Leadership between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates - Case Study Example

• Introduction

The world is changing in a fast pace and is the competition among the companies. The companies generally try to lead the industry they are operating into. In order to do the same, the companies need various strategies to increase the market share of its product, enhance the supply chain and ability to supply the product to meet the demand of the customers. Such activities need to be done by the employees of a particular organization under an efficient leader. Therefore, the leadership style is one of the main elements of ensuring the task to be done. The theory of leadership explains it to be a motivational factor or a person who inspire the others to do the task in a tactful manner. There are two subject parties in this, one is the leader and other is the follower. The leader may follow various leadership styles in order to get the job done in time. Therefore, this study will focus on the leadership style of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, who through their great minds created the two biggest technology giants namely Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc. The study will also look upon various other aspects of the leadership and its effects on its followers and company as a whole.

• Background of Organization

Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc. both is the technology giant of the US which is indulged in manufacturing computers, software and smart phones. The companies are very much sufficient in their operations and are top organizations in their industry. Both the brilliant minds started the organization from the scrap and build it in such a way that it is currently values in billion. Bill Gates as well as Steve Jobs both has been competitors with beginning of their rise in the technology market (Arthur, 2014). During the earlier stage, Microsoft was quite strong to the Apple but later Steve Jobs reinvented himself and rebuilt the Apple Empire which currently values more than that of Microsoft. As both the companies are multinationals, they have to recruits the talent from various regions and their cultures also vary with the same. The leadership styles of the companies are also very effective so that it can maintain with the multicultural aspects of the organization. There are many factors which effects the organization such as culture of the organization, structure of leadership as well as other political and economic factors (Kumar & Surisetty, 2012).

The company being a multinational can get affected by the cross-cultural factor of the organization. Such factor could also affect the leadership of the organization which may or may not go as per the plans made by the management. Such factor may include any kind of lack in training of the employees which in turn effecting their performance. Such activity of the employees actually questions the leadership style of the organization. The organizations have witnessed many ups and downs during their stage but successfully crossed all the barriers and finally created its value in the market (Deci, et al., 2001).

Many other economic and political factors also created huge challenges for the organization where the toughest situation for both was the great economic depression of 2008. This was the time when the companies were controlling their cash outflow and many people were out of their jobs. In such a situation both the companies recorded low profits and their revenue figures were also low. However, against all the odds the companies restructured themselves in order to claim the market. It is due to great minds and the strategy they made and the new plans that are made by the current professionals keeping the previous strategies as base. Though these are the external factor and cannot be control by the organizations but keeping itself intact in such situation is the most important task (Ivashina & Scharfstein, 2010).

The companies were initially led by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and both of them had different views on leadership strategy. Bill Gates believed on participative leadership style while Steve Jobs in Autocratic style. Bill Gates is a flexible person regarding his decision making as well as managing the organization. He believed in including the professional managers in the business structure because as per his perspective, the professionals can manage the amateurs. Gates is a strong as well as energizing personality who inspired other with his charm and make them follow his though to make the company a place what it is now. On the other hand, Steve Jobs was person of strong will and power. According to him, most of his thought process was correct and he also implemented the same. Being an autocratic leader, he always did whatever he thought was correct and directed the employees in a same way (Maccoby, 2000).

• Elements of Leadership Philosophy

The leadership strategies followed by both the entrepreneurs are unique in it. The main element of both the leaders has something in common. They were farsighted persons and always achieved their goals which they never lost sight of. This made them the best technological titans of the world. They always intended to take various steps which only took them near their organizational goals (Maccoby, 2001).

As the capabilities of being an entrepreneur, they had in view which of the task are needed to be done. They contemplated a lot in order to make their strategies work and their companies a hit. They kept a check on the daily processes of the business which helped them to identify the weak links and the solutions to the same (Dess & Picken, 2001).

The two titans had a vision while they started as well as operated their business. While both the visions were different from one another but still they were for greater good. As per the growth in the technological world, Bill Gates envisioned that every person on the planet should have access to the upgraded technology in order to stay updated about the world. However, the technological concepts have moved to every corner of the world but the dream which Bill Gates saw was regarding computers. This vision of Bill Gates came true when each and every office has access to computers and most of them used windows as their operating system (Bel, 2010).

Steve Jobs on the other hand has also seen a vision, maybe not as big as Bill Gates but he envisions making the music store portable. In this case, the entrepreneur was developing the iPod, which can be referred as the packet sized music device.

While discussing about Microsoft Corporation, the leadership style of Bill Gates is admired a lot and also rewarded a position in top 10 most admired business personalities. As per the sources it has been known that the titans were a participative leader and also demanded creativity and encourage innovation and also recognized the employees personally and their level of passion for work (Cusumano & Gawer, 2002).

Being a participative leader, Bill Gates always held meeting with the employees and asked them to provide with various innovative ideas. In this process he always interrupted them in order to interrogate and challenge their proposition in order to find loop holes and solve the same. Though his leadership style was participative as he also provided the employees to present their ideas but many authors also referred this as a mixed style of participative as well as autocratic style of leadership. As per Bill Gates himself, he believed that various leadership style could be adopted which totally based on the situation through which the organization was going through (Cusumano & Gawer, 2002).

On the other hand, the style of Steve Jobs was kind of autocratic as he demanded perfection in the task allotted. His talent was outstanding which kept the staff, investors as well as the customers intact and on the same time he increased the value of the organization in the market. It was through the effort of Steve Jobs, the company raised its market value by a huge extent which actually seemed near impossible (Sharma & Grant, 2011).

Therefore, it can be concluded that the leadership style of both the entrepreneurs has led the company to the heights of its success. Both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have their own unique style of leadership to keep their staff inspired and customer hopeful about the next product which they were about to launch. The service they provide show their admiration towards the customer and their employee welfare show their concerned towards employees. Such activities led towards the rise in goodwill of both the companies and the market share of both of them also rose to a great extent.

• Similarity and Difference in Leadership Style

There are some core leadership elements which are shared by both these leaders. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs can be regarded as two renowned personalities in the real-world scenario. Both these leaders have been able to set high mark in the industry. One of the common leadership traits which can be witnessed in case of both these leaders are they are perfectionist. Task-oriented leadership trait forms the basic characteristic which defines personality of Steve Jobs as well as Bill Gates (Eisner, 2015). It can be stated that these two leaders are the pioneers of the computer world. Another core leadership element which is shared by Bill Gates and Steve Jobs is encouraging participation of team members to contribute innovative ideas for business success. Both these leaders are not dominating; rather they are more focused on collaborative working approach. Risk-taking nature can be denoted as a trademark for both these leaders (Northouse, 2014). To be more precise, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have always undertaken major risks may that be in the form of launching new products or entering into an unexplored market segment. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs as leaders have never emphasized on traditional operational procedure, rather they are inclined towards designing high quality ideas and then implementing them in real-world context.

On the contrary, there are some leadership traits which differ in case of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. For instance, the aggressive nature is relatively higher in case of Steve Jobs compared to Bill Gates. At times, unattainable targets are also set by Steve Jobs so as to ensure that team performance is comparatively higher. The main objective set by Bill Gates for Microsoft is to introduce innovative skills in the software industry. A mixture of leadership qualities can be observed within Bill Gates (Manning & Curtis, 2012). As a leader, Bill Gates seems to be participative, dependable and at times even delegate team members. He is the supreme entity in the organization in context of undertaking final strategic decision. However, Bill Gates as a leader has always motivated his team members to accomplish set targets. Arguably, similar leadership traits cannot be standardized for Steve Jobs. Transformational leadership style was certainly the core leadership element observed within Steve Jobs. He acknowledged hard work but at the same time used offensive language for team members who were not able to attain desirable goals. The main difference between both the leaders is Bill Gates is certainly dependent on skills or competencies of team members, whereas, Steve Jobs always preferred collaborative work so as to efficiently deal with any organizational change (Singh, 2015). Another primary differentiator is relationship-oriented leadership attitude which defined personality of Bill Gates. Leadership styles and behavioral attitudes are primary differentiators because they signify the manner in which leaders treat their employees. For instance, relationship-oriented attitude enables a leader to develop strong relation with team members, whereas, similar approach is not followed by task-oriented leaders. In overall context, leadership style of Bill Gates is a combination of being visionary and maintaining employee relations. On the other hand, task-oriented work culture was usually maintained by Steve Jobs.

• Effectiveness of leaders using Leadership Theories

The leadership has become an interesting topic these days as the people are getting more and more concerned about the traits of their superior. However, the major part of the subject is about the differentiating actor of the leader and the follower. Though there are many leadership theories which have been founded but all of them do not hold relevance in the modern world. There are about eight types of leadership theories namely Great Man theories, Trait theory, contingency theory, situational theory, behavioral theory, participative theory, management theory and relationship theory (Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009).

Great Man theory is the one which refers that the inherent of a great leader would also gain same thinking pattern and would be great as his/her predecessor. Such leadership does not hold much value in today’s world except a few small proprietary businesses. The same was followed in the historical periods when the lands were ruled by the rulers. The trait theories are the most important concept where the people were chosen as per their leadership traits. They are generally chosen as per their personality and behavior. However, there is again a question raised that there are many people with such traits but not everyone is a leader. Contingency theory is a leadership style which is chosen as per the situation of contingency. Therefore, the main belief in this one is that the, the leadership depends on various factors such as leadership style, the quality of followers as well as the depth of the situation. On the other hand, situational leadership is the concept where the leader may use various leadership styles as per the situation demands. Behavioral leadership is the concept where the leaders are chosen as per their behaviors and actions. Therefore, according to this leadership concept, leaders are made and not born. Participative leadership theory is the one which is used the most because the ideas of other are also taken into consideration. The main belief behind this theory is that it is not necessary that brilliant ideas can be developed only by the managers and not subordinates. Management theories focus on the role of organization as well as group performance. On the other hand, relation theories explain the relation of the leader and the follower (Avolio, Walumbwa & Weber, 2009).

As in the case of leadership style of Bill Gates, situational, participative as well as management theories can be considered. It is so because he never followed a single style of leadership, rather he acted on a situational basis. Generally, as per the sources, it has been quite well known that he followed participative leadership where he set up the meeting and asked the employees to deliver their own ideas for the company’s wellbeing. Bill Gates also kept a close supervision on the work that was operated in the organization. He believed in the group performance rather than individual work and also rewarded them as per their performance (Cusumano & Gawer, 2002).

On the second thought, Steve Jobs followed quite different style of leadership from Bill Gates. He maintained behavioral, management as well as relationship theories. It is so because he was mainly known for his actions rather than his words and learned from many previous drawbacks. He always kept a supervision on the tasks allotted and also demanded perfection in the work. On the other hand, he also worked hard for the keeping the staffs, customers, and other stakeholders intact for the success of the organization (Sharma & Grant, 2011).

• Analysis and Recommendation

The leadership styles which are been followed by the two technology titans are different but on the same time both of them are huge success. The style that is been used by the founder of the Microsoft Corporation is totally dependent on the situation both the internal as well as the external. It is very impressive decision to not to keep intact to a single process with the change in the business environment. His style has also been considered as participative because he kept on conducting meetings to gain ideas from the fellow subordinate. This does not only inspire the subordinates but make them realize that they are value addition to the organization. The leadership style of Bill Gates also took into consideration, the quality checking through rigorous supervision and he also encouraged teamwork in order to achieve the objectives. On the contrary, Steve Jobs followed a little autocratic style of leadership, where he demanded the task done as perfect as possible. Steve faces some of the challenges as well as failures during his earlier stage which taught him a lot about business operations. Therefore, he enhanced and upgraded himself to new heights. He tends to keep good relation with all the stakeholders of the company. The through which he had in mind was to transforms the followers into next leaders.

Therefore, it can be recommended that the ideas and concept of leadership which has been provided the great leaders like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should be followed by their successors. The leaders are leaders because of their followers and it is important for them to maintain good relation with all the stakeholders. Being a factor of motivation and inspiration is quite responsible task and same can be done if the leader himself has achieved the impossible. Therefore, the leaders who is to be chosen in the future date must follow the steps of the two titans and take the company beyond its limits.

• Conclusion

This study has totally focused on the leadership quality that is must if great responsibilities are taken. The leadership qualities held by Bill Gates as well as Steve Jobs has been taken into consideration where they took their companies to unique heights. Though the leadership style at both the companies were different but were also effective. Bill Gates used participative style which led to various ideas which could add value to the company but on the same time Steve Jobs was following autocratic style. His style of leadership was transformational and he demanded the task to be done in the way instructed. This would lead to perfectionism of the employees and would make the company successful.

• References
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