Introduction
Satya Nadella is an inspiring example of a leader who has reformed a large company through his management strategy. Young managers can use this example to develop leadership skills. This example can be viewed by dividing the situation into four thematic areas for convenience. These areas will be Nadella’s immediate destiny at Microsoft, managing conflict, building effective and efficient communication, and fostering diversity in the workplace.
Learning From Nadella’s Example
Examples of contemporary masters of their craft are inspiring and show that people can develop and walk a unique path to success in their field. Satya Nadella is one of such masters of his craft, who has made a revolution in the field of leadership and working with a team, with people, setting the priorities and accents of his work competently. It is always interesting to review his evolution and how it affected Microsoft because his leadership technique is unlike any existing.
Nadella and his Background
Nadella is not a born leader or a genius who was destined to become the CEO of Microsoft even before he was born. Initially, he was interested in engineering, and he studied in India. Management and business are what Nadella came to with time and experience. Starting at Microsoft, his path was also not perfect from the beginning: the recruiter said that Nadella should work on empathy.
Nadella and Authentic Leadership
Role-model management implies an active example of a leader who does more than hand out dry commands and criticizes his subordinates. The leader appears as an ordinary person who copes with the team and does not get hung up on poisonous criticism (Prakash, Bisla, & Rastogi, 2021, p. 102). Nadella was able to improve the efficiency of the corporation as the teams began to become emotionally involved in the outcome.
Comparing Leadership Styles
I agree with Nadella’s leadership style and develop it further. Like Nadella, I advocate freedom of opinion and expression in decision-making, and this process should include as many workers as possible, I think. I insist on long-term training, as I understand that employee confidence in their abilities is crucial for quality work. Unfortunately, I have not been able to use artificial intelligence to increase efficiency so far.
Leadership and Taking Risks
Nadella’s leadership model is fascinating in terms of risk management. According to his position, the leader exists to calm down and cope with the risk. Preventing or dealing with stakes in the markets is the responsibility of management, which must have the appropriate information to resolve the issue. I think Nadella would agree with me, but I believe that taking risks by management is not justified when these risks can negatively affect a large team.
Channeling Conflict
Modern leadership strategies allow people to manage conflicts at different levels. Nadella’s design allows for the elimination of conflicts in advance at an intense level since his leadership is based on constant improvement of the corporate and team culture. Conflict management is essential because only a team without conflicts can effectively create a product. Leadership ability to resolve disputes effectively in importance is in one of the first places in volume when deciding the question of business strategy.
Nadella and Conflict
Nadella’s developed corporate culture was based on colleagues’ trust in each other and the trust of superiors in subordinates. Workers discussed questions at the meetings; people were not worried about their opinions. The leader took responsibility for clarifying complex issues, so colleagues did not push these tasks onto each other (Recode, 2021). A conviction for mistakes was prohibited so that team members could effectively learn from these mistakes.
How Should Leaders Manage Conflict
It seems that the ideal leader tries not to avoid conflicts but tries to solve or prevent them. One way to quickly prevent war is to face the problem face to face. Leaders often delegate responsibilities to resolve emerging strife to others. These assistants do not have the authority to solve the problem. The courage to resolve disputes is significant to a leader. If a leader is lazy or cowardly in resolving conflicts, he (or she) will lose subordinates’ trust over time.
Areas of Conflict at Your Organization
Since in my company the majority of employees are young people under 25 years old, many conflicts arise from misunderstandings and haste. Sometimes employees criticize each other too harshly, lacking diplomatic skills. At universities, they do not receive sufficient skills for communication within the team, and many are not familiar with corporate ethics. A lack of experience affects the inability to assess the situation strategically.
Management of Conflict at Your Organization
Conflicts within the team are managed through out-of-office communication and improved personal relationships. Young people need to have friends and emotional support to be confident. This method of conflict resolution is not suitable for vertical power and managers. The CEO is obliged to hold a series of meetings with the actors to resolve disputes and offer the assistance of coaches or a new performance appraisal system (Harvard Business Review, 2021). It is essential for leaders to think about a new strategy of rewards and penalties for work done.
Effective Communication
Satya Nadella faced a host of challenges at Microsoft, and to address them, and he changed the foundation of teamwork at the company. Evaluation of Nadella’s effectiveness is a simple task since various dimensions can be used to justify his easily identifiable success. (Last Name, 2021). It is difficult to overestimate the role of effective communication in cooperation since the use of innovations, integration with other companies and technologies, quick completion of specific tasks, etc., depend on it. Well-structured communication allows employees to understand each other better and maintain trust in the team.
Nadella and Communication Barriers
The concept of One Microsoft was, in his opinion, inclusiveness, diversity, interest in the quality of the product, and the desire of customers. Nadella wanted to focus employees’ minds on the moment of growth of the company and the product, and for this, it was necessary to unite goals, values, and priorities (Gottfredson & Reina, 2021, p. 449). He offered employees anonymous one-to-one (and group) conversations in which they could vividly describe how they see their work at Microsoft.
How Leaders Approach Effective Communication
The first thing to do to build an effective team is to build trust. A couple brings together different people with different potentials, so they need to be allowed to prove themselves (Heslin & Keating, 2017, p. 379). It is necessary to correctly distribute the roles in the team and define the rules for the positions. It is essential to learn how to ask for and give feedback to work, and this is the only way to develop and innovate in the work of the team and the company.
Communication Barriers at Large and Small Organizations
I believe the problem Nadella faced belongs to several big companies. Even though the researchers of his method focus mainly on the communicative aspect, we do not forget that Nadella made his amendments to the promotion of the product, the creation of innovations. The face-to-face element is essential, but it gets lost in the flow of information technology and artificial intelligence.
Communication Barriers at Your Organization
I believe that the most critical issue in my company is the issue of trust. The workers do not know each other very well and have not traveled a critical path together. They tend to see each other as competitors, and they also really want to please their bosses. Nadella mainly faced other problems, as Microsoft has its environment and culture. My company does not stand out for its scale and size.
Fostering Diversity and Learning
Social spheres strive for racial and gender diversity; companies have long ago equalized women’s and men’s salaries, but researchers still record that the number of women in leadership positions is too small. Many sociologists and other scientists are trying to answer the question of why. Microsoft is a business giant that many other companies in a similar field rely on, and the issue of diversity is no exception.
Nadella and Diversity
Satya Nadella is of Indian origin; it may have allowed him to feel the need for diversity in the workplace in top companies in the multicultural space of the United States. His views on women and their salaries at Microsoft are very well known (Ibarra, Rattan, & Johnson, 2018, p. 16). Nadella was constantly on the lookout for minorities who could benefit Microsoft. Inclusiveness and accessibility to minority jobs became part of the company’s new culture as Nadella sought to make Microsoft a genuinely global business model.
The Importance of Diversity
There should be diversity in such large companies in the proposed solutions to the problem, the approach to work, and ethnic and gender relations. People raised in different cultures (Nadella understood this very well), who have absorbed different values ​​and ethics, can bring unique ideas to the team. When decision-making and discussion, these ideas may sound radical, but only the most radical and seemingly insane ideas carry the truth under scrutiny.
Obstacles to Diversity
Leaders, advocates of diversity, face ridicule and reproach in their direction, as the existing system is reluctant to accept innovation, especially in the cultural and ethical field. Nadella also faced ridicule in his direction but managed to forget them in time, focusing on the mental state of his team, which was supposed to go to success and promote the product. The advocates of diversity always risk lowering their reputation and losing their face.
Your Approach to Increasing Diversity
There is no wide ethnic diversity in my team, but I am sure that an encounter with a person from a different culture would broaden the consciousness and perception of other team members. There is gender diversity in the team, and women and men have equal rights regarding pay and attention. It is necessary to involve people who know a very high level of foreign languages in the company, which will help attract a certain number of ethnic minorities.
Conclusion
Looking at the material, the reader can see that the fate of Satya Nadella at Microsoft was not ideal, and he cannot be called a genius. It gives the reader the understanding that leadership skills result from meaningful and long training—one of the essential skills of a leader in managing and preventing conflicts. In addition, the leader has to work on the company’s culture, which is something that Nadella fundamentally approached. The culture allows for effective communication, which affects the efficiency of the team and the vertical of management. Although the compared companies differ significantly in scale and size, communication, trust in the team, and team building remain essential.
References
Last Name, N. (2021). Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Instilling a growth mindset case study. Unpublished Manuscript.
Harvard Business Review. (2021). Microsoft’s CEO on the metaverse and flexible work [Video]. YouTube.
Heslin, P. A., & Keating, L. A. (2017). In learning mode? The role of mindsets in derailing and enabling experiential leadership development. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(3), 367–384.
Ibarra, H., Rattan, A., & Johnson, A. (2018). Microsoft: Instilling a growth mindset. London Business School Review, 29(3), 1–22.
Gottfredson, R. K., & Reina, C. S. (2021). Illuminating the foundational role that mindsets should play in leadership development. Business Horizons, 64(4), 439–451.
Prakash, D., Bisla, M., & Rastogi, S. G. (2021). Understanding authentic leadership style: The Satya Nadella Microsoft approach. Open Journal of Leadership, 10(02), 95–109.
Recode. (2021). Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella | Full interview | Code 2021 [Video]. YouTube.