Leadership means the ability of a person to help the others showing the straight and direct path of goals. To be a successful leader, it is important to have specific qualities and skills. Leadership is not only limited to be in charge of a team and handling that team in iron fist. In this modern competitive world, a leader should have more special & modern attributes rather than having the old fashioned attributes.
There are different skills and attributes great leaders possess, where some of them come naturally and some of them have to gather by one’s own caliber. If you are looking for any leadership example then there will be no other better examples than Larry Page, the co-founder & CEO of Google. He has been an inspiring leader through out the world. The way of leading his team made him a democratic leader. He always talks about the future, how to become persevere & empowers others. All of his great ideas made him today a successful leader. Future’s leaders should take a look on his leadership qualities and skills.
Leadership Qualities, Skills, and Style of Larry Page
If we look at his leadership skills we can divide them into several divisions like leading process, recruiting process, motivating process, communicating process etc.
He leads his team by allowing his members to think of crazy ideas and cultivate the best idea for his organization. He also lead his team to face challenging conception of advanced technologies and innovations.
Page says that his staffs should follow several qualities such as:
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- Be a good leader
- Empower your team and don’t micromanage
- Express interest in your team members’ success and well-being
- Be productive and results-oriented
- Be a good communicator and listen to your team
- Help your employees with career development
- Have a clear vision and strategy for the team
- Have technical skills so you can advise the team.
The recruiting process of Google is they take interview of interviewee by professional interviewers. Then Google takes interview over phone and finally an on site interview in any google office. Google used to ask different types of challenging questions to test the interviewee’s creative minds. Google normally hires smart, determined, team oriented and more importantly who have more ability rather than experience. Page hires employees within weeks rather than months. To review each candidate Page personally has regular spreadsheets.
Page motivates his team with both financial and non financial motivation. Employees are equal and they have the equal freedom to do anything. The motivation theories Larry Page uses are Mayo & Herzberg’s theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. A participative management is way more encouraging and Page believes that behaving and treating employees is way more important than making money.
Page believes that if an organization runs like a family then that organization will be more productive. “Google should be like a family” he said. Larry creates strong relationships with staffs while figuring out the best outcomes from them. Google’s healthcare always look after it’s employees’ health because Page wants to make sure they all stay healthy.
Larry Page is creative and intelligent. He is so ambitious, collaborative and driven. he He follows several strategies which took him to the pick of his success. He always look forward to get crazy ideas because he believes those crazy ideas would change the entire world. He provokes his teammates to believe in venturous ideas that could really change the world. “You attract incredibly smart people and achieve something worthwhile, even if it’s not your original goal”, he said at the Google Faculty Summit in 2009.
Another great caliber that he possess is he always instigates his team members to build a team and avoids bureaucracy like old fashioned organizations have. “He has a problem with traditional management. He doesn’t like it,” says Levy, who has interviewed Page about six times. If we look at his management style we will see he is so quick and concise about making organizational decisions. Page works for faster and whippy management approach at Google.
Page always give importance to small steps and moves taken by his organization. Google’s staffs try to make new features and increase the quality of using Gmail, it’s search engines and Android. Page told an audience in Europe that he gets “a new build” on his Android phone each day. “It continues to work better and better every day.” His company also create a bonding with the students, it’s future employees and users. Google’s offices are also situated in college towns as well. If students cannot able to go Google headquarters, they can use skills of joining Web 2.0 company and can use the google products. These small steps and moves bring Google big rewards and reputations as well.
Leadership Skills of Larry Page
Larry Page’s communication and listening skills are very good. Page believes that this skill is very vital in terms of running the company to success. He lets his employees express their thoughts and how they are thinking to run the company. He is a good communicator and he coaches them in a way that everyone knows he is open to listening to any of the personnel’s thoughts. He helps the employees with career development and he takes out the vision & strategy of the team with his adroitness.
Decision-making skills made Page prosperous as CEO which had been proved when he took the charge of Google for the second time. He was in agony while the company’s decision-making skill dropped and Google could not act like it did in the past. Then he outlined a few rules and made a decision-making structure in the company. He changed the method of making decisions that were found potentially effective and interesting. Page sets changes in the existing decision-making system.
Larry Page is an expert in embracing new challenges and he is a skilled personality to bring the best of anything. In 2005, Page decided to invest in Android and this was a pet project of him in Google from 2005 to 2007. Ignoring Eric Schmidt’s objection, Google increased its investments in Android with Larry Page’s support. Later, this wager turned out successful and Google successfully defeated Microsoft by conquering the mainstream operating system in post PC generation.
In Conclusion
From the discussions above, we have come up with some outstanding leadership skills which are being possessed by Larry Page, made him a successful leader. Though Google is facing some problems but still Page has been able to effectively retain the employees and increase their productivity.
Related:
- Best Leadership Qualities and Skills of Great Leaders
- Leadership Qualities, Skills, and Type of Michael Bloomberg
- Advantages of Money Market in Economy
- Leadership Qualities – Styles, Skills, and Traits of Mark Zuckerberg
Sources:
- myassignmenthelp.com/free-samples/the-leadership-success-story-of-larry-page
- fortune.com/2011/04/18/what-would-larry-page-do-leadership-lessons-from-googles-doyen/
- larrypagebusinessleader.wordpress.com
- larrypage.weebly.com/larrys-leadership-style.html
- https://vulcanpost.com/19793/ceo-larry-pages-ten-year-discipline-returning-ceo/
- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279203649_The_Unconventional_Leadership_of_Corporate_Leaders_in_the_21st_Century
- http://michael-roberto.blogspot.com/2012/01/larry-page-reforms-decision-making-at.html
Sadnan is one of the top contributors of The Strategy Watch, he has been actively contributing since 2017 as a Content Analyst; He has finished his graduation from North South University with a dual major in Accounting & Finance. As a contributor, he has written for different topics including Leadership Styles and Qualities, Finance, and Economics. He also has a strong interest in SWOT & PESTLE Analysis and Marketing Strategy.