Business law textbook answers

Running head: How are Leaders Leading in the 21st Century? 1

LEADERSHIP STYLE. WHAT DO PEOPLE DO WHEN THEY ARE LEADING? 2

Leadership Style: How are Leaders Leading in the 21st Century?

Leadership Style. What do people do when they are leading?

Larry Page is one of the co-founders of Google. The American computer scientist founded the company together with Sergey Brin. He graduated from the prestigious Stanford University with Masters in computer engineering. He is currently the CEO of Google. He has been at the helm since April 2011. Before becoming the CEO, he ran Google as its co-president together with Brin.

Leadership Style and Philosophy

“Larry Page’s work is to make a very unconventional business to work.”(White, 2007) In order to do this, he employs a number of leadership styles and philosophy. He uses a leadership style where his main focus is not on his competition. He notes that the work force that are made to work to beat rival companies are not usually happy and end up being less motivated. He also says that the improvement that is got from making small changes in order to stay ahead of competitors is minimal. It is for these reasons that Page leadership style focus on beating its own targets and not focusing on competitors.

The leadership style and philosophy of Page is one that focuses on innovation together with commercialization. According to him, having innovation without commercialization is useless. He notes that a company can focus on big ideas and innovation and this will develop modern computing. However, when there is no commercialization very little will be achieved in the long run.

The leadership style and philosophy of Larry Page is one that focuses on improvement. He believes that there is always room for improvement. According to him, Google has only tackled 0.1 percent of what technology has to offer in terms of improvement of lives of people. This means that the company still has a long way to go. He urges his employees to focus on crazy things and nurture the best out of these ideas. He claims that people not doing crazy things are doing the wrong things.

Google has an unusual organizational culture that is designed to ensure both creativity and loyalty. The culture lays emphasis on both innovation and creativity. The leadership style of the CEO of the company is in perfect alignment of this culture. Larry Page motivates the employees to come up with crazy ideas and he ensures that innovations that are out of the ordinary are commercialized.

Personal and Organizational Values

One of the personal values that Larry Page is known for is perseverance. “Together with his partner Brin, they took six years to assemble a team that worked on the digitization project of Google’s book.”(Brandt, 2007) Google maps that have Street View is an idea that took him years to make possible. In his mind, he knew that it was possible to achieve that and as a result he kept on trying to convince other people to work on the idea.

When it comes to organizational values, Larry Page has a quick and concise approach. He is always working on ways that can enable Google have a fast and nimble management approach. He encourages conciseness as he notes that this reduces risk of misunderstandings. An article on the Wall Street Journal claims that the Google’s CEO expects his staff to give him short updates (about 60 words) on the progress of their projects. This means that they have about two paragraphs to put their points across.

Larry page is open and has a fast decision making. It is common knowledge that some of the top executives sit around for days before making top decisions. However, he prefers to make quick choices and encourage an attitude that is immediate-minded.

Influences. The organizational values practiced by Larry Page ensure that the employees practice the highest level of ethics. He is quick and concise in all areas of management. This means that the employees are assured that in case of any problem, they can rely on the management to provide a quick solution. The decision making of the CEO is also good and fast thus the employees most of the time get the best deals hence they do not have to engage in unethical practices. The excellent organizational values of the CEO leave no room for mischief.

Strengths. Just like any other person, Larry Page has its strengths and weaknesses. One of his greatest strengths is perseverance. He is one person that does not give up easily. As long as he has a feeling that the crazy idea that he has can be made possible, he does everything possible to ensure that he makes the dream a reality. Had he not have had this marvelous skill, Google would not have been conceived as it took them six years to make a breakthrough.

Another strength that the CEO has is that he believes that there is always room for improvement no matter how good a product is. According to him, there is always something extra that can be added for better service and functionality. He ensures that the staff at Google adds new features and improves the usability of its mail service, Android and search engine. Improvement and improvising is done at all times.

Larry Page is also a great team builder. In the early stages of the company, he was involved in the hiring of every employee. He is not a fan of traditional management and is always on the lookout for fresh graduates to absorb in the company.

Weaknesses. Larry Page has his weaknesses as well. One of his major weaknesses is his poor communication skills. As the CEO, he does not communicate more with the outside world. This has been costly in the past as there was a time Google Stock went down by 8% as a result of hum not holding a Q&A session with investors.

Another weakness is poor handling of adversity. In the recent past, there has been a number of complaints that has been as a result of the size of the company and its huge market share in advertising and search. As the CEO, he should look carefully into the backlash and costs of defending themselves.

The CEO relationship with the workers has also been questioned in the past. There are people who believe that he is not engaging the workers enough. His major critics see him as somehow rude and egomaniacal. In order to improve on his leadership, he should make efforts to be closer with his employees.

The Top Quality Value for Success

In my opinion, the major quality value that Page has is his never-say-die attitude. The perseverance that he has is out of the ordinary and he has reaped big from it. This is his most important value as without it, he could not have come up with Google in the first place as the journey towards success in Google was rough and long. Through this quality, he was able to convince his team to work and come up with the Google maps that have street view as he believed that the task could be achieved and never gave up on the idea.

Influence of communication and collaboration, and power and politics on group dynamics

Group dynamics refers to both the behavior and attitudes in a group. One of the processes that is involved in group dynamics is communication and collaboration. “When there is effective communication in a group, the team becomes mature as a group. This results in flexibility, functionality and the team starts to collaborate.”(Brown, 1988)There are a number of ways through which collaboration and communication can be achieved; regular meetings, training team members in some aspects of work and regular updating on the work progress. With effective communication and collaboration come good group dynamics.

Power and politics have a significant effect on group dynamics. The attitude that people in a group will have on those with power within the group will depend on how those with power treat them. In case there is fair treatment and the other members of the group feel appreciated, there will be good group dynamics. The dynamics will also depend on political affiliations of the members in the group. “The members with different affiliations will tend to have different behaviors and attitudes towards each other.” (Forsyth, 2010)The group dynamics are usually adversely affected by power and politics.

References

Brown, R. (1988). Group processes: Dynamics within and between groups. 40-54

Forsyth, D. R. (2010). Group dynamics. Cengage Learning. 62-70

White, C. (2007). Sergey Brin and Larry Page: The founders of Google. Search and you shall find. 31-45

Brezina, C. (2013). Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Eric Schmidt, and Google. Going Public. 60-71

Brandt, R. L. (2007). The Google Guys. Inside the brilliant minds of Google Founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. 30-42