The Successes of Larry Ellison Some people think that the words great and effective can be used interchangeably, when describing a leader, but this is certainly not the case. The idea is that to be classified as a great leader, one needs to have qualities of empathy, understanding, humility, and create a positive outcome. On the other hand, an effective leader will create effective results, regardless of whether the outcomes are inherently good or bad. The formal definition of the concept of leader effectiveness is defined as, “the degree to which the leader’s actions result in the achievement of the unit’s goals, the continued commitment of the unit’s employees, and the development of mutual trust, respect, and obligation in leader-member …show more content…
Colquitt’s Life Cycle Theory of Leadership argues that an optimal combination of initiation structure and consideration is needed depending on the readiness of employees, expressed in terms of four different snapshot, R1-R4. Ellison is strong in initiating structure, which is a “pattern of behaviour where the leader defines and structures the roles of employees in pursuit of goal attainment”. (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 2013). This forms a very strong positive relationship with employee motivation, and employee perceived leader effectiveness, job satisfaction and overall performance. From the very beginning, Ellison is very clear on his ambitious goals, and did whatever he can to achieve them. His goal is to be the number one software company in the world, beating even Microsoft and he engrained this into all his employees. A large part of Oracle’s and Ellison’s success was the emphasize and premium that he always placed on choosing and training the right employees. (Foley, 2014) He has said that “its all about people, taking care of your employees is extremely important and very, very visible”. He also “sets them up for life” in terms of compensation, so nobody ever left Oracle due to lack of paycheque amount. (Mendelson, 2011) The passion Ellison has, keeps the employees committed, and they stay at Oracle because they are up for the challenge, displaying affective …show more content…
While Ellison has many aspects of transformational leadership, by inspiring his followers to commit in a shared vision, his main management style is transactional leadership. This is defined as when “a leader rewards or disciplines the follower on the basis of performance.” (Mendelson,2011) More specifically, Ellison is following the contingent reward aspect in which the leader attains follower agreement on what needs to be accomplished, using promised or actual rewards in exchanged for stellar performance. While Ellison is generous to the employees who exceeded their sales targets, or developed revolutionary new products, he was hard on the ones that weren’t so lucky and would fire them. Ellison has always been very focused on adjectives and goals, always telling him employees exactly what he wanted. Research has shown that the contingent reward standing is sometimes the most effective way, and one that sometimes motivates employees the best, in turn positively affected Oracle. There is also a link between personality and leadership behaviour as well. Traits like confidence, ruthlessness, and passion will cause him to strive for the impossible and work hard to achieve it. He is the driving force behind this huge multi billion-dollar international company,