Introduction
The socialized charismatic leadership model considers a leader as one who inspires the team and helps its members to see and fulfill their values. Personal qualities and communication skills are central to this model, enabling an evaluation of the leader’s efficiency. Satya Nadella, a current Microsoft CEO, can be considered an example of a strong leader who successfully restored Microsoft’s leadership position in the IT market. He was born and living in India, was admitted to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the late 1980s, and successfully graduated in 1990. Since the 1990s, he lives in the United States with his family. He worked in several IT companies and eventually at Microsoft, where his career grew steadily. He became the company’s CEO in 2014, and his business approach helped the company improve its position in the market. Nadella is an excellent example of a socialized charismatic leader, and to see how he corresponds to it, one must evaluate the model and, then, Nadella’s approach to the business.
Socialized Charismatic Leader: An Overview
Socialized charismatic leadership is based on a leader’s charisma and social skills that enable them to communicate successfully with employees. Charisma is associated with strong, expressive delivery, high confidence, self-esteem, and readiness to take risks with full responsibility (Sacavém et al., 2017). Social skills, along with charisma, include the ability to understand others, find approaches to various people, and a high commitment to the common deal, showing an example to team members. Emotional intelligence (EI), which enables a leader to understand their own and others’ emotions and influence them, is crucial in this case (Lussier & Achua, 2016). Such a leader feels unity with the team, which is called socialized power: it enables the team to reach goals and objectives, solve problems, and create a profit for the business. People are naturally attracted to a charismatic leader’s strong personality, and they use this attraction to form strong connections with their team and aspire everyone to fulfill their common goal (Zúquete, 2022). Therefore, three interconnected qualities are necessary for a socialized charismatic leader: strong charisma, high EI, and socialized power.
Satya Nadella Leadership Principles
Satya Nadella aims to motivate his employee to work for a purpose, helping them to see it and showing how they can reach it. In addition, he constantly searches for new ways to improve Microsoft’s efficiency: although sometimes they lead to failures, the profit is large in case of success. For example, he embraces open-source code development and buys various startups, renewing and expanding Microsoft’s functionality (Borgogni, 2021). Linux, Windows’s open-source rival, was embraced and used in Microsoft Azure, and some of its elements were incorporated into Windows itself. While there were unsuccessful deals, such as with Nokia, that led to financial losses, Nadella’s risky decisions were usually successful for the company, such as Linux incorporation or LinkedIn acquisition (Borgogni, 2021). Nadella’s primary goal is value fulfillment for all Microsoft workers: he ensures that everyone knows why they work and what they will obtain as a result of their work. He considers every job in the company as important, from top managers to ordinary programmers, and helps all employees to feel good in their places (Borgogni, 2021). Those leadership principles
Summary
One can see that all three socialized charismatic leadership qualities apply to Nadella: charisma, emotional intelligence, and socialized power. As mentioned, charisma is a unique quality that enables aspiring people working with the leader to feel fulfillment from their work (Zúquete, 2022). Taking the increased success of Microsoft, one can see that he has charisma and his employees’ efficiency is high. He seems to understand his employees and be empathetic to them, meaning he has good emotional intelligence (Borgogni, 2021). His socialized power and the ability to use it is high, too: his employees work together for the company’s success and his risky and bald decisions, such as LinkedIn acquiring, were profitable for the company. Thus, Satya Nadella can be considered a socialized charismatic leader, as his leadership practice fully corresponds to the principles of such leadership.
Conclusion
Socialized charismatic leadership is based on strong charisma, emotional intelligence, and socialized power. It is efficient, as it focuses on communication and relationships with team members, which is the key to the success of teamwork. Charisma is the necessary component of such leadership: it is a unique quality that includes confidence, a firm commitment to the team’s ideas, aspirations, and the ability to aspire others. Emotional intelligence enables a leader to perceive and understand others, while socialized power is necessary to formulate united goals and reach them. In addition, socialized charismatic leadership includes the readiness to take risks to obtain a larger reward, taking full responsibility for this risk in case of failure, without regrets. Satya Nadella, a Microsoft CEO, corresponds to all those qualities: he has a strong charisma that enables him to motivate employees on all levels. His emotional intelligence helps him perceive all workers on all jobs in the company and help them when necessary. Lastly, his socialized power was expressed by bold decisions, which eventually led to Microsoft’s success and restoration as one of the industry leaders.
References
Borgogni, D. (2021). Satya Nadella bio: Life overview of Microsoft’s CEO. Business Chronicler. Web.
Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2016). Leadership: Theory, application & skill development (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.
Sacavém, A., Martinez, L. F., da Cunha, J. V., Abreu, A. M., & Johnson, S. K. (2017). Charismatic leadership: A study on delivery styles, mood, and performance. Journal of Leadership Studies, 11(3), 21–38. Web.
Zúquete, J. P. (Ed.). (2022). Routledge international handbook of charisma. Routledge.