Mark Zuckerberg as a Successful Young Leader - Case Study Example

Leadership Author Affiliation Date 1. Introduction Leading other is an abstract quality ina human being. This quality of a man is responsible for the evolution of leadership concept in the world. In the restricted sense, leadership means to lead the other and to be advance to hold the comand of the group of the people. In the broader perspective, leadership means to guide other and to give directions to other. All the leaderss of the world work to achieve any goal or the purpose[Kae814]. Like president of the country lead the administration services and affairs of the country. Moreover, the coach of the hockey team maangeshis team to won the match. All the collective actions in every organization need a concerted directions, Planning and its implementation is meaningless without the proper guidelines and instructions of the supervisisor or the maanger of the company who act as the leader. Leader is the person who gives directions and vision to the organization. Without the leader, there would be a chance of creating chaos in an organization because everyone in the organization wants to pursue his ideas and suggestion in the cpmpany. The leadership concept reduces the chances of creating mismanagement and chaos in the organization.A leader is on who hold a power and authority to influence other members of group and other group fellows are bound to obey and follow all the directions of leader[Lon73]. Leadership is thus, the chief tool of management which is identified with ability to make a group perform effectively to achieve a goal or to influence employees to achieve organizational goals. Moreover, leadership is the single most important factor of determining the effectiveness of the group or an organization. Leader is the person who inspire the members of the group or the followers of the organization. Leader must may or may not be business executive is a successful leader because leaders have some distinct leadership and communication skills[ODo93]. To understand the concept of an effective leader, I have chosen Mark Zuckerberg a successful young leader and identify his leadership and communication style. Moreover, I have also analyzed Mark approaches towards the globalized environment. 2. Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zukerberg is one of the successful enterprenuer and a creator of one of the popular social networking site Facebook. He was the shinning student of his school and won many prizes in astronomy, physics and math in his school. He was very popular in school because of his achievements and extraordinary skills. He studied computer science at Harvard University. Mark was the bright student and shined in everything what he did in his youth. He was the team leader and Capitan of his school fence team. Moreover, Mark he spoke and understand many language that made his communication skills attractive[Suk11]. Now Mark is considered as the leader and a role model for the young entrepreneur. He has distinct leadership and communication style. Moreover, Mark is following the latest trends to make his invention more attractive. Mark’s communication, leadership style and approach have been discussed below in detail. i. Leadership Style of Mark Zuckerberg Mark has many leadership qualities. The qualities and his style of leadership can be easily unstand with the help of different leadership theories. First of all, Mark has instinct quality of leadership like some people born great[Can81]. Mark has born great as a leader. Trait based theories are also very important to acertain the qualities of the leader[Bor64]. In the trait based theories, five factor model which is known as big five is very useful to know which leadership traits make the Mark a successful leader. The big five was derived from the Cattell’s 33 variables of personality variables[Cat43]. The big five model includes extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability versus neuroticism and culture[Oli99]. In these 5 big traits Mark is extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stable. He was very active in his school and liked to participate in various competition. Moreover, he was the captain of his school fence team it shows his extraversion and agreeableness. Similarly, an effective leader like Mark Zuckerberg has always distinct and discernible in his actions. The behavior of the leader is different than the other members of the group. He has distinct behavior with distinct qualities. There are two leadership style have been described by the behavioral theory[Kru01]. Both the leadership styles of behavioral theories are different in many aspects. One leader is always concern for the production, profit and sales on the other hand there is a leader who prefer people over production. He always tries to manage and listening the people and he is less concern for the profits and production[Mar011]. Mark Zuckerberg earlier in Harvard University introduced a program called as “course match”[FPL10]. It was a very useful program through which students of the same module could see which courses other people are taking. After that Mark developed a program called Facemash. It helped the students of the University to find the suitable and best looking mate. The students can select the mates by seeing their pictures. In such a way, Mark Zuckerberg liked to help the Harvard University fellows. Mark has the behavior oriented towards individual. As, he always created something that provided ease to the students of Harvard University[FPL10]. Mark has many leadership qualities but in true sense he is following a democratic style of leadership. A democratic leadership style is one of the effective leadership style. Democratic leader is one who shares decisions and plans of implementation with the other members of the organization[San07]. Mark Zuckerberg is also such a person who likes to share his decisions with his subordinates and that the reason he is leading one of the successful social networking site. Mark considers his followers as participants and always tries to increase the productivity, satisfaction, involvement and commitment. Participation is one of the core characteristic of democratic leadership[And59]. Facebook is a successful company because of its democratic nature. Mark Zuckerberg has given authority to its all members of the company. They can suggest and give effective ideas to make the services of Facebook more reliable and user friendly. Democratic leadership is the only leadership in which a company can earn high productivity with high morals and satisfaction of the employees as well as the users. An ideal democratic leader is friendly, helpful and encouraging[Lut96]. Similarly, Mark is also helpful and encouraging with his employees and also with his customers. Customers of Facebook are all those who use Facebook networking sites. In the Facebook Company, Mark Zuckerberg holds a powerful and authoritative position in chain of command. He is the person who can take all the major decisions of the company but doesn’t do that he takes all the decision with the cooperation and consent of the employees of the Mark. As, Mark represents all the important characteristics of democratic leader, it shows that Mark Zuckerberg gives more value to the people and group relationships[Edg11]. All the subordinates at the Facebook company are highly encouraged to participate in the decision making process, it also represents the likeness of Mark of sharing new ideas and suggestions. The democratic leadership style is very suitable for the Facebook Company because the all the subordinates and employees of the company are experience and technically expert[FAC11]. The reason behind the Mark Zuckerberg’s democratic leadership style is to deal all the experience employees equally. Mark gives authority and power to his all employees to take decision regarding their specialized department. The organizational structure of Facebook Company is also democratic[Tim13]. All the departments are decentralized and the expert departments are fully empowered. The mission that Mark Zuckerberg is promoting through its social networking site Facebook is to making the world more open and connected by giving the power to all the people across the world to share their feelings, photos, contacts and events. There are five elements that make Mark Zuckerberg a successful leader of today. These are five P’s, passion, purpose, people, product and partnership[Tim13]. ii. Communication style of Mark Zuckerberg Mark Zuckerberg has effective communication style and he is one of the best speaker. He knows many languages and he can easily attract large audience through its effective and powerful communication syle. He is not a conventional leader but a modern one who speaks with his subordinate and customer in informal language. Despite of usinf informal way of communictaion Mark has very effective way of communication.Communication is a significant quality of an effective leader. The important characteristics of an effective leaders are many[Jen111]. First the communication stlye must be clear and direct. The healthy communication will only occur, when the message is fully and completely understand by the audience or the employees. Mark is the prominent example of effective communication[Rob14]. Even he arranges many answer questions sessions with the Facebook followers to know their ideas and communicate about their new features to the users. Moreover, there are different communication styles that are popular in the organizations and among different big companies like Facebook. The first type of communication style is passive communication[Joh08]. The passive communication is a significant style in which a leader develops a pattern of avoiding expressing the opinions and suggestions. The passive communication style is not the active style of speaking. A leader with such a style neither act or speak against any violation nor try to express his opinion in the general public. It is more of bureaucratic type. A passive speaker usually unaware of important happenings[Cla121]. A passive speaker of such a kind follow the leadership style in which he show concern only for the production but not for the people. Therefore, it can be analyzed that Mark is an active leader so he is not a passive speaker. The second type is aggressive communication style. The aggressive communication style in which an individual express his feelings and opinions when his rights or the rights of other get effected and violated. The communication of the aggressive speaker sometimes abusive[Cla121]. The characteristics of aggressive communicators are many like he always tries to dominate other, his speech sometimes abusive and he used to criticize those who blame his or attack him. The characteristics and nature of Mark Zuckerberg are somehow similar because many times Mark takes strong and aggressive stance on the human rights violation. The example is when some extremist in Paris had attacked the office of Charlie Hebdo then Mark cried and praised the efforts of Charlie Hebdo as a strong supporter of freedom of speech[Ale14]. He said that everyone had a right to say anything about anyone and no one could suppress the power of freedom of speech. He also said one could kill the person but no one in this world could kill the ideas and words[Ale14]. There are many consequences of the aggressive communication style like one can be alienated from the society and may be the aggressive speech create hatred and fear among the people of the society. In addition, the third type of communication style is passive-aggressive communication style. The aggressive-passive communication style is a style in which a person develops a pattern of communication in which a communicator appears passively but act with the great anger. The aggression in passive-aggressive communication style is indirect and behind the scene. People or leader of such a kind feel powerless and less popular. The leaders who have aggressive-passive communication style are not capable of dealing complex and difficult situation[Joh08]. They want withdrawal from the difficult time thus Mark does not have such a characteristic[Gar12]. He active but not passive. The forth type of communication style is assertive communication style[Cla121]. The assertive communication style in which an individual clearly states their opinion and strongly stands for his or her rights. The assertive leader firmly supports emotional, spiritual and physical needs of the people and not hurting anyone’s feelings with their communication style. The assertive communicator states the needs and wants of the people in a very respectful and appropriate manner[Cla121]. Mark Zuckerberg follows this communication style that is the reason the people feel connected to other. The Facebook controls the life of the people just because of the promotion of assertive communication style. Mark Zuckerberg is a young but very matured in his public speaking. He reflects that he has strong communication skills that is the reason he attracts many investors and business partners[Mar13]. Moreover, it is his strong and effective communication style that make him a young successful leader and entrepreneur of this globalized world. iii. Approach of Mark for globalized environment Mark Zuckerberg is very well managing his business in this globalized business world. There are many reason behind the success of Mark and his project Facebook. First, Mark has thrown away the traditional hierarchies system in his company and promotes the modern way to deal with employees. Mark empowers all his organizational system and promotes the decentralized system in the organization. In the Facebook Company, Mark has broken all the hierarchies and barriers because he wants that his all employees can easily approach him. Moreover, Mark has clear vision for his company. In addition, Mark also gives attractive perks and privileges to his employees[Ste12]. Mark is using multilevel approach to deal the challenges of the globalized world. The multilevel approach is a combination many effective strategies and theories. The most effective one in the multilevel approach is Leader-member exchange theory. The LMX is the most influential theory in which the effective leader has high relationship quality[Lid97]. Similarly, Mark is also using this approach because he is trying to create strong bonding between the company and the employees. The most important approach that Mark has adopted for this globalized world is his promotion of intercultural adaptation. There are many cultures around the world and Marks wants that the people of different cultures know each other and get connected with one another. People around the world can share their feeling, emotions and ideas through Facebook. Now, Facebook has become one of the most popular social networking site of the world. Moreover, Facebook has become the most important part of the globalized society. Mark promotes intercultural adaptation in the globalized world. Intercultural adaptation involves the process of promoting and understanding the need of the new culture of global environment[Reb11]. Mark and his approaches are different. Mark gives importance to introduce new technological innovation in the Facebook. Facebook is not the only innovation of the 21st century, there are many successful innovations that have introduced in the world. Even many other researchers are busy in developing new innovation for the people of globalized world. Mark has successfully managed his innovation and always struggling to introduce new values and features in the Facebook. Such an approach of Mark is known as innovation assessment. Mark is always looking for the source of idea for introducing an innovation in the Facebook. The recent example is Mark has announced to launch dislike button on the Facebook features which will add on the popular demand of the user. In this way, Mark is always looking for the idea to improve the services of the Facebook. Similarly, there are different types of innovation that can be introduced into the existing technology. Mark has launched a timeline theme as the innovative content on the other hand the call facility has also launched with the messenger, which was also one of the innovative feature. Moreover, Mark has adopted the fast innovation realization policy[Art11] in which the Mark and his team fully watch the activities of the competitors. If the competitors launch any new attractive feature Mark and his highly expert team rapidly copied it and incorporated into the Facebook, this shows that Mark adopts aggressive approach towards it competitors. Moreover, for improving the customer relationship and promoting equality in the recruiting process, Mark and his company launched a modern method named as “Crazy social media recruiting technique”. A technique is very useful to promote equality among the user and give the reflection that Facebook and Mark treat all the human around the globe equally. Not only Facebook hired very competent candidates from the social media but many other big companies joined this campaign and hired a large number of people through social media. In this way, Mark found the source of innovation in this idea and launched” graph search” through which users can write skills in their profile and according to that skills the rate system rate the talent of the individual and give high, medium and ow ranking in graph search. The graph search proves a great innovation for the companies because they just saw the graph ranking and hire the high achiever[Tim13]. Moreover, Mark Zuckerberg knows the importance of change. Thus, he is also adopting new leadership approaches to face the challenges of globalized environment successfully. There are many approaches like pacesetting, authoritative, affiliative and coaching approach[Fas02]. The pacesetting approach[Dan00] is used to excel in the field in which leader and his subordinates are already very successful. The pacesetting is the approach that is used by the Mark because his team is highly skilled and motivated do not need further motivation, they give all their time in improving the services and providing best services to the users[Fas02]. Mark is not the authoritative leader but it is also true he is an entrepreneur and a successful entrepreneur. Mark act as an authoritative leader while designing the vision and mission of the Company. The whole vision of Facebook is based on the philosophy of the Mark Zuckerberg. Thus some time to avoid conflicting vision Mark act as authoritative leader and set the desired goals and objective by himself. At the same time, Mark is also adopting the affiliative[Dan00] and coaching approach[Dan00]. He promotes emotional bonding at the work place. Mark also suggest to his employees in working in groups rather than working individually. He act as the coach and always tries to promote cooperation in the organization. Thus in this way Mark does not act as a conventional leader but understand the need of modern world of globalization and try to follow the latest trends. Similarly, Mark also understand the cultural changes and try to promote the cross cultural harmony through Facebook. Even, Mark has married a Japanese women that also reflects his liberal approach for the different cultures and religion. As, Facebook connects more than 1.3 billion people around the world. Mark has not only relational approach in which he has a vision of connecting people but he is also using Facebook as the tool of economic and political development. Many movements has started like Egypt revolution and jasmine revolution from the Facebook. At the same time, Mark also promotes Facebook as the economic development tool. There are many pages on the Facebook that are advertising and selling their product on the Facebook[Del15]. All these multinational companies are the sponsors of the Facebook. Mark earn lots of revenue from these multinational companies. Mark turned the Facebook into the business promote tool with the largest connecting social site, Facebook is now also a biggest online shopping and advertising medium that brings lots of revenue and profits for the mark and the team. Mark reduces the barriers to marketing and support entrepreneurship that are the significant need of the globalized business environment. Thus, Mark doesn’t create anything that only use to connect the people around the world but he adopted new innovative and other changes of the globalized world to make his Company Facebook successful. Now, he is the most successful leader and entrepreneur of the global world and his social networking site is the successful company of the world. 3. Conclusion To sum up, it can be concluded that, Mark Zuckerberg is one of the most influential and popular leader of the world. Many youngsters of the world follow him because he is not only the successful leader but also a successful entrepreneur of the world. He promotes democratic leadership style in his Facebook Company. The organizational culture of Facebook is very flexible and decentralized. The communication style of Mark is very effective and powerful many famous personalities already admit and admire the powerful skills of the Mark. He has assertive communication style. He not only run a company but Mark is very active in promoting human rights and freedom of speech. Mark is very popular and intelligent CEO. He knows very well how to make money and profit from his popular social networking site. He also adopted many new approaches to deal the challenges of the globalized world. Mark makes his social networking site a tool of political and economic development of the globalized world. Mark and his company makes lots of money from his internet based business activities. He earn lots of profit from its business related pages and ad posting service. Thus, Mark Zuckerberg has all the qualities of an effective leader. 4. 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