Effective Leader: Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt - Essay Example

Effective Leader: Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt Name Institution Date Effective Leader: Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt Introduction According to McLean (2006), good leaders are made not born. If one has the aspiration and determination, they can become effective leaders. Good leaders are developed through a continuous process of self-study, education, training as well as experience. Google CEO, Eric E. Schmidt is a good example of an effective leader within the digital age. The PhD computer scientist signed on with Google within 2001. From then, through Schmidt’s effective leadership, Google has experienced exceptional value growth. This has been through his commitment to innovation and effective management and hence his leadership has been perceived as worthy being referred to as ‘legendary leadership (Manyika, 2008 pg 5). Throughout his leadership in Google, Schmidt has played a big leadership role in the company. So many things are obvious regarding his efficacy as a leader. Schmidt is a thinker. He has a lot of ideas and he is always looking for more ideas. Additionally, he is an extremely forward thinker. Making money is just not enough for Schmidt; he is also focused on development of new information technologies. The end result has been extremely good for Schmidt in spite of how his ideas edge on the extraordinary; Schmidt has the imagination of a science fiction writer (Manyika, 2008 pg 5). As an effective leader he is, Schmidt balances his visionary leadership with being a competent and a down to earth leader. He demonstrates a leader can be essentially sound while still focusing on innovation. Furthermore, Schmidt is an excellent planner. He always has a strategy for the company. He constantly focuses on the future and the changing nature of the business and hence prepares Google Company for anything. Schmidt is probably the greatest practitioner of “thinking outside the box” since the company through his leadership is always willing to go against traditional business principle if need be (John 2005, pg 2). As a leader, Schmidt is aware that a leader should always be ready to act 24 hours a day and therefore he knows it requires excellent time management to balance personal life and business leadership. As a result, Schmidt knows that as a leader he should love the constant intensity otherwise it is difficult to rise to the top. Considering he has a wife, children and hence he is a family man, this is an eye opening revelation of the sacrifices a leader should make for the company (John 2005, pg 4). Because innovation is the key to the success of Google, all things Schmidt does revolves in developing more effectively managed innovations. Without innovation, Schmidt knows that there is nothing to prevent another digital company from overtaking Google. As the leader, Schmidt encourages innovation systematically in the company at all levels throughout the organization and this includes the management. At Google, management follows a “70/20/10″ rule 70% of the time is spent on major business projects, 20% is spent on projects allied to the core business and 10% is spent on projects that are not allied to the core business. In order for Schmidt to follow this rule, he divides the projects into various rooms and keeps a track of time spent within every room (Manyika, 2008 pg 6). Additionally, Schmidt knows that Google employees are very important to the success of the company. He ensures that all recruits have the required education status. Most of the company’s employees are researchers and developers in addition to their normal job responsibilities. Google employees enjoy an organization dedicated to benefits. They also enjoy an informal organizational culture where workers can access gyms, massages, pool tables as well as other recreational amenities. Through this, the leadership keeps the workers motivated and hence they give their best in their work, increasing productivity of the company. Schmidt idea of recruiting highly educated, creative as well as intelligent individuals has had a positive impact on the company (Mischel, 2008 pg, 15). Schmidt acknowledges that inspiring employees into higher levels of teamwork, there are some things that a leader should be, know and also do. These things do not come naturally and are gained through constant work and training as well. Leadership refers to the process where the leader influences others to achieve a goal and directs the company in a manner that makes the organization more cohesive and coherent. This is the reason why Schmidt as an effective leader has been able to influence the company employees to accomplish a common goal at Google (Manyika, 2008 pg 8). To be a successful and effective leader such as Eric E. Schmidt, it is essential for new and aspiring employees to be appropriately trained and prepared when they begin to get on on their future leadership role. Management development entails activities that prepare the employees for future leadership roles (Northouse, 2007, pg 4). At the company level, a successful HRD program facilitates employees to carry out a higher level of work. The Human Resources Development will focus on the competencies of the organization. The first step will be training followed by developing the worker through education, to satisfy the long-standing needs of the company as the individual career objectives and employee value to their current and future employers. As a resource, the human resource will be developed through attaining or upgrading personnel skills as well as attitudes at all levels to maximize organizational effectiveness. Training is supposed to be about entire person development and not only transferring skills, the convectional interpretation of training at work (McLean, 2006, 24). Mentorship should be involved in the training. A mentoring relationship is a win-win for all parties involved; the worker who looks for the mentor, the mentor in addition to companies that employ the mentoring pair. Basically, mentoring is a strong tool of job training and can make great contributions to experience, skills and wisdom to a mentored worker and hence increase and expand the development of the employee. Mentoring is the key within the development of the employees in an organization. In regard to situation, all situations are different. As a leader, one should use effective judgment to establish a coherent mode of action and a form of leadership required for every situation. For instance, one might need to confront a worker for unsuitable behavior, but in case the confrontation is too late, early, weak or cruel, the outcome can be ineffective. Normally, the situation has larger impact on the action of the leader more that the leader’s traits (U.S. Army, 2008, pg 4). During training, peer-group mentorship can be used. This brings workmates with comparable interests and needs. This group is self-managed. For instance, each participant can present a problem and then other members respond to the problem represented. Consequently, the collective wisdom of the group is harnessed to resolve the problems and enhance practices, and value is developed for all group members (Rowe, 2007 pg65). Offer learning and experience that best fits the trainees’ personal interest, development as well as fulfillment. Performance and ability are in due course dependent of the attitude of individuals in addition to emotional maturity. Therefore, it is necessary to help the employees to accomplish their aspirations at individual level. This acts as a benchmark for trust within the company as well as ensuing skill/process development pertinent to the management of higher responsibilities, roles and teams (Posner, 2006 pg. 24). Participative workshops will work effectively. In this regard, the right individuals will be involved from the beginning and the focus will be on what people want. A personal developmental questionnaire can be used to start to set the scene and offer illustrations of ‘substitute’ learning opportunities. The emotional intelligence standards fit extremely well with modern strategies to the development of individuals’ belief, maturity and also attitude. When individuals develop self-confidence, integrity, emotionally, they can routinely turn out to be more practical, solution-focused, and responsive and such, which across an entire team has a cumulative impact. Several individuals at work are merely ‘going through the emotions’ behaving in a ‘conforming’ manner regularly because they are not confident and free to do what they want and feel is appropriate, or are anxious about being bold, while boldness is enormously necessary for self-sufficiency, initiative, greater responsibility; actually, all behaviors that companies strive to encourage. It is not possible to train on boldness; individuals should experience things that facilitate them to feel stronger, to tackle risks and to desire to be risk takers. This implies that rewards should be there or individuals will have no reason to take any risk; and not merely the prospect of financial prospects. Essentially, the type of motivators can be additional responsibilities, acknowledgement as well as involvement within new and successful and interesting projects. This is to encourage individuals’ development and change. Creating and utilizing progress charts are useful, and are necessary for anything complex. It is fundamental to make use of other training tools for planning, measuring, examining and also following up on the individual’s training (Ivancevich et.al, 2007 pg 25). Breaking skills down into easily digestible aspects facilitates planning and is helpful in the management of training activities more efficiently. Training individual in stages, when you can increase every skill, and subsequently an entire role, from a series of aspects, keeps things controlled, relaxed and always accomplishable within the mind of the trainee. Establishing a pertinent ‘skill set’ is fundamental for evaluating and making sure that training is given prioriy. It is not adequate just to evaluate against a job description, as this doesn’t show skill, simply responsibilities, which are not the same. In addition, establishment of a ‘behavior set’ is also extremely valuable, but is a more intricate area to evaluate and develop (Newstrom, 2003 pg.26-28). Conflict can come along in an organization, mostly because of varying priorities among performance management functions, and notable allied to training, development and interests of employees. Therefore, it is important to train the workers on how to identify and manage a conflict. Conflicts are in most instances caused by the varying objectives of the departments and hence there is a need for facilitation of common understanding and cooperation. Therefore, during the training, employees will be provided with different case scenarios involving conflicts and they will be instructed to resolve the conflicts professionally (Jago, 2002, pg. 314). Psychometric tests are very valuable in training and development of people. Psychometric testing generates steadfast assessments which are naturally objective, instead of being subjective since it tends to be individual judgment. Furthermore, psychometric tests facilitate whole-person learning as well as development (Mischel, 2008 pg. 10-12). In several training situations, it is difficult to establish and assemble groups of delegates whose requirements, experience and capability levels directly match each other. Therefore, during the training groups will consist of trainees and learners from varying scales of experience, styles, goals, needs and/or capabilities. This brings out further demands on the training demands on the trainers to make sure that the requirements of all trainees are met, without causing any dissatisfaction or monotony for delegates who are already knowledgeable of some parts of the information and capabilities that training seeks to transfer. As a result, trainers and delegates should recognize and accept this situation at the start of the training session, with the aim of dropping the potential dissatisfactions and negative reactions and effects as much as possible (Bass, 1990, pg 19-31). Exercises involving management of project teams towards agreed definite results are perfect for developing management and leadership capability. Therefore, during training it is essential to begin with the small projects then augment the size of the project, complexity and timescales as the capabilities of the trainee develop. Fundamentally, the basic core requirements of training are imagination, dedication and a solid procedure of managing and recognizing development. Leaders will concurrently fill numerous roles interacting, motivating group members, solving conflicts as they crop up. Effective leaders should have two key qualities: knowledge and communication competence. Leader requires knowledge of issue and the ways of successfully leading a team. This knowledge will allow leader to make out alternatives available. The leader also needs to be an efficient communicator as in the same way listener and speaker. Leaders should attain qualities of flexible, honesty, empathetic, bravery, interactive, and positive attitude (Lamb, & McKee, 2004, pg. 30). Conclusion In conclusion, as the manager or the CEO, one should take time and acknowledge and thank employees for successfully completing training and development project. Getting acknowledgement is a strong motivator and stimulant towards additional training and personal development. A Key Performance Indicator is measurement of training hours per individual as an average across the organization. The level of intricacy in measuring training time per individual is dependant on what one defines as training; training time per individual on training workshops is comparatively simple to measure. It is possible to manage ‘training hours per individual’ goals and information through annual appraisals, when training past and future can be measured. References Bass, B. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: learning to share the vision. Organizational Dynamics. Vol. 18/3, pg 19-31. Ivancevich, J, et.al. (2007). Organizational Behavior and Management. New York: McGraw- Hill Irwin. Jago, G. (2002). Leadership: Perspectives in theory and research. Management Science. Vol. 28(3), 315-336. Posner, Z. (2006). The Leadership Challenge. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Lamb, L. & McKee, K. (2004). Applied Public Relations: Cases in Stakeholder Management. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Routledge. Mischel, W. (2008). Personality and Assessment. New York: Wiley. Newstrom, K. (2003). Organization Behavior: Human Behavior at Work. New York: McGraw- Hill. Northouse, G. (2007). Leadership theory and practice. Thousand Oak, London, New Delhe, Sage Publications, Inc. Rowe, W. (2007). Cases in Leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications U.S. Army. (2008). Military Leadership. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. McLean, G. (2006). Human resource development as national policy. Advances in Developing Human Resources. Vol. 6/3. Manyika, J. (2008). Google’s View on the Future of Business: An Interview with CEO Eric Schmidt. The McKinsey Quarterly. John B. (2005). "The 70 Percent Solution: Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives us his golden rules for managing innovation". CNN Money magazine. . Retrieved on 24th December 2011. Read More