Satya Nadella as a Leader Who Demonstrates Effective Communication Practice

Analysis of A Leader Who Demonstrates Effective Communication Practice – Satya Nadella
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Analysis of A Leader Who Demonstrates Effective Communication Practice – Satya Nadella
Introduction
In the 21st century, leadership has emerged as one of the most defining factors that determine a company's success or failure. When the business environment is analyzed critically, the most successful companies can attribute their success to individuals at the helm. In some instances, the success emerges from the individuals' influence on the employees and clients, increasing the perception of effectiveness. In other cases, the success is purely from the individuals' leadership style that impacts performance positively. Notably, such leaders whose impact has been widely recognized include Apple's Tim Cook, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Google's Sundar Pichai, and Microsoft's Satya Nadella. These leaders have demonstrated high-ranking leadership traits that are unique and which have elevated their respective companies. The current analysis focuses on Satya Nadella, the current chief executive officer (CEO)of Microsoft. In order to complete the analysis, various aspects such as communication abilities, emotional intelligence, cultural competence will be considered. In addition to these aspects, the analysis will consider the appropriate theories to support the evidence provided. As such, the paper will be organized as follows; it includes an introduction that summarizes what the essay is discussing, a brief autobiography of the leader selected, their career path that led to the position he holds currently, a summary of his leadership style and the specific leadership traits notable which will be discussed under communication, emotional intelligence, and cultural competencies.
A Brief Overview of Satya Nadella
Satya Nadella, the current CEO of Microsoft, is an Indian-born American business executive who succeeded Steve Balmer in 2014 as the CEO and later John Thompson in 2021 to double as the company's executive chairman. Before his appointment to the position, Nadella worked as Microsoft's vice president of the cloud and enterprise segment, whose core function is to build and run the company's computing platforms. Nadella is an electrical and computer engineer having studied in India and United States. With a career spanning over three decades, records indicate that Nadella has worked in Sun Microsystems and Microsoft. Between the two, Microsoft is reportedly the organization through which his rise to executive leadership was achieved, having worked for the organization since 1992 (Weinberger, 2019). Nadella has held several executive roles at Microsoft, which include Vice President of Microsoft Central (2000), Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Business Solutions (2001), Senior Vice President of Microsoft Online Services (2007), President of the Server and Tools Division (2011), and CEO Microsoft (2014) (Weinberger, 2019). Throughout his career, Nadella's potential to run the company was realized during his tenure as the President of the Server and Tools Division. He headed operations such as Azure cloud platform and data center products and services, including the SQL server database and windows server. In this role, he increased the division's revenue from an estimated $16.6 billion to $20.3 billion within two years (Business Standard, 2022). His leadership at the helm of Microsoft has accorded him numerous awards and recognition, with the most prestigious being the Financial Times Person of the year in 2019. Besides, he has maintained a year after year record of being among Barron's list of the world's best CEOs.
Nadella's Leadership Style
Various leadership styles have been used to characterize Nadella, among them transformational, visionary, and empathetic. Although the executive embodies these styles, Prakash et al. (2021) provides the best description that encompasses all these traits. They describe Nadella's style as authentic leadership. The concept of authentic leadership was developed by Bill George, who authored the book Authentic Leadership in 2003 (Johnsen, 2018 p.2). The idea is that leaders demonstrate unique traits that make them genuine to their followers. Prakash et al. (2021) note that such leaders present their "true selves" in their roles. Miao et al. (2018) further describes an authentic leader as highly self-aware, has an internalized moral perspective, upholds relational transparency, and can maintain balance processing. When interviewed by CNBC on the qualities of a leader, Nadella highlighted three key traits: providing clarity, generating energy, and driving success in any condition (Gibbs, 2019). Such characteristics are critical to his performance at Microsoft, considering that the company's workforce is dominated by millennials who are more learned, tech-savvy, and command higher expectations than any other group. Based on this fact and the CEO's success since he took over from Ballmer, Nadella's leadership is transformative. He changed the organization's culture by introducing a new vision and leadership style. Over the years he has been the top-ranking officer at Microsoft, Nadella has imposed a concept that provides a precise balance between innovative culture and supportive leadership targeted towards high organizational performance.
Specific Leadership Abilities
Communication Competences
In the current competitive business environment, organizations and especially their leaders must find unique ways of maintaining their competitive edge. Ekpo (2016) notes that effective communication is at the core of business success and, therefore, must be held. The author argues that the purpose of communication from a leader's perspective is to adjust, control, and coordinate organization to changes. During his tenure, Nadella has proved to be an effective communicator both orally and in writing. To be precise, communication is one of the principles that define his character and success at Microsoft. Nadella's preference for effective communication can be traced back to when he was appointed as the organization's CEO. The first action he took was to send out an email to all the employees, calling them to action. Grossman (2014) described the email as engaging, sincere, and informative to the Microsoft workforce in analyzing the communication. Over the years, the CEO has maintained a communicating culture and, as a result, has managed to rally the employees towards a common purpose. Gallo (2018) notes that through constant communication, Nadella has worked to inform the organization's 120,000 employees about what he believes, how he envisions the world, and his vision for Microsoft.
His authentic leadership style has boosted communication by emphasizing the technical and emotional aspects. The technical aspects of communication, in this case, include the conveyance of the organization's vision and strategies and other engineering aspects of the business, which Nadella prefers to capture in documents. An example of a document through which he has communicated thoroughly is his book Hit Fresh, a comprehensive publication outlining the way forward for the company. This book demonstrates the extent to which the CEO values communication and his ability to communicate. Taking time to document his vision reflects the value he attaches to communication. This approach has been lauded (Ancona et al., 2019) because it presents a new approach to how leaders should communicate with their employees. Nadella's communication abilities have been facilitated by his approach towards communication, which is unlike his predecessors. Nadella has demonstrated the ability to engage with employees effectively by adapting a "listen more talk less" policy. This approach has effectively dealt with the millennial-dominated workforce, which expects to be part of the process. Thus, Nadella takes a laid-back position while conversing with the employees, allowing him to observe situations objectively thus, initiating appropriate solid action.
According to Millen (n.d), effective engagement builds trust, which is critical in business. In Nadella's case, communication is all about a highly engaging activity. This, in part, explains why he has been one of the most influencing CEOs of the 21st century. Millen notes that leaders must share themselves for such engagements to be effective. Sharing in this context implies providing employees with evidence of who they are. This allows employees to know their leaders, whi...