Leadership Styles
On this planet, we have different kinds of leaders with distinct characters that allow them to rule. These leaders can be inspirational, transformational, or transactional. Charismatic leaders are those who know how to connect and convince others to do what they believe is right or what they desire. These individuals are often referred to as qualified communicators.
Transformational Leadership
Transformation leaders are leaders who empower people to deliver unexpected outcomes or alter problems that appear to be unchangeable. A transactional leader motivates the workers by giving rewards to the best performers, and the poorly performed can be punished so that they can improve their performance with the aim of enhancing team building.
Travis Cordell Kalanick
Travis Cordell Kalanick is a known American businessman who is the founder of the peer-to-peer file sharing company Red swoosh which was started in the year 2001 with the help of Michael Todd. He is also a former CEO of transporting network company Uber, which he resigned as the CEO in June 2017. I would partially support the leadership style of Travis because, despite the bad culture which was at the Uber Company where women were sexually harassed, he had done a great job in the growth of that company. On the other hand, it is the nature of the entrepreneurship and majority of the leaders including Travis Kalanick to be aggressive, passionate and strong headed so that they can maintain their businesses.
Good Leadership Qualities
He had good leadership styles, and that is the reason why Uber had emerged successful. He also showed good leadership quality by accepting that he had done wrong and was ready to step out in June, this year. He is also perseverance and hardworking because it is through his hard work that he has emerged as one of the top richest people in America through the growth of the companies where he played his proper role as a leader (Wirtz, Jochen, and Christopher Tang 627). The most encouraging thing about him is that he made lots of mistakes just like any other leader, where he said he used to learn from those mistakes and moves on.
Transformational Leadership Qualities
Travis has the character of a transformational leader where as I mentioned earlier, this is the types of leaders that inspire people to achieve unexpected results in an organization or a company. Travis was able to initiate teamwork and also increased the overall efficiency of Uber. He always had a vision, goals, and objectives that he needed to accomplish as a leader where he looked at the past things which the company had accomplished what they could do with the current situation and why it was to be done. The biggest task he played was to inspire and motivate the staffs within the Uber Company to contribute towards achieving a particular target. Once he motivated and inspired his employees, he was sure of positive outcomes and hence the growth of the company. Everybody loves to be inspired, and a good leader should be an inspirational tool to other people.
Charismatic Leadership
Charismatic leaders know how to communicate and persuade people. Travis can meet the characters of a charismatic leader and one of the Uber managers (Frederique Dame) wrote on Facebook saying that he doesn't think people can comprehend the complexity of what is to be the CEO of Uber and how Travis is an inherent part of this company, by inspiring all of the staffs daily to hustle and make things happen. When Travis was the CEO, he used stagecraft and imagery at apple events to convince his employees and customers their goals were significant and more meaningful than simply selling new computers. His vision also drove the employees to unusual length because he encouraged them to work hard and become richer than him. Other people love charismatic leaders, and this is what is happening at Uber where the majority of the staffs can forgive Travis and welcomes him back to be their leader once again.
Transactional Leadership
Transactional leaders use power and incentives to motivate employees to perform at their best where the leader motivates subordinate by exchanging gifts or rewards for the good performing staffs. Travis was focused on team building, motivation and collaboration with the employees at different levels in the company. He was setting goals and incentives for the Uber Company to push his workers to higher performance levels, and also to grow the company at large. With the help of Travis in giving reward and punishment as a transactional leader, what started as an app to request black cars in a few metropolitan areas, is now changing the cities around the world (Townsend and Olivia 4). Being a transactional leader, Travis has promoted the growth of Uber despite its current situation; it is still among the best companies that have also created employment too many people all over the world.
Benefits and Drawbacks
Travis's approach to leadership has some benefits and lessons we can learn from it, this is because he was an aggressive and a positive thinker- he was dynamic in his thinking, and this contributed largely to the positive growth of the Uber Company. Additionally, his resignation was the one most mature thing he did to avoid conflict and to create time for a better auditing process of the general functioning of the company. This was an easy way to influence leaders in case of such accusations and allegations coming up, acting like a real leader to accept his mistakes and was very flexible.
Travis as the CEO had some drawbacks as well; these are the cultures in the company which was poor since he protected managers who sexually harassed the female subordinates and other women. Also discouraged the employees to report sexual harassment to the HR especially those employees that had higher power took advantage of the other subordinate since the rules worked for them, as the CEO Travis needed to have a stand and act accordingly towards such individuals, but all along he was for it and did not punish them. Moreover, he encouraged low professionalism-he did an inadequate vetting process and did not mind to hire people with little skills and knowledge on their work especially the 10000 drivers most were not skilled to the task.
Conclusion
Travis has been a leader in many different firms where others have had success during his ruin while others have had downfalls. The current scandal of sexual harassment in the Uber Company has made him resign due to the public demand. It is high time he starts his own companies and spread the knowledge of leadership to the young people who are looking for jobs. He has been a good leader and has shown excellent leadership qualities to the whole world especially in the previous Uber Company hence it is high time he shares his qualities to others especially the youths.
Work Cited
Wirtz, Jochen, and Christopher Tang. "Uber: Competing as market leader in the us versus being a distant second in china." SERVICES MARKETING: People Technology Strategy. 2016. 626-632.
Townsend, Olivia. "Uber: How Many Miles Left?." The Market Mogul (2015).
