors. (2019). Bill Gates Biography. Retrieved from
https://www.biography.com/people/bill-gates-9307520
Business Alligators. (2017). 11 Personality Traits of Bill Gates. Retrieved from
https://www.businessalligators.com/bill-gates-personality-traits/
Entrepreneur Media Inc. . (2019). Bill Gates. Retrieved from
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197526
Hedayati, F. (2014). Leadership qualities of Bill Gates. Retrieved from
http://www.centerforworklife.com/leadership-qualities-bill-gates/
Khan, M. S., Khan, I., Qureshi, Q. A., Ismail, H. M., Rauf, H., Latif, A., & Tahir, M. (2015).
The Styles of Leadership: A Critical Review. Public Policy and Administration
Research, 05(03), 87-92.
Mukherjee, K. (2016). The Psychology of the Successful Entrepreneur. International Journal
of Advanced Engineering and Management, 01(01), 25-32.
Sakthikumaar, J., & Kiruthika , P. (2014). Leadership: Meaning and Purpose. Online
International Interdisciplinary Research Journal, 4, 669-678.
Sattar, S. B. (2017). Leadership Qualities, Skills and Style of Bill Gates. Retrieved from
http://www.gotabout.info/leadership-qualities-skills-style-of-bill-gates/

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Silva, A. (2014). What can we learn from great business leaders? Journal of Leadership
Studies, 08(03), 52-57.
Sohmen, V. S. (2013). Leadership and Teamwork: Two Sides of the Same Coin. Journal of
IT and Economic Development, 04(02), 1-18.
Uzohue, C. E., Yaya, J. A., & Akintayo, O. A. (2016). A Review of Leadership Theories,
Principles, Styles and their Relevance to Management of Health Science Libraries in
Nigeria. Journal of Educational Leadership and Policy, 01(01), 17-26.