Leadership in Organization
Executive Summary
Leadership positions are among the most important for any organization. An effective leader is one who can bring the team together to reach common goals and objectives. There are various examples of leaders who have expanded organizations.
Leaders like Steve Jobs are known for their attitudes and behavior. This report is based on Sergey Brin’s leadership attributes. He has been the anchor and the reason behind Google’s success. Sergey and Larry established Google 16 years ago, and since then, they have never looked back.
Sergey is one such leader who has played an instrumental role in the development of Google employees. Sergey realizes that employees are Google’s power, and Google can truly attract customers only when it has a talented pool of employees.
In turn, Google employees have also supported Sergey and Larry in their initiatives. Sergey and Larry have developed certain initiatives and plans to better connect with customers.
Introduction
It can be said that one thing that separates successful organizations is the presence of effective and efficient leadership. One thing that sets apart companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft is the presence of a strong leader at the top.
An effective leader is one who can drive the initiatives in the company. An effective leader is one who can think out of the box and can bring innovative changes in the organization. An effective leader is one who knows the meaning of calculated risk and who is willing to bear the risk in order to save his or her team.
It can be said that leadership is both an art and a science. Leadership is not only objective but also subjective and based on a number of parameters. It would also be correct to say that a leader requires the support and encouragement of his or her team (Parasnis, 2011).
In the end, leaders’ motivation levels can be high only when they have the support of their team.
The objective of this paper is to critically evaluate and analyze the leadership of a 21st century business leader. There are number of successful leaders, for this paper a leader ina large organizations is considered. This paper would focus to discuss the leadership style of Sergey Brin.
Larry and Sergey Brin established Google Inc. in 1998, and since then, the company has expanded to almost every part of the world. Google’s success depends a lot on its leadership attributes.
Larry has played an important role in integrating all the employees, and Sergey has been an important person handling Google’s external environment. The objective of this paper is to discuss Sergey Brin’s leadership style.
Organizational background, leadership attributes and style
Google Inc. was founded in 1998. The company was founded in the field of Information Technology, which was a growing field at the time, and Google took advantage of industry sentiments. Google’s objective is simple: to be innovative and creative.
Google has always believed in developing innovative products that can make customers’ lives easier. Sergey has been instrumental in the company’s success. Sergey has always believed that the company’s employees are its biggest assets.
Sergey has always believed to create a culture wherein employees are free to work. It is reported that Google has one of the best internal culture to work. Sergey has always remain closed to employees. He had taken several initiatives to ensure that the motivation levels of employees remain high.
For example, Sergey is always approachable by employees. Even an entry-level engineer from Google Bangalore can approach Sergey and discuss the policies (Lara, 2014). Sergey strongly believes that Google employees are the biggest source of new ideas and innovation.
Google has also focused to link the personal goals and objectives of employee to the organizational goals and objectives.
The leadership style of Sergey can be best described as democratic. Sergey believes that the decision in the organization should be the joint responsibility of all the employees.
Leadership traits
Sergey has always believed that Google would be able to reach the exponential growth rate because it has the support of its employees. Some of the traits of leadership of Sergey can be discussed as:
Employee first: Several organizational theories have suggested that customers should always be put first, and in fact, all employees and managers should work to make customers happy. Sergey believes that employees are Google’s first line of customers.
He believes that Google’s customers cannot be happy unless their employees are happy. It is the employees who eventually work on strategies and policies to make customers happy. Therefore, Sergey adopted the policy of ‘Employee first’.
One of Sergey’s most important leadership traits differentiates him from other business leaders. Sergey has always believed that the company should treat its employees as partners and always work to protect their rights.
Team player: Sergey has always believed that best learning is learning from team and organizations can achieve their goals and objectives only when management adopts a team centric approach.
Sergey has developed a culture wherein Google employees are encouraged to form teams. The teams formulated at Google are used not only for official and formal purposes but also for informal purposes.
For example, teams at Google usually go out for team outings. Sergey has developed a rule that every team at Google should go out for team outings without fail.
Sergey believed that employees’ productivity would improve further if they worked in teams. Sergey has always played an important role in improving the synergy among team workers.
He has always believed that a team should have a pyramid-like structure, with the company’s senior leaders at the top. Sergey has always focused on staying at the top.
Effective and transparent communication: Sergey believes that “knowing what you want accomplished may seem clear in your head, but if you try to explain it to someone else and are met with a blank expression, you know there is a problem”.
Sergey has always believed that more than half of management’s problems and issues can be resolved with effective and transparent communication. Sergey believes that effective communication is two-way. Effective communication is not only about saying something but also about listening to others.
In modern organizations, management communicates their policies to employees but spends little time understanding their problems and grievances.
Sergey has developed a platform in Google so that employees can reach managers with just an email. Healthy lines of communication are crucial for training new members and creating a productive work environment.
Sergey also believes that company should have transparent communication channels with employees. Transparency helps to create a healthy environment in the company.
Sergey has demonstrated the best practices of effective and transparent communication at Google. Every employee, engineer, and manager must have a transparent communication channel to interact.
Confidence, Optimism, and commitment: One of Sergey Brin’s biggest assets is his confidence. In an organizational setting, confidence is the most sought-after attribute of leaders. Sergey believes that confidence is the most important characteristic of leaders because employees cannot be confident of their work unless their leader is confident.
Sergey has always shown confidence and commitment towards the organization. Sergey expects a great dal of commitment from employees working at Google and he can expect the commitment because he is unconditionally committed towards the growth of Google.
It can be said that confidence, optimism, and commitment are three pillars of Sergey’s leadership attributes. Many researchers believe that confidence and optimism are drivers of risk-taking ability. Google has witnessed an exponential growth rate in the market. It is one such company that is well-known in almost every country and state (McKelvey, 2008).
People of all ages, races, and cultures use Google as a search engine or email. This has been possible only because Sergey demonstrated the required confidence. This has been possible only because Sergey and Larry were able to visualize the future of the company. This all has been possible only when Sergey and Larry hired committed employees.
Intuition and decision-making ability: As discussed above, leadership is both an art and a science. When leading a team through uncharted waters, there is no roadmap on what to do. Everything is uncertain, and the higher the risk, the higher the pressure.
That is where the natural intuition has to kick in. The natural intuition is one of the biggest leadership attributes of Sergey. Intuition and personal instinct is something that comes in the art part of the leadership. Sergey has believed that his intuition and decision-making ability could help Google to continue its growth.
Its intuition has helped the company emerge as a successful player in developing countries like India and China. Sergey has always believed in a democratic style of leadership. The important decisions at Google are made with the consent of important stakeholders.
The company also believes that its employees are its most important stakeholders. Making tough decisions is always difficult. Sergey believes that this difficulty can be overcome if management has the support of its employees.
Ability to inspire: An effective leader is one who is able to inspire the team members. Sergey believes that he should be able to get the team working. He believes that an effective leader is not only the individual contributor but also he or she should be a team player.
To say the least, a leader is effective when he or she can inspire the people under him (Brezina, 2012). Sergey knows that the team’s performance matters, so he focuses on inspiring Google’s employees. Sergey has taken several steps to inspire Google’s employees.
For example: Every year, all the employees of Google are given New Year gift. These gifts act as inspiring agents for employees. It also helps to increase the motivation level of employees.
For example: Every year, all the employees are taken out on a tour with other team members. This offsite is considered as an inspiration gesture from leaders.
For example, Google provides free lunches and dinners to its employees. It also helps to inspire employees.
The above-discussed initiatives were started by Sergey in order to ensure that motivation levels of employee remain high.
Motivational theories and Sergey
Sergey Brin strongly believes that one of the most important drivers of employee productivity is motivation. Sergey strongly supports Maslow’s theory of motivation and believes that employees can be motivated by both monetary and non-monetary measures.
Google is known to pay the best in-class salary. Sergey also realizes that different employees in the company would have different levels of motivation (Boggs, 2008). For this reason, Sergey believes in Maslow need theory of motivation. It can be depicted as:
Conclusion
The above paper discussed Sergey Brin’s leadership style and attributes. He has been a great leader of Google and has brought It to heights in the last 16 years. It is expected that Google will continue to grow and flourish under his leadership.
He is also lucky to have a partner like Larry, who has supported him on every step. Sergey has always shown confidence in his skills, his partnership with Larry and his employees. The above paper discussed the leadership traits of Sergey and it also discuss the various qualities that Sergey posses.
Google Inc. is on the right path of growth and development. It is expected that Google will continue to grow at this exponential rate.
Sergey also believes in developing a culture wherein other leaders can be nurtured inside Google. Sergey would like to see Google in a position where its employees can emerge as leaders and take Google to new avenues.
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