Question 1
Personality assessment
According to the leadership trait theory, leaders tend to possess specific physical or psychological characteristics that make them able to outstand and lead the others (followers) (Kliem 2). Despite the fact that the trait leadership approach is usually based on researching the character traits of famous historical personalities, it can be used to investigate the leadership of modern leaders of international corporations.
Current assignment focuses on investigating the personality traits of Eric Schmidt, the world-known former CEO of Google, who managed to significantly develop a unique organizational culture of Google and actively promote innovation.
One of the crucial traits that helped Eric Schmidt lead in a successful way was conscientiousness. After having produced a highly interesting PhD at the University of California Berkeley, Mr.Schmidt worked in a range of IT companies, continuously producing added value and getting promotions. For instance, having joined Sun Microsystems as a software manager, Eric Schmidt soon became the director of software engineering and a vice-president. Thereafter he ended up as president of Sun Technology Enterprises. A combination of excellent professional knowledge, management skills and conscientiousness helped Mr. Schmidt to reach a position of Google’s CEO.
An important character trait of Mr. Schmidt that also helped him continuously improve himself as a leader is his disposition to self-development. He also seems deprived of the feeling of arrogance. Combining the above traits, Eric Schmidt found it extremely useful for him to hire a coach to ensure a continual observance of Mr. Schmidt’s performance and its improvement (Schmidt 1)
Сconscientiousness, openness, extraversion, a disposition to self-development and readiness to listen to the advice of others represent personality traits that have helped Mr. Schmidt to reach the position of Google’s CEO and successfully lead others.
Question2
Leadership behaviors
The core of Google’s success deals with an ability to develop and introduce innovative technological products and services. As ideas highly matter for the development of innovations, Google’s leadership aims to introduce an innovation-friendly atmosphere, whereby each employee has a chance to introduce his novel ideas and get rewarded, if they appear to be useful for the development of new products and services of Google.
In view of the above, it is worth mentioning that Eric Schmidt promoted the application of distributed leadership and letting employees to solve problems they are most interested in. The reason for that was that Google employees already demonstrated a good track of solving problems they are personally and professionally interested in.
According to Spillane, there are three elements that form the cornerstone of the distributed leadership concept. Firstly, leadership practice is considered to be the central concern to be addressed by a leader, as well as in terms of the leader-follower relations. Leadership practice stems from the mutual influences of a leader, followers and a specific situation, wherein leadership is exercised (Spillane 4-5). All the above constitute the elements of leadership practice. Furthermore, specific emphasis is put on situation that partly defines leadership practices and is partly defined by them. At the same time, an important characteristic of distributed leadership deals with avoiding formal organizational structures, characterized by strong hierarchical relations.
That is why, Eric Schmidt supported the functioning of flat organizational structure in Google, where employees work in teams and have broad opportunities for communicating and collaborating. Apart from the horizontal cooperation between different teams, Eric Schmidt facilitated vertical cooperation, so that employees acquire c chance to communicate their ideas and concerns to the company’s top decision-makers.
It is also important to underline that, adhering to the principles of distributed leadership, Eric Schmidt also promoted shared decision-making, whereby employees could also participate. It is also essential to mention that the refusal from traditional organizational structures can be considered a symbol of challenging existing ideas and structures to introduce highly functional innovations. At the same time, he used teams to make the work of Google functional and ensure that at least several people work on the same project idea.
Apart from using flat organizational structure to reinforce the innovation-related performance of employees, Eric Schmidt also allowed employees to use a part of their time at work to elaborate on solutions to the problems they are most interested in. Each employee can use twenty percent of his/her time to explore such problems, and practice reveals that employees tend to be especially productive during the time, when they can set objectives themselves.
Google culture provides for creating an extremely broad range of employee benefits that allow fully concentrating on work. For instance, employees have continuous access to free cafes and snack bars, as well as medical services and fitness clubs. Apart from using non-traditional approaches to organizational structures and the facilitation of ideas generation by employees, Eric Schmidt introduced a range of leadership behaviors, aimed to strengthen the results of the ones, already mentioned. For instance, apart from maintaining all existing elements of a reward system (e.g., financial incentives, career opportunities, stock option plans, etc.), Eric Schmidt launched a tradition of creating a peer-reviewed lists of the best employees and personally encouraged them to continue working during a special “dinner with CEO”. He also promoted the creation of a five-hour long video called “The Factory Tour”, where employees, who developed new products, were introducing their ideas (Minimala et al. 1). Willing to prevent excessive bias, Mr. Schmidt based a promotion and reward system on peer review by colleagues and independent reviewers’ opinions. These steps helped him improve the motivation of employees and create new goals for them to reach.
Apart from the fact that Eric Schmidt doubtlessly adheres to the ideas of shared and distributed leadership, it is necessary to mention that his leadership style can be characterized as democratic. Democratic leadership style aims to encourage employees to actively participate in the functioning of the company. Thereby a leader serves as a mentor (coach) and mediator, rather than an individual to be followed by employees. The key term, used by Eric Schmidt, is empowerment. Working with Google, Mr. Schmidt puts significant efforts to let employees develop, not being squeezed within the hierarchical organizational structure, as it frequently happens in other companies.
Question 3
Approaches to motivation
Motivation remains one of the most broadly addressed domains of leadership and management studies. Starting from Maslow, who created a pyramid of human needs, professionals in the field of psychology, management and organizational science have been trying to identify incentives that can be most effectively used to motivate employees to improve the quality of their performance. During his work as a CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt used a variety of approaches to facilitate employees’ performance.
First of all, it is crucial to mention that he emphasized empowerment and professional development of employees as the ways, helping them to become effective participants of the system of distributed leadership. Secondly, by refusing from hierarchical organizational structure and centralized decision-making, Mr. Schmidt promoted enhanced decision-making opportunities for each of the company’s employees. Furthermore, by allowing employees to dedicate twenty percent of their time to the projects they invented themselves, Mr. Schmidt expressed his trust and respect in relation to Google’s employees. It is also necessary to mention that Eric Schmidt combined different types of rewards, including:
Non-financial incentives (being personally encouraged to continue work during the special dinner with the CEO of Google; becoming the protagonist of the film, telling about the performance of Google)
Financial (the use of financial awards for best ideas; career promotions) (Minimala et al. 1)
Google also pays high wages, has fully-fledged employee benefit system, as well as a unique organizational culture, where shared goals and values really matter. Even interns tend to get high wages, as well as other types of incentives, when working for Google. In his approaches to motivation, Eric Schmidt combines the evidence from the Maslow hierarchy of needs and Argyris’ theory of adult personality. Firstly, he manages to fulfill different types of employees’ needs to ensure their satisfaction and, in turn, better performance. For example, physical needs are being fulfilled with the help of free food, fitness centers and free medical services. At the same time, employees have a lot of chances to communicate. Esteem and self-actualization becomes possible through highly responsible work, involving a variety of complex tasks, and a chance to get multiple rewards.
Following the Argyris’ theory of adult personality, Eric Schmidt emphasizes employees’ responsibility (through distributed leadership), variety of tasks (including a chance to elaborate on own projects) and participative decision-making. The above elements promoted employees’ motivation and commitment to working with Google. Finally, it is also possible to mention that Eric Schmidt combined intrinsic (responsibility, achievement, self-development) and extrinsic (promotion, feedback, good working conditions) motivators to motivate employees to create innovative ideas (Analytical Technologies 1).
Works cited
Analytical Technologies. Theories of motivation. Analytech, 2013. Web. 9 March 2016.
Kleim, Ralph. Leading high performance projects. Boca Raton: J.Ross Publishing, 2004. Print.
Manimala, Matthew, Wasdani, Kishninchand. Distributed leadership at Google: lessons from the billion dollar brand. Ivey Business Journal, 2013. Web. 9 March 2016.
Schmidt, Erick. Best advice I ever got: hire a coach. Fortune 500 Archive, 2009. Web. 9 March 2016.
Spillane, James. Distributed leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012. Print.
