What was his leadership style and was it effective?

Warren Buffett’s Leadership Style

• Displays the behaviours of a democratic leader.
• He also displays the role of a self-empowered leader as well as a servant leader; he is loyal, sets goals, plans a strategy for achievement, and stays committed until an objective is accomplished. He empathises his employees; he may critique one’s performance but may not criticise that person as a whole.
• Idealises interaction and collaboration.
• Focuses on the importance of communication, mutual trust and interpersonal respect.
• Personal thoughts: “You must do what you love, but be patient and disciplined.”
• Instrumental values that shape leadership styles are:

o   Forgiveness

o   Honesty

o   Ambition

o   Responsibility

o   Rationality

• He uses humour to motivate and lead his manager/staffs.
• Decision making

o   Produces a final choice

o   Output consists of:

§  Action

§  Opinion

o   Process of selecting from several choices, products/ideas

§  In order to make a decision desired by everyone.

 The 6 c’s of decision-making

Factors of making effective decisions

Characteristics of an effective leader:

     

Servant leadership

o  Warren’s approach that pursued to serve employees, customers and the community.

o  He grants the community with a higher priority than himself.

o  Traits of a servant leadership:

There are many perspectives on how we can look into Warren Butler’s leadership style. His leadership style is somewhat a combination of democratic leadership, servant leadership and self- empowered leadership. The reason behind this is that he plays the role of a democratic leader, discussing with his employees about the topic or assignment that needs to be accomplished and when communication is two-way. As for the practice of a servant- leader, he practices the principles of a servant leader and for example, he empathises his employee. He may judge an individual based on their mistakes and faults but never would he judge the individual as a person. Lastly, he is a self-empowered leader because he is loyal, plans strategy for achievement, put in commitment and will always pursue till the end. There are many ways of engaging employees in a company, and above shows a list of employee engagement tips which are similar to Warren Buffett’s style of leading and engaging his employees. Different people have different beliefs on various kinds of employee engagement and I think that Warren’s style is actually quite effective, he shows significant focuses in involving his employees. This will help increase the motivation level of the employees and also, it shows how an effective leader he is. These leadership styles have benefited him, his employees, the company and the community, that’s why it is effective. However, every leadership style will always have its flaws and for a democratic leader, it might be time consuming when making decisions and it may lead to disagreements among group members but to gain, you need to loose so it’s all a win-win situation. Different leadership styles have given different impacts towards the community, a leader’s leadership influences the company as a whole. It is important that a leader practices the traits and characteristics of a good leader but everybody has their own beliefs on their way of leading. We can’t judge whether that certain leadership style is good or bad but all I can say is that, based on my researches, I think that Mr. Buffett is a really committed and effective leader.