Leadership in Business

This document discusses the importance of leadership in business and explores different leadership styles and traits. It includes case studies of successful leaders like Jeff Bezos and Barack Obama.

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LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS
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4/13/2019

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Leadership styles and traits..............................................................................................................4
Scenario 1: CEO of an organization............................................................................................4
Scenario 2: President...................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Leadership is the ability of a person or a set of individuals to guide and influence its
followers or further associates. Leadership includes creating sound and at times difficult
decisions. A leader in an organization is generating and articulating a clear vision. They form
attainable goals, and provide the relevant information and tools that would be essential for them
to accomplish those goals (Brenner, 2015). The report will include the leadership traits and styles
in two different scenarios and considering some popular leaders for illustration.
An effective leader owns following traits:
 Self-confidence
 Management skills
 Strong communication
 Creative and innovative thinking
 Willingness to take risks
 Perseverance in the face of failure
 Openness to change
 Reactiveness in times of crisis
 Levelheadedness (Cherry, 2018)
A leadership specialist believes that there are various kinds of leadership styles. Leaders may
have been prevailing distinct style and they would practice various styles in diverse situations or
with diverse followers. Frequently recognized leadership styles comprises authoritative,
coaching, situational, transformational, laissez-faire, pacesetter (or transactional), coercive,

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charismatic, democratic, command and control (or bureaucratic), affiliate, authoritative,
coaching, innovative, and servant leadership styles (Collins, 2005).
Importance of leadership includes:
 Providing motivation – Leaders are responsible for motivating others and influencing
them to work for an objective. The followers are ready to work or perform for their
leaders while leaders consider the personal objectives of their team members.
 Providing guidance – The leader is not only commanding to perform but also providing
guidance to the followers or employee to work. Leaders instruct their followers or
subordinates to how to use their efforts in a direction to reach out to the desired outcome
(Birasnav, 2014).
 Building work environment – A good leader is responsible to provide a good work
environment to their followers. He is willing to listen to their followers and their ideas. in
case it is not found to be a disagreement, he is responsible to make the follower
understand his point and reason for disagreement (Brenner, 2015)
 Induces change - Change is the major aspect that is considered by a good leader. He is
responsible for implementing change and avoids resistance to change by their leaders, as
he believes in the necessity of change in any environment.

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Leadership styles and traits
Scenario 1: CEO of an organization
For the first scenario where the leadership plays a vital role, is a company leads by its CEO
and was successful due to leadership skills attained by its CEO (Edelman, 2017). For example,
Jeff Bezos is one of the successful entrepreneur and leader running a leading e-commerce
company that is “Amazon.” The leadership traits or beliefs that have made Jeff successful
leaders include:
 Long-term thinking – He is found to be planning personality, that is he believes in
planning for the long term, which makes him provide a vision for its company. He
initiated amazon in 1994 and at that time, he was the one able to identify the relevance of
the internet. It can be said, as the company was the first mover in the e-commerce
industry (Mishra, 2016).
 Always experimenting – He is experimenting person who is always willing to experiment
something new. To thrive in amazon business he has always been exploring new things,
which was the reason that the company initiated the business by selling online books and
now it is offering almost every consumer and electronic goods worldwide (Bird &
Mendenhall, 2016).
 Risk taker - Jeff is ready to take a risk that was the reason for him to implement his
experiment of e-books retailer worldwide. Moreover, he also encourages its employees to
be taking the risk to promote innovation in the business. He has a personality to take
higher risk in search of higher gain, which has got him to the list of top entrepreneurs
(D’Innocenzo, 2016).

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 Highly competitive – Jeff is always ready to compete which initiated with its first product
launch or beginning of amazon, when he competed with apple I Pad with its kindle
eBooks and until today ready to compete with top companies through new and innovative
product launch (Mattews, 2018).
Considering the leadership style, he is a visionary leader that is providing a vision for its
followers and other subordinates in the company. Some belief him to be an autocratic leadership
style, as he is found to be task oriented individual. He believes in his decision and makes its
subordinate work for the vision or direction provided by him. However, he said himself to be a
democratic leader but found to be autocratic in most of the situations (fortune, 2019).
The leadership style depends on the situation for instance on contrary to Jeff, Steve jobs or
Tim cook the CEO of Apple found to be democratic leaders as in that country the teamwork is
more important which make them follow a democratic leadership style and depend on their team
for various work profiles (Bird & Mendenhall, 2016).
Scenario 2: President
Another scenario where leadership plays most important role is the president of a
country, where an individual has to adopt leadership style according to the situation. For
example, Barak Obama has found to be a successful leader in the real sense. He was 44th US
president who holds the most powerful position worldwide. The leadership traits that was
responsible for him being an effective leader across the globe and lead UD for eight consecutive
years were change, which included campaigns run by him like “Change we can never believe in”
which was successful and promoted revolution and transformation (Hautala, 2016). “We rather
than I” is his major belief. As per his believe, a single person is not responsible to bring change,

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he prefers to involve people in conversation and like them to contribute positively. Risk taking,
in politics people, prefers to play safe, but Barak Obama was willing to take the risk for the
nation’s benefit. Art of communication is one of his major traits as a leader, which has made his
followers work for him. He is not only a great speaker but also a good listener (Elkatawneh,
2016).
The leadership style that is believed to be adopted by Obama was a democratic leadership
style. As per this leadership style, the person tends to listen to others and not just amply the
decision over others to perform. One of his traits discusses included he believe in we instead of I,
which shows that he prefers to listen to his followers to understand others and apply democratic
leadership style. However, the leadership tends to be changed as per the situation, as if his
change strategy makes him adopt a transformational leadership style. The leadership style
considering the situation can be asses by the transformational leader for example Abraham
Lincoln (16th president of US) who needed to bring a major change in a nation like the
abolishment of slavery (Hill, 2016).

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Conclusion
From the report, it can be concluded that the leadership skill of a person or a set of
individuals to guide and influence its followers or further associates of an organization. The two
scenarios are considered for discussion over leadership style and traits were CEO of a company
and president of a nation. For example, Jeff Bezos is CEO of Amazon found to be a visionary
leader and in some situations, it has been believed that he adapted autocratic leadership style.
This also depends on nature of the business, for example it was observed that in case of Apple
the CEO tends to have democratic leadership style as the prod On the other hand, Barak Obama
is the 44th president of the USA who leads that country for 8 years with democratic leadership
style in general. However depending on the situation, he has also found to be transformational
leadership style.
Considering the two scenarios, it can be said that there were various similarities and
dissimilarities in the leadership. Considering the similarities, the traits of a leader are quite
similar in both the cases that are may it be Jeff Bezos that is CEO of amazon or Barak Obama, a
president of a nation. For instance, they both tend to take the risk, and prefer to bring change.
However, there is major difference while applying leadership in the two situations. These two
situations make the responsibility of leaders to a different level. In case of leadership as a CEO is
restrained by the BOD of a company and has power like firing an individual from a company. On
a contrary, president powers have expanded to a greater extent but still their need for an
agreement with various other governmental branches. This makes Obama considering
democratic leadership instead of autocratic. Moreover considering risk, A CEO is responsible for
a very small group of people that is an organization and the risk involve may be the success or

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failure of the company. While in case of president the risk involve is to another level that is the
risk of life or death and the damage to the nation could be cause with one wrong decision.

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References
Birasnav, M. (2014). Knowledge management and organizational performance in the service
industry: The role of transformational leadership beyond the effects of transactional
leadership. . Journal of Business Research,, 67(8), 1622-1629.
Bird, A., & Mendenhall, M. (2016). From cross-cultural management to global leadership:
Evolution and adaptation. Journal of World Business, 51(1), 115-126.
Brenner, S. (2015). Leadership style and the process of organizational change. Leadership &
Organization Development Journal, 2-16.
Cherry, K. (2018). Understanding the Trait Theory of Leadership . Retrieved 08 01, 2018, from
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-trait-theory-of-leadership-2795322
Collins, J. (2005). Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve. Harvard
Business Review.
D’Innocenzo, L. (2016). A meta-analysis of different forms of shared leadership–team
performance relations. ,. Journal of Management, 42(7), 1964-1991.
Edelman, P. (2017). Training leader emotion regulation and leadership effectiveness,. Journal of
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Elkatawneh, H. (2016). Bridging Theory and Practice Leadership/Barack Obama . Barack
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fortune. (2019). data-sheet-be-like-jeff-bezos. Retrieved from fortune:
http://fortune.com/2017/04/14/data-sheet-be-like-jeff-bezos/

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Hautala, T. (2016). The relationship between personality and transformational leadership.
Journal of Management Development, 25(8), 777-794.
Hill, N. (2016). Empowering leadership and effective collaboration in geographically dispersed
teams. Personnel Psychology, 69(1), 159-198.
Mattews, B. (2018). The New York Times Versus Amazon: Is Jeff Bezos' head still in the
clouds? Journal of Organizational Psychology, 18(3).
Mishra, A. (2016). The Role of Corporate Leadership in Business Growth. Effective Executive,
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