Leadership in Business

This article discusses the leadership skills of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and co-founder of Facebook. It analyzes his leadership qualities using the three-skill model and leadership as a problem-solver. The article recommends that Zuckerberg become more charismatic and influential to deal with the challenges faced by Facebook.

Leadership in Business 0
Title: Leadership in Business
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Leadership in Business 1
A Leader & his Leadership
One leader of the current times, who has carved a niche for itself in very less time due
to his effective leadership skills, is the CEO and the co-founder of one of the most popular
social networking sites, Facebook, is Mark Zuckerberg. The reason why this college dropout
is an avid leader because the way he has handled his supporters and critics perfectly and has
sailed through the various hurdles to build a company whose worth is more than $130 billion.
Mark Zuckerberg built a strong business through his out of the box thinking and trying to
create a unique business. All these traits along with the effective leadership qualities help him
to become a leader, who is very influential and powerful (Ciulla, 2016). The main reason to
select Mark Zuckerberg as the leader of today is because he did something conventional
which was difficult to achieve, but he followed his vision of creating a more connected world
and worked as a true leader to achieve this goal (Kouzes, 2010).
Critical Analysis of the Leader
Each leader has a different approach to conducting his duties from a different
perspective. The skills and the attributes which these leaders require to accomplish their set
goals involves the correct implementation of the leadership qualities. Leadership should be
mistaken with controlling and a leader should know when to lead and when to step aside.
Mark Zuckerberg is a leader who has built the most popular social networking site in the last
decade. For analyzing his leadership attribute the skill based approach by Katz, that is the
three-skill model will be most appropriate (Collinson, Smolović Jones and Grint, 2017).
According to Katz three-skill model, the main focus is drawn towards the three skills
of the leader that are very important for appropriate administration (Katz, 2014). The role of
the leader or the administrator has been defined as the person who directs the other people to
perform their activities and have set objectives for the business that has to be attained by the

Leadership in Business 2
efforts of other people. The three-skill model covers the skill that includes technical skill,
human skill, and conceptual skill. A successful leadership is based on these three skills that
every leader should know how to implement effectively (Hopkins and O’Neil, 2015).
Mark Zuckerberg belongs to the technical field and thus it is very important for him to
have adequate knowledge about the different techniques, methods, and processes. The
utilization of the different techniques so as to accomplish the business objective requires
leadership skills. Mark Zuckerberg wanted to bring the world closer and this requires easily
accessible networks. Mark Zuckerberg created a computer communication system at the age
of 12, and when he realized his true potential and passion that was to create a social
networking site that connects the world easily, then he quit his college and started working on
his dream (Kiley, 2018). At the age of 20, he launched Facebook and this was due to the
continuous improvement of his technical skills and used the latest technologies and process to
connect this world. Before, launching Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg initially launched
Facemash in the year 2003 and after identifying some issues with it, he worked on the needed
changes and used effective leadership to support and encourage his team to bring the
necessary technical changes that were needed in the project (Grint, 2010).
The next skill of the three-skill model is the human skills. According to the human
skill, a leader should have the abilities to work in collaboration with the other group members
(Searle and Hanrahan, 2011). Mark Zuckerberg is a co-founder of Facebook and the other
partner of it is Eduardo Saverin. There were some other people too who were involved with
the making of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg has excellent human skills as he stood by his team
during thick and thin, and also understood the perception of each team member. He was only
20 when he launched Facebook. At such an early age, he was able to understand the
perception of its team members. Mark Zuckerberg has time and again understood the
perceptions of its people and have successfully utilized his understanding that displayed a

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strong leadership trait that is important for overall management of the business. Mark
Zuckerberg has displayed the third trait of human skill that is to communicate effectively. He
had a very clear vision and that was to connect and bring the world closer. The clarity of his
thought helped him in showcasing his vision strongly and clearly and thus he possessed a
strong human skill.
From the Three-skill model, Mark Zuckerberg possesses the two qualities that are
technical and human skills. The third skill that is the conceptual skill that looks at an
organization as a whole and for this it is very important to understand the individual business
and the industry. Mark Zuckerberg is majorly responsible for the evolution of social
networking sites. Though, there were some social networking sites that exist before, but the
type of prominence and success which Facebook received was incomparable. Mark
Zuckerberg exhibited excellent supervision traits that helped the organization reach high
levels. Mark Zuckerberg has excellent equanimity skills that helped him deal with his critics
calmly and also helped him in facing problems in a more logical manner (Smolovic-Jones
and Grint, 2013).
The other concept that will help in analyzing the leadership qualities of Mark
Zuckerberg is “Leadership as a Problem-solver”. The external environment that surrounds
each organization has become increasing very difficult for the leaders to manage and handle.
The turbulence that is created by these external environments, affects the working of the
organization. Thus, for a leader to be a problem solver it is very important. Mark Zuckerberg
has faced some huge problems in the last 14 years, but he has handled them very
impressively by displaying his leadership qualities to handle different challenges. For
example, the latest crisis that the organization is facing due to the data security and the
involvement of the lawmakers have created a number of issues for Mark Zuckerberg, but he

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handled all such problems very logically and like a problem solver he is exhibiting his
different leadership skills to reduce maximum damage (Somers, 2011).
Thus, from both the concept that is the three-skill model and leadership is a problem
solver, this can be concluded that Mark Zuckerberg is an excellent leader who has faced
numerous challenges and has worked as a problem solver to manage the situation effectively.
Though, he is a problem solver, but in the recent times the shares of Facebook have gone
rapidly down and this is a very big cause of concern (Tobak, 2012). Thus, Mark Zuckerberg
has to work on his conceptual skills of leadership. Though, with the changing times Mark
Zuckerberg has evolved his leadership qualities, but with the new emerging issues, he has to
change his approaches. Leaders have to bring a balance between the quantifiable and
qualitative outcomes, as a true leader focuses on the overall development rather than just
profits for the organization. According to Mumford et al., in the process of solving complex
problems a leader who is a problem solver is involved in many different issues and
circumstances that help in building better leadership attributes.
Recommendations to My Leader
Though, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the influential people in the entire world, as he
has brought the world closer through his invention Facebook, but there are some
recommendations that will help him to become even a better leader with the changing times.
Mark Zuckerberg should become more charismatic and for this, he has to become more
vibrant as a person. Being charismatic is a gift, a person is more capable of building an
emotional connection with the people. This type of leadership also helps in dealing with the
issues associated with the social and political environment. With the evolution of the social
networking site, there are a number of external factors that are affecting Facebook. For this
purpose, it is important for Mark Zuckerberg to add charisma more into his personality. A

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charismatic leader creates a lot of followers for himself and this helps in building the loyalty
of the customers towards the organization. Mark Zuckerberg has to build a new dominance
due to the emerging competition from the other new social networking sites. The dominance
is one of the traits of charismatic leaders and dominance does not mean overly bossy, but it
means to have a control of the charge in an appropriate manner. Mark Zuckerberg has to
build dominance over the various issues and have to intimidate to control the various current
issues that he is facing. Mark Zuckerberg is an influential person and influencing people is
another trait of a charismatic person. But, influencing people require various new approaches
that have to be distinctive for different people. Mark Zuckerberg has received immense
support from all around the world, but it is also very important for people to like him and
idolize him so, for that purpose he has to influence people and along with it he should display
massive self-confidence, all these leadership traits help the leader to deal with the unexpected
problems that arise time and again, due to internal and external business factors (Mumford,
2010).

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References
Ciulla, J. (2016). ‘Searching for Mandela: The insights of biographical research’. Leadership,
12(2), pp.97-186.
Collinson, D., Smolović Jones, O. and Grint, K. (2017). “‘No More Heroes’: Critical
Perspectives on Leadership Romanticism”,. Organization Studies, 1(1), pp.1-23.
Grint, K. (2010). ‘Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: the role of leadership’. The New
Public Leadership Challenge, 1(1), p.169.
Hopkins, M. and O’Neil, D. (2015). ‘Authentic leadership: application to women
leaders’. Frontiers in psychology, 1(6), p.959.
Katz, R. (2014). ‘Skills of an effective administrator’. Harvard Business Review, 52(5),
pp.90–102.
Kiley, D. (2018). Former Employees Talk About What Makes Elon Musk Tick. [online]
Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkiley5/2016/07/14/former-
employees-talk-about-what-makes-elon-musk-tick/ [Accessed 7 Nov. 2018].
Kouzes, J. (2010). The Truth About Leadership: The Nofads, Heart-of-the-matter Facts That
You Need to Know, San Francisco. Jossey- Bass., 1(1), pp.14-30.
Mumford, M. (2010). Leadership skills for a changing world: solving complex
problems’. The Leadership Quarterly, 11(1), pp.11-35.
Searle, G. and Hanrahan, S. (2011). ‘Leading to inspire others: charismatic influence or hard
work?’. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 32(7), pp.736-734.
Smolovic-Jones, O. and Grint, K. (2013). ‘Essay: authentic leadership and history’, in
Ladkin, D. and Spiller, C. (eds). Authentic leadership: Clashes, convergences and
coalescences, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar Publishing, 1(1), pp.21-39.

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Somers, C. (2011). ‘Sustainable business’, Small Businesses Shaping the Big Society virtual
summit.. [online] inbusinessforgoodsummit. Available at:
http://www.inbusinessforgoodsummit. co.uk [Accessed 14 Nov. 2018].
Tobak, S. (2012). ‘America’s worst CEOs: Where are they now?. [online] CBS News.
Available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/americas-worst-ceos-where-arethey- now/
[Accessed 14 Nov. 2018].
Appendix
Question 1-
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogertrapp/2018/04/12/how-mark-zuckerberg-can-sharpen-up-
his-leadership/#58a4091b31c5

Leadership in Business 8
https://www.inc.com/ekaterina-walter/as-zuckerberg-turns-30-leadership-lessons.html
https://ceomarkzuckerberg.weebly.com/leadership.html
https://sites.psu.edu/leaderfoundationsclarke/2016/09/26/mark-zuckerberg-leader-of-the-21st-
century/