Leadership Analysis: Evan Spiegel and the Snapchat Phenomenon

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This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Evan Spiegel's leadership, focusing on his role as the co-founder and CEO of Snapchat. It delves into Spiegel's key leadership qualities, including creativity, vision, and self-awareness, and examines how these traits contributed to his success. The report also explores the impact of Spiegel's past failures, such as the unsuccessful Future Freshman venture, and how these experiences shaped his leadership approach. Furthermore, it discusses the development of his leadership skills, highlighting the influence of his privileged childhood and education at Stanford University. Finally, the report assesses Spiegel's autocratic leadership style, providing examples of how he makes decisions and manages his team. The analysis includes the impact of this style on employee satisfaction. The report concludes by summarizing the key findings and emphasizing the impact of Spiegel's leadership on the popularity of Snapchat among young users.
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RUNNING HEAD: LEADERSHIP FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATION
Leadership for the contemporary organization
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LEADERSHIP FOR THE CONTEMPORARY ORGANIZATION
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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Leadership qualities.........................................................................................................................2
Role of past failure...........................................................................................................................4
Development of leadership skills.....................................................................................................4
Leadership Methods.........................................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
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Introduction
The research report is prepared on the topic ‘Leadership for the contemporary
organization’. The contemporary leader chosen for the report is ‘Evan Spiegel’. He is an
American businessperson, the co-founder and CEO of the modern global application named as
‘Snapchat’ (Spiegel, 2019). It is a photo and video sharing social media app founded in the year
2011 (Molloy, 2017). The basic purpose of the report is to gain knowledge about the skills and
qualities of the leader that had led him in achieving major success. Additionally, it includes the
skills, qualities and past failure of Evan Spiegel. Moreover, it also laid emphasis on the methods
and concepts adopted by the leader in his approach of emerging as a top business leader.
Figure1: Evan Spiegel
Source: (Clifford, 2018)
Leadership qualities
Leadership is a key skill that assists the individual in leading and guiding the individuals,
groups and teams in an organization. It is an ability of making quality and fruitful decisions.
These traits are developed through experience and genetics. There are not any particular
leadership skills thus every leader attains different quality skills (Burns, 2012). Similarly, Evan
Spiegel being one of the contemporary leaders also attains some of the leadership qualities that
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had led him in achieving major success within a short span. Some of the key leadership skills of
Evan Spiegel are as follows:
Creative
Self-Aware
Bold and admits faults (Canal , 2019)
Visionary
Healthy ego
High mannered (Benner, 2017)
Quick decision maker (Sloane, 2015)
Aims for perfection (TFP, 2019)
Self-believer (Hill, 2018)
The youngest CEO of Snapchat application attains many leadership skills. He is creative
in his business process, as he had led the creation of an entirely new digital media app, Snapchat.
He developed an application that has the features of sending disappearing messages. Further, he
had continued to add more new and interesting features in the Snapchat application. Some of
these are Snapchat filters, Bitmoji and Snap Games. To build originality in Snapchat app, he had
rejected the idea of developing newsfeed (Scrivens, 2019).
He usually keeps himself aware and thus participates in political conversations. In the
year 2015, he had met the president of China for the business concern. He is bold enough to take
the risk of developing new features of Snapchat that does not guarantee success. It exhibits the
quality of ‘Self-Awareness’ in respect of the outside world (Canal , 2019). He has its own
viewpoint and thus follows the same. Others opinion does not overpower his own decisions.
Moreover, he considers that life is not all about making money, winning the competition but
instead bringing a change in the world through technology. He also attains the quality of
‘Visionary’ as he set a large vision for Snapchat as ‘Camera Company’ (Benner, 2017). He
believes in strategically thinking and consider being proactive for the future event (KWHS,
2018).
Additionally, he attains ‘Positive Ego’ as he refuses to stick to the norms of the social
networking system. He often considered as a highly mannered person (Benner, 2017).
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Additionally, his quality of not settling for anything less than ‘Perfection’ has also led him in
achieving tremendous success for the Snapchat. Thus, he never takes a ‘No’ for an answer (TFP,
2019). However, the quality of ‘Strong self-belief’ had led him in launch of new digital media
application (Hill, 2018).
Role of Past failure
Failures are the part of business process. It is not a step backward but instead it is a step
to attain the success. It fills the individual with enhanced knowledge and helps in developing key
skills. Like any other leader, Evan Spiegel also faced a startup failure. He faced difficulty in in
initiating the Snapchat in the marketing world. He faced disputes on the issue of originality of
the app concept. It resulted in the development of legal action against the former fraternity
brother over the origin of the Snapchat concept. Additionally, he experienced fast failure in his
first company named as ‘Future Freshman’. It almost took his one year and thus it resulted in
disappointment (Sloane, 2015).
His past company failure has led him to attain the skills of ‘Perfectionist’, ‘Creative’,
‘Visionary’, ‘Self-aware’ and ‘Quick decision maker’. Ashe failed in his experience it motivated
him to develop something creative concerning current technological environment. It makes him
to be imaginative for meeting the future planning. It helped him to come up with the new concept
of Snapchat that is creative in its features as well as gathering the attention of youngster, the
future of the country. As he is the founder of a popular application, it made him to be highly
aware about the internal and external environment of his company. It also makes him to be a
quick decision maker as any delay in decision-making may cause him loss of millions (Sloane,
2015).
Development of Leadership skills
There is not a phenomenal time to learn the leadership skills. These can be learnt at any
phase of life. Not all skills can be learnt but some are self-developed from the genetics and the
initial childhood. Other skills can be learnt from the past failures and life experience of an
individual (Winch, 2015).
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Similarly, Evan Spiegel has learned some of his leadership skills from the experience
while some are inbuilt since his childhood. He spent a privileged childhood as he was born in a
wealthy family. He never faced the financial issues thus it makes him motivated to not to settle in
something small but instead aiming for major success. He was born in an era of high
technological usage and was often interested in technology that fascinated him towards the
creation of digital media application. As he was a technology driven person, he believes in
developing and creating new means to provide the world with creative and better digital
experience. His childhood was spent in luxury and thus it keeps him motivated to attain more.
Further, he gained knowledge from the Stanford University that help in enhancing his knowledge
in product designing and being creative in his approach (Case, 2017). He had learned the
remaining key leadership skills from his past failure and life experience as mentioned above.
Leadership Methods
Every leader differs in its leadership style. Leadership style determines the manner of the
individual in relation to employee direction, motivation and implementation of plans. There are
various styles of leadership:
1. Autocratic
2. Participative
3. Free rein (DuBrin, 2015)
In the Autocratic leadership style, leader attains full control over the decisions and does
not believe in the group participation. It focuses only on personal views and ideas and
implements the same, thus they are generally unpredictable. It has full control over the group
activities. Further, he believes in rigid and structured work. Additionally, it is analyzed
employees are generally unsatisfied in this leadership style. Participative leadership involves
delegation of authority and collective decision-making whereas Free rein leadership style allows
its employees to make their own decisions and function accordingly (DuBrin, 2015). However, it
is assessed that Evan Spiegel is a follower of Autocratic leadership style. This can be seen from
the facts described below:
Examples:
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1. It estimated that Snapchat unpopular design would result in decline of its share price and
loss of application users. Evan Spiegel had taken the note positively and decided to go
ahead with that design only (Hill, 2018). It states that he gave prior importance to his own
views and thoughts and follows the same.
2. From the initial age, he was taught to be seen but not heard (Wolverton, 2018). It means
that he ignores others thoughts and advice. The above two examples states that he gave
prior importance to his own views and thoughts and follow the same.
3. Because of his leadership style, he ignored the group participation in decision-making. It
led to unsatisfied personnel that ultimately resulted in the loss of key human resource of
Snapchat. The vice president ‘Tom Conrad’, chief engineer ‘Stuart Bowers’, chief
financial officer ‘Drew Vollero’ had resigned from their post because of lack of
autonomy (Newton & Statt, 2018).
4. He lays great attention in the recruitment process but fails to develop satisfied and happy
employees (Newton & Statt, 2018).
5. It was assessed that he frequently changes his decision. Hence, it fulfills the quality of
Unpredictable leader of authoritarian leadership style (Bilton, 2019).
Moreover, being a young entrepreneur, he was shy, frightened and faces challenge in
open communication. Thus, he usually keeps his management style as secretive but with the
passage of time, he had changed his approach towards achieving objectives. He initiated the
concept of clear communication of his objectives.
To be better in leadership style, he invited ‘Stephen Miles’ to guide him. Additionally, he
conducted an employee survey about his leadership style. In order to improve the productivity of
the performance, he was advised to be more professional and to develop a habit of positively
learning from the criticism rather than ignoring them. He was guided to initiate monthly staff
meetings as this would help him in gaining knowledge of others perspective. Further, it would
help him in preventing upcoming mistakes (Hill, 2018).
Evan Spiegel was criticized over his inefficient leadership among its human resource.
However, under his leadership style, Snapchat had gained massive popularity among the
youngster with strength of 187 million users by the year 2018 (Wolverton, 2018).
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Conclusion
The research report summarizes on leadership style of chosen contemporary leader, Evan
Spiegel. He is one of the youngest CEO and Co-founder of digital social media app named as
Snapchat. It includes the evaluation of leadership qualities and skills inherited by the leader. It
also includes the mode of the development of the leadership and the role of past failures in the
development of leadership skills. Lastly, it also comprises of his leadership style in the Snapchat
Inc. From the research report, it is analyzed that Evan Spiegel attained various key leadership
skills. However, he failed in effective leadership style but attained great achievement for his
digital media application by capturing the attention of young population.
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Bibliography
Benner, K. (2017, February 2). Snap’s success could be due to Evan Spiegel’s philosophy of
showing “who I am now”. Retrieved from CNBC:
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philosophy-of-showing-who-i-am-now.html
Bilton, N. (2019, January 17). ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE WHEN IT COMES TO EVAN
SPIEGEL”: IS A SNAP SALE INEVITABLE? Retrieved from Vanity Fair:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/01/anything-is-possible-when-it-comes-
to-evan
Burns, J. M. (2012). Leadership. Open Road Media.
Canal , E. (2019, July 18). Snap CEO Evan Spiegel Says He Wasn't the Best Communicator, but
Is Working on Becoming a Better Leader. Retrieved from INC:
https://www.inc.com/emily-canal/snap-ceo-evan-spiegel-leadership.html
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making money’. Retrieved from CNBC: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/06/snap-
ceo-evan-spiegel-life-is-not-about-making-money.html
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breakthroughs — but could it break the company?Snap’s unusual structure led to
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