Everyday Leadership Series (19) - Bill Gates

Aside from the list of qualities and skills subject to successful leadership, lessons learned from iconic leaders with indelible marks in our society are more inspiring. They help to channel our leadership attitudes into mainstreams of practicality while instating words to recite in our minds as we face diverse leadership commitments. We have become familiar with setting the bar high, having a grand vision, saying what we mean, and leading by example, being competent, and among other qualities as criteria to flying high in our leadership endeavors but that’s not enough.

Bill Gates's commitments and influential leadership character will administer good lessons as we scrutinize our attitude towards successful leadership. Obviously, lessons learned from an individual who has been on Forbes list of the world's richest people for over 31 years will be highly influential as we develop roadmaps and models to achieve success as leaders.

At first, we can learn that success is always around where our life has meaning. Bill Gates said "it was hard to tear myself away from a machine at which I could so unambiguously demonstrate success," when he had the first challenge at the earliest stage of his career inspiration. This spells it clear about how our lifestyle should correlate with our career dreams. Below are 5 leadership lessons from the Bill Gates for our leadership inspirations.

Not distracted by success

Success can easily cloud anyone's judgment when it becomes a benchmark. This is totally not the case for Bill Gates. He looks beyond his success while executing business decisions. Gates is a leader that lacks overconfidence and recognizes that his success should not bias business ethics. In one of his statements, he said “Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can’t lose”. This means that Gates does not believe in putting down his initial path to success, rather he prepares more to avert psychological challenges being successful can bring.

Caring for people

Philanthropy and humanitarianism are two leadership roles very significant in the life of Bill Gates. To ensure the sustainability of his care for people, he founded Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations with his wife; an organization devoted to save lives and improve global health. Bill Gates believes his life would accomplish less if his energy and talent cannot serve as channels to improve many lives and the society at large.

“I hope you will reflect on what you’ve done with your talent and energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you work to address the world’s deepest inequities, on how well you treat people a world away that have nothing in common with you but their humanity, ” says Bill Gates on Bloomberg Business Week. His leadership role does not mean success for himself alone or his team members, but he's working hard to ensure that others grow too. That’s a lesson worth learning.

Vision-oriented

The wide achievements recorded by Bill Gates are enough not to doubt that he is vision-oriented. Not just in Microsoft where he envisioned the creation of a graphical interface, but in his philanthropic life. Microsoft was able to beat its competitors because Gates was always visioning something bigger and at every point, he was ahead of other competitors because lacked no dream. Gates is able to incorporate his career with his contribution in other fields, making him more involved in our society than software supply. His foundation is in collaboration with Rotary International to kick polio out of the Globe. Gates is also working on malaria project to end the existence. The projects are all outlined with Gates's strategic steps from A to B. With these developed plans, it's easier to follow him as a leader.

Rates his capability a little higher

The contract that led to the establishment of Microsoft in 1975 was proposed in the air. Gates actually rated himself more when he told Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS), that he could develop an interpreter for microcomputer. He has never done that before. We could also note that he was ready to sacrifice what it would take to have the program developed. Gates and Allen had to work hard to develop the interpreter within a few weeks when MITS became interested in their proposal. The project went successful and Microsoft was established a few weeks later. He's a leader that doesn't believe that how much he has done is the best of him.

Valuing time

One of Gates's famous quotes, “no matter how much money you have, you can’t buy more time”. This implies that Gates values every minute and prioritizes his daily activities to ensure a good influence in the most important. He doesn't believe in attending meetings that won't matter if he was not there. Irrespective of how much success he has recorded his value for time has remained the same. He still believes in proper planning and leadership commitment knowing he has the same number of hours with everyone.

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Are you Leading?

Dr. Deepak A. Patil

CEO, Lead ThySelf