Read the mini-case, Keeping up with Bill Gates *BELOW* and answer the questions
ID: 450853 • Letter: R
Question
Read the mini-case, Keeping up with Bill Gates *BELOW* and answer the questions at the end:
1. Would you classify Bill Gates as a charismatic or transformational leader? Why?
2. Consider the followers and employees of Gates. What are some unique characteristics of Gates’s followers that might identify him as charismatic or transformational?
*TEXT BELOW*
Keeping Up with Bill Gates
Bill Gates inherited intelligence, ambition, and a competitive spirit from his father, a successful Seattle attorney. After graduating from a private prep school in Seattle, he enrolled in Harvard but dropped out to pursue his passion—computer programming. Paul Allen, a friend from prep school, presented Gates with the idea of writing a version of the BASIC computer language for the Altair 8800, one of the first personal computers on the market. Driven by his competitive nature, Gates decided he wanted to be the first to develop a language to make the personal computer accessible for the general public. He and Allen established the Microsoft Corporation in 1975. Gates’s passion and skill were programming—he would work night and day to meet the extremely aggressive deadlines he set for himself and his company. Eventually Gates had to bring in other programmers; he focused on recent college graduates. “We decided that we wanted them to come with clear minds, not polluted by some other approach, to learn the way that we liked to develop software, and to put the kind of energy into it that we thought was key.”
In the early days of Microsoft, Gates was in charge of product planning and programming while Allen was in charge of the business side. He motivated his programmers with the claim that whatever deadline was looming, no matter how tight, he could beat it personally if he had to. What eventually developed at Microsoft was a culture in which Gates was king. Everyone working under Gates was made to feel they were lesser programmers who couldn’t compete with his skill or drive, so they competed with each other. They worked long hours and tried their best to mirror Gates—his drive, his ambition, his skill. This internal competition motivated the programmers and made Microsoft one of the most successful companies in the computer industry, and one of the most profitable. The corporation has created a tremendous amount of wealth—many of its employees have become millionaires while working at Microsoft, including, of course, Bill Gates, currently one of the richest men in the world. During the 1990s Bill Gates’s net worth grew at an average rate of $34 million per day; that’s $200 million per week!
Gates needed a castle for his kingdom, so he built a much-talked-about house on Lake Washington. The house lies mainly underground and looks like a set of separate buildings when viewed from above. The house was conceived as a showcase for Microsoft technology—it took $60 million, seven years of planning and construction, and three generations of computer hardware before it was finally finished. A feature of the house that reveals a lot about its owner is the house’s system of electronic badges. These badges let the house computers know where each resident and visitor is in the house. The purpose of the badges is to allow the computer to adjust the climate and music to match the preferences of people in the house as they move from room to room. What happens when more than one person is in a room? The computer defaults to Gates’s personal preferences.
Explanation / Answer
According to various authors and texts, charismatic leadership is when one “infects their teams with positive emotions simply by using positive emotional language.” Where some other says that, “this starts with the idea that the team members agree to obey their leaser when they accept a job” and that “the leader has a right to punish team members if their work doesn’t’ meet an appropriate standard”. Of the two of these leadership styles, I would have to say that Bill Gates leadership style is that of transformational leader. When Gates made people to “feel like lesser beings” he definitely was not being charismatic, he motivated people not by being positive but by putting everyone against each other. Other sources state that when he did not care for decisions that were made he would berate subordinates and not care how it motivated them or broke them down. So as stated above clearly Bill Gates is an powerful transformational leader who drives employees to succeed thru competition with each other. Bill Gates followers characteristics are described in the below article. These followers tend to be driven to prove themselves, thrive on competition, and good at their particular jobs. As stated above Bill Gates is a transformational leader he did not use positive emotions to motivate his employees. Moreover, in doing that he motivated the competitive drive in his people. They were motivated to better their coworkers in order to succeed within Gates’ world. In another words it was his way or the highway. According to Kendra Cherry in her article What is transformational leadership? How transformational leadership Inspire she states that this type of leader “inspires followers to change expectations, perceptions and motivations to work toward common goals.” They have the ability because of their knowledge and experience to inspire employees to succeed no matter what. His employees are like him in many ways they are driven, they thrive on competition and have a vision of where they want to be.
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