In a world of rapidly changing economic situation, the role of a leader for a development of any company is of a great importance. Leadership may be identified as a set of personal qualities of an individual, which inspires motivation in other people to move toward a definite aim. One way or another every person is involved in the leader-follower relations in many spheres of human activity.
Apart from responsibility, every authentic leader should possess some qualities. A successful leader must have an adequate knowledge of psychology, in order to be a good judge of character. A leader should possess a quality to defer to opinion of others and to postpone own interests to the public welfare.
At the same time, it should be distinguished between a leader who possess the leadership skills and between a person who is just vested with authorities of a leader. Hogan, Curphy and Hogan state (as cited in Bolman, & Deal, 2008) “the skills of one-half to three-quarters of American managers are inadequate for the demands of their jobs” (p.8). That is why the leadership studies and their practical application is of a great importance for a successful functioning of a company.
In my opinion, the person who fully possesses the qualities of a true leader is the famous business magnate Bill Gates. It seems to me that the reason, which has predetermined his success, is that Gates has an optimistic view on a problem no matter how complicated it is. At a young age, he had a dream to provide every family with a personal computer. That time this goal seemed unattainable. Now we can see that nothing is impossible.
Apart from his unquestionable professional expertise, this person has a quality, which is necessary for every leader. He has persuasion skills and the ability to lead the way. When in 1980 the IBM Company entered the market of personal computers, Gates had a reputation of one of the leading specialists in this sphere in the USA. Tim Paterson created the operating system, which was called Q-DOS. Then Gates and his friend Allen bought and upgraded this system.
At first sight, it seemed that this buying was a failure for the Microsoft, but Gates even at that time was result oriented. He realized all the long-term perspectives of this project. The IBM Company assumed obligations to sell the computers produced by them only with this system paying interest to the Microsoft.
During his entire career there was a wide range of successes and misfortunes, nevertheless this person was always able to take a risk. It seems to me, that in spite of his extreme wealth, Gates has never worked for the sake of money. He was carried away by enthusiasm and was able to captivate others with his ideas. Moreover, his approach to the organization of a working process is rather innovative. Once Bill Gates said: “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because he will find an easy way to do it” (A Role Model: The Leadership Qualities of Bill Gates, 2014).
I am sure that the experience of Gates success can be useful for any person and for the development of the leadership qualities. It seems to me that every leader should have a dream or at least a plan of actions. In this regard, Bolman and Deal (2008) emphasizes the importance of a frame, which they distinguish as “a mental model -a set of ideas and assumptions- that you carry in your head” (p.11). Moreover, it seems to me that for a successful leader a business team, which consists from likeminded people, is also very important. Without the assistance and understanding from surrounding people, it is very difficult to achieve a task. Therefore, every leader should consider others opinion.
Reference List
Bolman, L., & Deal, T. (2008). Reframing Organizations. San Francisco, USA: A Wiley Imprint.
A Role Model: The Leadership Qualities of Bill Gates. (2014). Web.