Leadership Report: Analyzing Satya Nadella's Qualities and Strategies

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Satya Nadella's leadership qualities and strategies as the CEO of Microsoft. It begins with his background, including his education and career path, highlighting his role in transforming Microsoft. The report explores Nadella's leadership approach, emphasizing his belief in positive leadership, growth mindset, and empathy. It examines specific examples of his leadership, such as the acquisition of LinkedIn. The study also identifies key challenges Nadella faced, including criticisms and disagreements, and how he addressed them. The report concludes with a reflection on the lessons learned from Nadella's leadership style, emphasizing his positive thinking, ability to listen, and handling of criticism. The report emphasizes the importance of his strategies and their impact on Microsoft's success. The report also includes references to support the analysis.

Running Head: LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
Introduction:
The main aim of this study is to briefly describe the leadership aspects of Satya
Nadella. Therefore, the study will be focussed on his background as a Chief Executive
Officer of Microsoft, starting from his education, work history, industry involvement as a
leader. In order to describe all his leadership aspects, the study will put forward with an
approach to leadership backed up with two examples of his leadership strategies taken in the
past, the key challenges he faced during his involvement in the industry and how he solved
those problems as well as how that problems could have been solved in a different way.
Lastly, the discussion will be concluding with a reflection regarding the research, about what
I learnt about leadership from his strategies.
Background of Work:
Satya Nadella now serves the position of Chief Executive Officer in Microsoft from
February, 2014 (Microsoft.com 2019). In the year 2014, Microsoft was experiencing
disastrous feedback from its business segment regarding the launch of Microsoft Windows 8.
After he succeeded the role of CEO, in 2016 Microsoft again found its way back to the
position in the market of software and services. That proves the change of leadership is
necessary and can be very effective for the development of an organization.
Nadella, before becoming the CEO of Microsoft started his organizational journey
working with Sun Microsystems as a technology staff member in the year 1992. Later, he
joined Microsoft and led many projects related to cloud computing, and helped to develop
one of the biggest cloud computing & storage infrastructure in the world. Then, he served the
position of senior vice-president of Research & Development and later as vice-president of
Microsoft Business Division.

2LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
Nadella did his schooling in Hyderabad Public School, Bachelor’s degree in Electrical
Engineering in Manipal Institute of Technology. Later, he went United States for studying
Master’s in Computer Science in the University of Wisconsim-Milwaukee, also he did MBA
from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Nadella after appearing as the new CEO Of Microsoft Corporation made some very
serious changes in the strategies. He made a point on making technologies and the services to
make priority the cloud and mobile first (Westerman, Soule and Eswaran 2019). Microsoft’s
stock prices in the market were tripled in just four years, by some of his bold decisions like
moving the company from making phone hardware and developing operating systems,
centring Microsoft’s business around subscription based products to make a sustainable
recurring revenue.
Approach to Leadership:
Satya Nadella believes in Positive Leadership style. Therefore, he wants to make the
workplace of his organization more enthusiastic by developing the growth mind-set and the
empathy (Patel 2017). The leadership style of him is to influence the employees of the
organization, and to make a robust workplace culture to make the employees under the
umbrella of the organization by motivating each other in achieving the same goal.
Nadella appeared as the CEO of Microsoft in 2014, when Microsoft was facing falling
market shares in its stock market. Whereas, Google and Apple was unveiling new
technologies related to mobiles which was affecting the shares of computing technologies
(Burnett et al. 2017). Microsoft was not losing money by any means, but company was facing
challenges in driving market shares and retaining the brand value built in past three decades.
In his ideology, he believes in changing with time and needs of the consumers. His mind-set
is to build a framework that relies on Positive Leadership (Ibarra, Rattan and Johnston 2018).

3LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
A leader who relies on the employees as much as on himself. A leader who can make any
unpredictable move to win the situation and solve the problems, holding hand to hand with
his fellow members. He is kind of a person who believes in making workplace much like a
home, to make the employees feel that they are not just achieving some organisation's
objective, rather feel that they have only one life which means only one chance to make a
change, to feel embraced, to fulfil all the requirements of a human being to evolve.
Examples of His Leadership:
As the wise men say, great readers may not be leaders, but the great leaders are
always good readers. One of the greatest qualities, a leader can have is being a learner, either
from his experiences or reading books. Nadella choose both as his learning path. Now, he is
one of the prime examples of a visionary leader.
A successful leader always believes in taking decisions in addition to making moves
in an unimaginable way to bring forth success. Nadella did the same in 2017, by the
acquisition of LinkedIn with Microsoft which led them creating wold's largest professional
networking services. This strategy is termed as one of the greatest masterstroke in Microsoft's
history.
Key Challenges He Faced:
A leader is not born, rather made by facing challenges in his journey and sorting out
all of them by his strategies. Nadella, was no exception in his journey. Ha faced many
challenges through his journey, which shaped him as a leader and made him the way he is
now. He wrote about some of them in his autobiography, “Hit Refresh”. Here, the study will
discuss about two examples of the challenges he faced in his journey (Nadella and Euchner
2018). Therefore, they are as follows –

4LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
Nadella as a person is not brash and outspoken about his predecessors and the critics.
But in his journey, like every leader is full of unnecessary controversies and criticisms. Once
Steve Bannon, former chief strategist of President Donald Trump criticized him about having
Asian CEOs in the technological organizations in USA. That was a very abusive and racist
remark based on the people belong from a particular race or place.
Nadella’s one of the biggest challenges is to deal with the former CEO Steve Ballmer
who is still positioned as a Company’s Board Member. After making disagreements with him
on the acquisition of Nokia phone, which made disastrous loss of $7.3 Billion in the year
2014.
Nadella is very popular for being a thoughtful and mindful leader in the Microsoft
Corporation. He talks about empathy and making workplace more comfortable to enhance the
working environment for him and his employees as well as the betterment of the organization
(Socas 2018).
Satya Nadella has stepped forward as the CEO of Microsoft and made some bold
moves to “Excel” the path in his journey as leader. He has done the best he could in the past
five years and still growing further to make the technological services are served best.
There’s still a lot left he can make, like making the workplace more cross-cultural, more
diverse to have employees from all around the world and make technologies reach every
home in the world.
What I learned from him:
In this portion, I will discuss about the facts as a reflection of Satya Nadella as a
leader and what aspects and approaches of leadership skills of him I liked the most. Firstly,
he is always a positive thinker, whatever the situations are, he holds the steering of the
situation and solves the problem by any means. If not possible, at least he tries to the end.

5LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
Secondly, I think a great reader can be a great speaker. When it comes to the point of being a
leader, a human being needs to have knowledge about solving the problems of the listeners.
He is a good listener that is what makes him a good leader who has humongous effects
among the employees of Microsoft. Lastly, he handles criticisms and challenges as a growth
of his own knowledge and surpassing the limitations or barriers he has within. The way Satya
Nadella approaches as a leader impressed me in a lot of ways, and to comment on his
leadership aspects, I must say, there is no one like him or ever can be.
Conclusion:
This study puts forward some serious discussions making a brief discussion about the
Leadership Aspects and Approaches of Satya Nadella, of the most visionary CEOs of
Microsoft. This study revisited the working history of him before being the role he is in now,
his educational background, industry involvement as in the history of journey that shaped him
as a leader. Followed by an approach to leadership, backed up with two examples of being an
exemplary leader who thinks and behaves in a different dimension. Therefore, a leader like
him faced many challenges in his path, some of them is described and discussed how he
solved all of them by raising his barriers. Then, the point comes where he needs to make a
little improvement in his leadership style, being the Chief Executive Officer of the Multi
National Organization like Microsoft to create more sustainable and robust growth in the
business market of technology. Lastly, the paper concludes with the reflection of myself
about the leadership style he possess and makes in order to take control and make exceptional
changes in a technological organization.

6LEADERSHIP QUALITIES OF SATYA NADELLA
References:
Bedi, P., 2018. Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better
Future for Everyone. FIIB Business Review, 7(1), pp.24-25.
Burnett, M., Counts, R., Lawrence, R. and Hanson, H., 2017, October. Gender HCl and
microsoft: Highlights from a longitudinal study. In 2017 IEEE Symposium on Visual
Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) (pp. 139-143). IEEE.
Ibarra, H., Rattan, A. and Johnston, A., 2018. Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Instilling a growth
mindset.
Nadella, S. and Euchner, J., 2018. Navigating Digital Transformation: An Interview with
Satya Nadella. Research-Technology Management, 61(4), pp.11-15.
Nahavandi, A. and Krishnan, H.A., 2017. Indo-European Leadership (IEL): A Non-Western
Leadership Perspective', Global and Culturally Diverse Leaders and Leadership (Building
Leadership Bridges).
Patel, S.R., 2017. Microsoft''s Paradigm Shift: Strategically Reinventing the Brand,
Supporting its Vision for Growth, and Strengthening Its Competitive Position.
Socas, J., 2018. Empathy: The Key Ingredient for Better Leadership. International
Leadership Journal, 10(1).
Westerman, G., Soule, D.L. and Eswaran, A., 2019. Building Digital-Ready Culture in
Traditional Organizations. MIT Sloan Management Review, 60(4), pp.59-68.
Microsoft.com. (2019). Microsoft - Official Home Page. [online] Available at:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-au [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].