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Introduction
This assignment is a discussion on the topic of leadership. It is based on three business leaders namely Ingvar Kamprad (founder of IKEA), Mohammed ben rashed al-Maktoum (ruler of Dubai) and Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon.com). The discussion starts by looking at the concept of leadership and related concepts. It then goes on to discuss the three leaders named above by looking at their background, their leadership styles and how their leadership styles compare.
Discussion
The Concept of Leadership
Leadership has been defined as the ability of a person to influence other people to do things, which they would not have done without the influence. People with this ability are referred to as leaders. Leaders are found in different settings and contexts ranging from the family, school, government and organizations; formal and non-formal, as well as profit and nonprofit organizations.
In an organizational setting, leaders are responsible for showing others “the way”. The leaders may have or may not have executive powers in the organization and they may be or, may not be managers (Northouse 45). Leading in an organizational context entails the leader consolidating the efforts and resources of the organization and focusing on the future by setting up a vision for the organization, which it intends to achieve in a given period of time, using the consolidated efforts and resources.
According to Russel Consulting, leading entails some distinct elements which include building and sustaining teamwork, strategic thinking, managing conflicts, coaching, inspiring a shared vision, problem solving, performance management and accountability, decision making, delegation, systems thinking, leading change, dealing with ambiguities, developing trust, employee development, customer service, innovation and creativity, emotional intelligence, servant leadership, quality and productivity improvement.
Effective Leadership
This is the ability of a leader to consolidate, maximize and utilize the available resources both in the internal and external environment to the organization so as to attain the objectives of the organization or of the society. Effective leadership therefore aims at realizing results which are extra ordinary, in a consultative manner and with minimum utilization of resources.
Effective Decision Making
This is the ability of a leader to make decisions which are sound, consultative, participatory, inclusive and timely. Effective decisions have impacts both in the short term and long term and are also highly acceptable by majority of the stakeholders and those affected by the decisions.For a leader to make effective decisions, he or she must do a cost benefit analysis, consider the effects of the decision on the organization and who should be included in the decision making and who should not be included.
Self-Managing Teams
These are also referred to as self-directed teams. It refers to a group of people who coordinate, oversee and manage the work they do on a day to day basis. They collectively handle assignments; make decisions related to the production of the organization, as well as make decisions regarding their work plan or schedules as well on how to approach problems or challenges which face them in their operations.
Some characteristics of self-managing teams include the task of producing a definite product, one on one interaction in their work, control in the management and execution of tasks and exercising control over interdepended tasks or duties.
Ingvar Kamprad
Background
He was born in 1926 in Southern Sweden and was brought up in a farm called Elmtaryd which is proximal to Agunnaryd village. As a young boy, he engaged himself in selling matches using his bicycle. Within a short time, he expanded the business and started selling fish, pencils, pens, Christmas decorations and seeds.
When he was 17 years of age, he was rewarded by his father for exceling in school. Due to his passion in business, he used the funds given to him by his father as a reward as capital in his small business, where he founded a company called IKEA in 1943. The name of the company is derived from his names Ingvar Kamprad, the name of the farm he was brought up in (Elmtaryd) and the village which was proximal to the farm (Agunnaryd).
When IKEA was founded, it was dealing with selling of wallets, picture frames, pens and other goods. With time, the business expanded and Kamprad started another business of delivering mails using the local milk van. By 1951, IKEA had expanded and was converted from mail operations business to furniture manufacturing business.
Kamprad relied on local manufactures instead of foreign ones as sources of his furniture and this enabled him to put the costs of his furniture relatively low compared to other furniture dealers. In 1953, he opened his first show room for furniture where people could come and see the furniture and explore the quality.
From then, he stuck to the business of furniture and as of today, his company is the largest furniture business worldwide with operations in 34 countries and is currently entering new markets such as Japan, China and Russia.
Since 1976, Kamprad has been staying in Switzerland where he worked as a CEO till 1999 when he reached the retirement age for CEOs in the country. According to the economist, the INGKA, an affiliate of IKEA was the world’s richest charitable foundation with an estimated value of $ 36 billion and according to the Forbes list of world’s billionaires, Ingvar Kamprad wealth was estimated at $33 billion in 2011.
Lifestyle
Kamprad is one of the richest men in the world who do not embrace luxury but instead believes in frugality. He is known to drive an old Volvo, takes cheap meals at IKEA, encourages his employees to write on both sides of paper, uses the subway to walk to work, uses furniture from IKEA in his home and purchases Christmas presents after Christmas.
As a way of avoiding high taxes for his business, he established trusts, foundations and holdings in 1982. Kamprad has been extremely involved in creating IKEA’s organizational structure. In 1976, he published what he called IKEA concept of frugality which was titled ‘A Testament of a Furniture Dealer’.
Since then, the company has been working under the guide lines of the concept. He also co-authored ‘the Leading by Design: The IKEA Story’ with Bertil Torekull, where he describes the business philosophy and the trials and tribulations he went through as he was founding the company which came to be known as IKEA.
Leadership Style
Ingvar Kamprad leadership style is transformative. Transformative leadership involves developing motivation, morale and performance of the team through variety of mechanisms.
The leader connects to the follower’s sense of identity, challenges the team to take greater ownership for their work and understanding the strengths and weakness of the team so that the leader can align them with tasks that they can perform well. Transformative leadership helps in realizing positive change. Leaders using this philosophy are energetic, enthusiastic and passionate. In this sense, the leaders are concerned, involved and also focused on helping every member of the group succeed.
As the leader of the business, he has succeeded in making IKEA very differentiated, which has seen it embrace innovation and invention. Through this, the company has managed to make new designs of furniture every now and then, thus becoming very competitive in the market.
The employees have also emulated his hard work, devotion and commitment to business ethics, rules and regulations and strategies which propel the business ahead of its competitors. His philosophy of focusing on what is odd has made the company become well known and also very stable and prosperous.
Even though he is a transformative leader, he has some elements of transactional leadership. Transactional leadership style entails exchange between the leaders and the followers. This is achieved by motivating and directing followers by appealing to their self-interest.
The goal of this leadership is to enhance the team to follow instructions through a system of rewards and punishments. The exchange between the leader and the team aims to achieve performance goals. This leadership style is insufficient in developing maximum leadership potential because leaders emphasize on detailed short term goals, standard rules and procedures.
Since the IKEA business is more of a family business than it is a conventional business, Kamprad, remains the person with the final say in virtually all spheres of the business and consequently, no major decision or business initiative can be undertaken without his consultation and this means that the managers are to some extend limited in their capacity to bring in their ideas and experience in the business.
Mohammed ben rashed al-maktoum
He was born on 1949 of Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum as the third son. He belongs to the Dubai ruling family of Al Maktoum and the Al-Falasi (the tribal leader). As early as at the age of four years, Mohamed was educated on Islamic and Arabic studies.
At the age of six years that is in 1955 he enrolled at Al Ahmedia School for his formal education where he schooled for four years before moving to Al Shaab School and two years later went to Dubai secondary school. At the age of twenty, he enrolled for the English language in the Bell Educational Language School in United Kingdom. He is married to two wives and they are blessed with 21 children; thirteen daughters and eight sons.
He has a lot of interest in horse breeding and racing and owns the Ballysheehan Stud in Ireland as well as Gainsborough in Kentucky and Versailles in the United States.
He also hosts the Dubai world cup for world horse racing. On January 2006, he became the ruler of Dubai after the death of Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum and was elected the vice president of UAE by the supreme council in the same month. On February the same year, the UAE president Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan appointed him as the UAE prime minister with the approval of the council.
Leadership
His leadership style is that of participative and visionary leadership. In participative leadership philosophy, all members of the team are involved in identifying essential goals and development procedures for reaching those goals. The leader facilitates rather than simply issuing orders or making assignments. Individuals are able to express their creativity and demonstrate abilities and talents. The teams give their suggestions freely and are involved in decision making.
Morale, capacity and relations between the leader and team are greatly improved. This leadership style contributes to teamwork and employee performance as well as contributing to productive work environment. If participative leadership style is adopted by leaders, employees are more likely to use their skills and capabilities to their fullest.
As a participative leader, Mohammed’s vision is focused on excellence in everything he engages himself in. Through his leadership, the UAE has become very successful in various sectors including education and tourism among others. It has become a business hub in the region to be emulated by other countries. For instance, in February 2007, he unveiled the Dubai vision 2015, which is a blue print for the countries’ financial and economic progress by the year 2015.
In April the same year, he unveiled the government’s strategic plan to spur development in the country through investing the federal resources in a more efficient and diligent manner so as to ensure transparency and accountability in all federal organs. In May the same year, he launched the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation which was estimated to be worth $10 billion.
The objective of the foundation was to enhance human development through investing in the development of knowledge, education and scientific research. It also aimed at enhancing business leadership, propagating knowledge, rejuvenating culture, youth empowerment, enhancing understanding among people of various cultures and conserving national heritage.
In September 2007, he launched the Dubai Cares, a campaign which raised Dh 3.4 billion in a span of two months which was used in humanitarian activities like eradication of poverty and promotion of knowledge and education especially among the world’s poorest children. In the same month, he launched the Noor Dubai initiative whose objective was to provide eye care services to an estimated number of 1 million people in the third world and prevent curable blindness.
Due to his participative style of leadership, he has established various awards in UAE and Dubai whose aim is to encourage hard work and innovation and creativity as well as dedication. Such awards include Young Business Leaders Award, the Dubai Government Excellence Programme, the Arab Journalism Award and the Dubai Holy Qur’an Award.
Under his leadership, the country has witnessed milestones in economic and social development including the introduction of e-government, establishment of various companies with global appeal in various fields such as tourism, ports, commerce and real estate which employ many people as well as the establishment of the Dubai Metro.
The country has also witnessed the launching of several projects which enhance culture such as the Universal Museums, the Muhammad the Messenger Museum and the Mohammed bin Rashid Gardens. He has described his leadership philosophy in a book called ‘my vision’, where he offers a comprehensive account of how UAE and Dubai have come to their present day economic status.
Jeff Bezos
He was born on January 1964 in New Mexico to a teenage mother who divorced his husband and remarried to another man. Bezos started demonstrating passion in science at a very early age, when he as a toddler tried to dismantle his crib using a screw driver and also used an electric bell to scare away siblings from his room. He attended school at River Oaks up to grade six
After attending Oaks school, his family moved to Florida where he continued with his education up to high school in Miami Palmetto. At the same time, due to his passion in science, he attended the Student Science Training Program in Florida where he received a silver award in 1982.
Thereafter; he enrolled at the Princeton University to study physics and later on enrolled for a bachelor of science at the summa cum laude. After graduating from the Princeton University in 1986, he worked in various firms and at various capacities including Fitel, Bankers trust and D.Eshaw up to 1994 when he founded amazon.com, which was rated by the Forbes at a net worth of $6.5 in 2011.
Leadership Style
His leadership style is task oriented. Task oriented leaders are those who concentrate on the task being undertaken, with the belief that their followers would emulate their actions and likewise commit themselves in getting the task accomplished.
As a task oriented leader, he is known to focus on the tasks being undertaken by the employees to ensure that they pay attention to details so as to complete the tasks in a comprehensive manner. Through his task oriented style of leadership; he has managed to spearhead the development of amazon.com to levels which very few competitors can outwit it.
Due to his style of leadership, he was named as the person of the year 1999 by the time magazine. He also received an honorary doctorate degree in science and technology from the Mellon University in the year 2008 as well as nominated as one of the America’s best leaders in 2008 by the U.S news and world report.
Comparison of the three leaders
The three leaders demonstrate different leadership styles and have managed to achieve various great things. Two of them (Jeff and Kamprad) seem to have similar leadership qualities.
What they share is the passion in what they are interested in. Kamprad is interested in and has a lot of passion in business which he started at a very early age by selling matches using his bicycle and used the profits to expand the business which ended up becoming one of the leading furniture shops in the word.
The same applies to Jeff, who started showing interest in science and technology at very early age where he used a screw driver to dismantle his crib. When he joined school, he did not choose any other career except science and technology and ended up with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and used this knowledge to establish his own company amazon.com.
The two differ in terms of their leadership styles. While Kamprad is a transformative leader with the ability to inspire and motivate his employees, Jeff is of the task oriented leadership style, which he uses to inspire his employees to be attentive to details.
Mohamed’s leadership is more of inheritance that it is a matter of passion. He inherits his leadership by virtue of being born in the royal family. It can be argued that he as a person may not be having passion in the position he holds as a leader like the cases of Jeff and Kamprad.
His style of leadership is driven more by competition and the desire to demonstrate that he is able to lead rather than by passion. His leadership compares to that of Jeff in that he is a task oriented leader, which he demonstrated by initiating a lot of projects to help the development of the country and sees to it that they are effectively undertaken to their completion.
Works Cited
Northouse, Peter Guy. Leadership: Theory and Practice. 2009.45. New York, NY: SAGE.
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