COMPARE AN CONTRAST THE LEADERSHIP STYLES FOR THREE BUSINESS LEADERS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
These report is part and partial of our organization behavior course. The report is about leadership style of three business leaders where we are supposed to compare and contrast their leadership style. I have chosen 3 business leaders of technology industry. i.e the late Steve Jobs( Former CEO of Apple) , Bill Gates ( CEO of Microsoft) and Narayan Murthy ( Chairman and CEO of Infosys). I have given a brief introduction on leadership and given the various types of leadership styles. On literature review I have discussed on various literatures written by various scholars on the leadership styles of the three business leaders that I chose. In addition I have analysed the various literatures and discussed the leadership styles of the chosen business leaders and compared them. Finally I gave a conclusion on what I found about the topic and came up with a conclusion on what I found helpful on leadership style for a company to be successful.

INTRODUCTION
Leadership is very vital for every business which has made it today to be a highly sought after and a valued commodity by various business leaders who seek for effectiveness of their business. But the questions that still arise is what makes good leaders and why some leaders succeed and others do not. Many people believe that leadership is a way to improve their personal, social and their professional lives. On the other hand organizations seek those with leadership ability because they believe they bring special assets in their businesses. Various scholars have defined leadership differently whereby some view it as a trait while others as a behavior. According to Jago he describes leadership as a trait, as a set of properties processed in varying degrees by different people while leadership as a behavior (process) is observed in leaders behavior and is learned.

Having discussed on leadership we will now have a look at our main focus of the assignment which is leadership style. Leadership style is described as the behavior pattern of a person who tends to influence others. This includes both directive behaviors and supportive behaviors. There are various categories of leadership styles namely: High Directive-low supportive style. This is a leadership style whereby the leader focuses on goal achievement by communication and spends less time on supportive behaviors. He/she only gives instructions on what and how the goals are to be achieved and only supervises. High directive- high supportive As the name suggests this is a leadership style whereby the leader focuses on both achieving the goals and meeting the subordinates social emotional needs. High supportive and low directive style- this is a style where the leaders focus is not necessarily on goals but he/she uses a supportive style that brings out employees skills around the task to be accomplished. Low directive-low supportive style- Here the leader offers less task inputs and social support to facilitate employees confidence and motivation in reference to the task. The above are the major leadership styles which most books describe as either transformational, transactional, authentic, autocratic etc. we will take a look at 3 business leaders and compare and contrast their leadership styles which hopefully will give us a clear view on leadership leadership styles and what makes some leaders successful than others.

LITERATURE REVIEW
We will examine what different literatures say about the three business leaders style i.e what type of leadership style they posses and how different they are from one another and later compare the literatures and come up with various findings and recommendations. One of the business leader that we have chosen is the late Steve Job, former CEO of Apple since it was due to him that apple remains to be on of the top companies with

very high revenues. we will therefore examine the types of leadership styles that he has. According to the Robert N Lussier he notes that Steve jobs is a very controversial leader in his business. He was described as tough, temperamental, agrressive and a very demanding leader. He would attack employees who make mistake and not meeting employees expectations , he would go ahead and anger employees and even customers. On the other hand describes steve Jobs that creates an environment that nurtures and enhances the technology based products many of which become successful. According to the article Steve job and management by meaning by Robert Veghanti notes that his leadership style was one to admire and criticize at the same time. According to the article he had a vertical, top down approach and harsh especially in the launch of a new product. And most of the management theories took him as an exception since was navigating a territory that is often indistinct to management creating meaning for both users and employees. Our second business leader that we will focus on is Bill Gates founder and CEO of Microsoft who is as a visionary- authority leader, he combined his unyielding determination with a well structured team. He is dismissive of the more mundane aspects of running a business believing that his job is to chart the future. While according to Des Dearlove he says that Bill Gates has the ability to inspire his people with the abilty to transform the computer Industry. He adds that Bill gates has made his role within Microsoft explicit by establishing how things should get done by working with the developers to ensure that they are doing the right things. Another literature notes that he mainly uses a participative style and tends to include elements of the delegative style. he is a leader who takes full advantages of his team and employees and occasionally trusts them enough to make decisions without his instruction. The third business leader that we will have a look is Narayan Murthy who is the chairman and CEO of Infosys. He is described as a visionary leader and it is due to this that he has taken Infosys far. He is a leader who believed in putting public good before private good while making decision. Eric H. Kessler and Diana J. Wong notes that Narayan leadership style embodies the nurturing style of Rama and believes in

extremely tolerant towards diversity. In addition it notes that Narayan remains to be a humble and caring for his employees.

KEY FINDING, DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

According to the literature we have analyzed three business leaders of technology industry both in Asia and America. What we have seen is that the leadership styles of the three business leaders are not really different. First we have seen that Steve Jobs was a leader who had leadership style one i.e He was a high directive and low supportive leader. (autocratic leader). He was very harsh to his employees and never listened to them especially in the launch of a new product. In addition to these we can say that steve jobs was a transformational leader since there some components of transformational leader that he acquired. Intellectual stimulation: This is a kind of leadership style whereby the leader encourages his employee to be creative. Given that Steve Jobs leads technology industry which requires innovation. He encouraged his employees to be creative especially the design department. And his directive style showed incase the employees did not meet his expectations. This is shown above where it shows that he was harsh to his employees. Idealized influence: This is a component of leadership style whereby the leader serves as a role model for his employees. We have seen above that most people admired steve Jobs leadership style. Thus we can say that he was not only a role model to his followers but also to other business leaders. We can also say that Steve Jobs was an authentic leader since he has had an impact on Apple. It was due to him and the management that apple is what it is today. He came up with different designs of iphone, ipad etc. which has become successful thus we can say that he was an authentic leader. He was also a charismatic leader given that most leaders and followers were drawn to him and always wanted to be like him.

on the other hand Bill gates who also is a leader of technology Industry lead his company quite differently from steve jobs. According to the literature we can conclude that Bill gates has the following leadership style He is a high supportive and low directive leader(laissez faire). This is shown in the literature which shows that he uses participative style and delegative style. He trusts his employees and delegates even decisions to them. Which was not the same with Steve jobs. He always wanted to make his decision and never gave a chance to his employees. In addition Bill gates is a transformational leader since he has an individualized consideration in him since he offers support and encouragement to his followers. This is depicted by the delegation of decision making to his employees. This was not the same with Steve Jobs since he was always harsh to his employees. Last but not the least is the CEO of Infosys, Narayan Murthi who is also a leader of a technology business. He is a high supportive and low directive style since he we have seen that he remains to be humble to his employees. Which is not the same with steve Jobs who was always harsh but similar to Bill gates who has the same leadership style. He is also a transformational leader since he is a visionary leader who was able and thus we can say that he has the component of inspirational motivation of a transformational leader. On the other hand he has an individualized consideration style since he provides support to his employees. Our findings from the literature and analysis is that the three leaders led there company differently, they all had different leadership style e.g even though they all had a transformational leadership style they had different component of the transformation leadership yet the industry is the same.

CONCLUSION
We can conclude that leadership is key but there is no really an effective way to leadership. every leader has different leadership style since every leader is different in terms of behavior and trait and it would be very unlikely to find a leaders with the same leadership style even in the same industry. A good example is shown in the

three business leaders that we have analysed above. All of them lead in technology industry but are very different in how they lead one is harsh to his employees another one very supportive and another delegates everything to his employees. With all these differences their business are running well and making good profits. We can therefore conclude that there is no right leadership as long as the business is running well but at the same time incase the business does not run well, the problem should be diagnosed and incase it is to do with leadership, then the leader should change his/her leadership style to suit the situation/business.

RECOMMENDATIONS
I find the following recommendations helpful to organisations incase the company has an issue with the leadership style. A leader cannot lead without followers and therefore I would advise the leaders to give a say to there followers and be supportive to them since most of the time the employees have more information to what is happening on the ground than the leaders. Leaders should not stick to the same leadership style since the style can work for one environment and not work for the other thus leaders should change their leadership style according to the environment and the situation.