Leadership, as demonstrated by many scholars, has a direct impact on the control, performance, and success of most of the companies and businesses. Various managers opt to use a wide range of leadership styles, which are also tantamount to the personal traits and behaviors. A case study of Larry Ellison demonstrates the applicability of the rare skills and leadership styles to achieve an unprecedented level of success, which would then serve as an example and emulation by many leaders. Ellison, who is ranked among the top ten richest personalities in the world, is renowned for his extravagant living and big talks, unlike other people within his class. However, his demonstration of an equally unique leadership style that often amazes many people earns him a reputation coveted by numerous leaders. Additionally, his success at the company he cofounded puts him at a higher rank, making him one of the biggest and controversial leaders.
Introduction
The kind of leadership traits, behaviors and styles employed by the company’s management have a direct impact on its success rate. Although not all the leadership styles and behaviors may be applicable to every organization, it is imperative for the managers to consider the appropriate ones in the bid to foster the performance of their firms. Larry Ellison, a former CEO of the software company Oracle, presents with a unique leadership style that propels the company through difficult times to become one of the leading tech firms. Basing on Ellison’s leadership strategy, this paper focuses on his personality, leadership traits, and styles as evidenced by the greater success achieved by Oracle, the company he co-founded.
Ellison’s Personality and Leadership Traits
Laying on the background, Larry Ellison is a co-founder and a former CEO of Oracle Corporation, an American-based software company. Ellison co-founded the company in the 1970s when he first developed the idea of databases and transformed it to a project at CIA named ‘Oracle.” During this period, the company underwent various challenges, among them poor leadership and errors in the management decision-making processes. The challenges are believed to have shaped Ellison’s mode of leadership, which transformed him into a unique type of a leader with a unique leadership style. The company later stabilized under his leadership and it is now among the leading software companies worldwide. Despite the success in his work sphere, Ellison’s personal life has been debatable, characterized by extravagant living, owning a fleet of expensive luxury cars yachts and military jets.
Larry Ellison’s personality has often stood out, owing to its significance to his leadership traits and success. There exist discussions as to whether an individual’s personal traits are genetic or influenced by the environment, however, Ellison’s personal life remains a puzzle to many. Psychologists now admit to the study of the people’s personality traits for the purposes of understanding their personalities as it is the case with Ellison. In an analysis by Bauer and Erdogan, (2012), Lewis Goldenberg’s “Big Five” model of personality description is presented, which allows for the explanation of an individual’s personality using the five key aspects. The major terms include extroversion, being open to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness, as well as the emotional stability. These factors also form the basis for the description of Ellison’s personality in relation to his leadership style and success.
One of Ellison’s outstanding trait is that he has been much sociable, thus being characterized as an extrovert. Through the analysis of his speeches and the reactions of his spectators, he exhibits unmeasurable extroversion. For a long time, Ellison has been known for his cheerful talks that are sometimes characterized by loose utterances, especially when talking about his competitors. Ellison’s extroversion and openness are also evident in his many interviews with media houses and other personalities, in which he literary talks about his extravagance of living and more about his riches. Additionally, Ellison has demonstrated a little conscientiousness regarding his speech and whenever he addresses people, he is known for his blatant use of callous language. However, his demonstration of high self-esteem has made him be described as a person with a strong internal locus of control.
Focusing on his leadership traits, Ellison has often regarded as a risk-taker, visionary as well as a performance-oriented figure that every manager would like to emulate (Finkle " Scoresby, 2012). Ellison has been described as a person who staunchly believes in his visions and would often disregard the input of his advisers if they would consider his moves as being unwise. Right from the beginning, Ellison has inculcated his subjects with the art of holding onto visions and making them realizable, even as he shares his story about the development of an idea he obtained from one of the IBM papers into one of the leading software companies: Oracle. Secondly, Ellison has always maintained that image is everything to him as a manager, which contributed to his stern moves concerning anything that touches on his company’s brand name. Ranging from bashing people and his “poor listening skills,” Ellison has remained firm on employees and any other associates in the bid to safeguard the brand name, a move that has seen Oracle become progressively successful (Bazarov, 2017).
Despite him being described as a “jerk” sometimes for his callous moves, Ellison’s motivational style of leadership remains adorable (Bazarov, 2017). His demonstration that money is his major motivator is unlikely of other renowned billionaires, despite him being ranked among the world’s richest people. Notably, Ellison’s high value for money has been his source of motivation, which he consequently passes down the culture of self-motivation to the employees (Bazarov, 2017).
Ellison’s Behavior: Task-Oriented or People/Relationship-Oriented?
Bauer and Erdogan (2012) present a model of leadership that incorporates both task-oriented and relationship-based modes of leading people. In their description, a leader should have the capability to create relationships, build up people in functional groups while at the same time maintaining a high focus on performance (Bauer " Erdogan, 2012). Similarly, Hiriyappa (2009) reiterates on the manager’s ability to maintain both the relationships and performance among the workers as the biggest drive towards the organization’s success. The interoperability, socialism, and personality can be jointly utilized to realize functionality and task-enforcement in an organization (Hiriyappa, 2009). For Larry Ellison, the perspective on leadership is a bit different as he focusses more on being task-oriented than people/relationship-oriented.
Despite his highly coveted success in leadership, Ellison has always maintained a focus on the organizational performance rather than other people’s input and views about his operational styles. Most often, Ellison would demonstrate little conscientiousness about his relationship with other people and would keenly scrutinize his employees’ performance rather than their personalities (Finkle " Scoresby, 2012). Occasionally, he would even describe some of the key performers in his list of employees despite him barely meeting them physically. His tough-talking and “no-nonsense” attitude when it comes to organizational performance have often put off some of the uncompliant employees, but such moves are considered “none of his business” (Finkle " Scoresby, 2012). However, Ellison still recognizes the need to maintain a workable relationship with the task-oriented and hardworking employees.
Ellison’s success has been attributed to the commitment and input of some of the key allies and performers in his company, which shows his value for workable relationships. With a team of few managers and advisers, Ellison has been able to make essential decisions and the routine management of the company. Through a series of acquisitions and co-operation with other key performers, Ellison came to appreciate the fact that functional relationships are worth upholding.
Larry Ellison’s Leadership Style
Hiriyappa (2009) describes various types of leadership styles, among them democratic/participative, free-rein and transactional leadership, among others. Each type of the leadership style is reflective of the type of the leader and the outcomes are dependent on the reception and inculcation of such styles (Hiriyappa, 2009). Considering Larry Ellison’s style of leadership, Bazarov (2017) explains that he has often criticized for delegating much of the duties to the employees earning him a delegative style of leadership. In this leadership style, the leader would often assign duties to others, which is advantageous in that it creates inspiration and satisfaction among the employees while the downside is that it is prone to chaos (Hiriyappa, 2009).
As much as Ellison’s keen interest was placed on the workers’ performance, an outrage has always been created over his high tendency of executing many delegations. The fact that he would demonstrate less commitment to official duties while he would often be involved in personal luxurious activities such as yachting would create stirs among the people. However, the success rate realized by Ellison is an indication of his unique style of leadership over Oracle.
Conclusion
The leadership styles employed by the managers would reflect the direction and the performance of the individual companies and businesses. Larry Ellison, an American billionaire businessman, demonstrates a unique character and leadership style that leaves many people surprised over his progressive success rate. Known for his controversies and luxurious living, Ellison demonstrative a highly extroversive life rarely displayed by other personalities of his calibre. However, his success story is co-founding and building up of Oracle demonstrates his uniqueness in terms of personality and leadership.
References
Bauer, T., " Erdogan, B. (2012). An Introduction to Organizational Behavior
(Vol. 1.0). Flat World Knowledge. Retrieved from http://lardbucket.org
Bazarov, M. (2017, May). Ellison - Organisational Behaviour analysis of personality, leadership, team management, motivation. Business. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/MirazizBazarov1/ellison-organisational-behaviour-analysis-of-personality-leadership-team-management-motivation
Finkle, T. A., " Scoresby, R. B. (2012, October). Larry Ellison and Oracle Corporation - Journal of the International Academy for Case Studies, Vol. 18, Issue 8, October 2012 | Online Research Library: Questia Reader. Retrieved July 23, 2018, from https://www.questia.com/read/1G1-322781020/larry-ellison-and-oracle-corporation
Hiriyappa, B. (2009). Organizational Behavior. New Age International.
