By happenstance, on May 14, 1984, the same year that Apple Inc. released its revolutionary Mac computer, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born. It was clear to everyone close to him that Mark was exceptional from his early years. Nowadays, his name is written in history as the youngest billionaire or, more commonly, the founder of Facebook.
At his 28th birthday, just 8 years after conceiving the idea of Facebook, he managed to ring the NASDAQ bell to signal the start of a trading day on Wall Street and successfully take his company to the stock market for the very first time. In 2012, Facebook’s market valuation was $104 billion.
Mark’s quote was included along with Facebook’s registration statement: “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services” (Mark Zuckerberg, 2012). By the time Facebook entered the stock market, Mark was considered a very smart person who was studying at Harvard University, a hacker, an innovator, bizarre, lonely, and very focused on his tasks.
While he was struggling to be successful, he gained a lot of experience through different situations, enabling him to develop himself from both a managerial and personal point of view. Nevertheless, he acquired, developed, and improved a variety of skills and traits that helped him manage the colossal company called Facebook.
However, there is one very important element that forces a particular person to be successful: the person’s personality. “Personality is the set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that are organized and relatively enduring and that influence his or her interactions with, and adaptations to, the intrapsychic, physical, and social environments” (Larsen & Buss, 2005, p. 4).
It can be shaped by the influence of heredity or early childhood experiences. Undoubtedly, a person’s personality can be changed due to major life events and the gradual maturing process, and so on. Over the years, many scientists, sociologists, and psychologists have worked on various models and theories of leadership. Some theories have been developed, others have been refuted, and some new ones have been discovered.
Some of them are the Great Man’s Theory (1900), the Trait Theory (30s), the Behavioral Theory (40s and 50s), the Contingency Theory (60s and 70s), the Transformational Theory (80s up), etc. The five-trait theory is an old one, preceding the scientific survey of leadership and dating back into antiquity across several early civilizations (Bass, 1990; Zaccaro, in imperativeness).
There are assorted and multiple illustrations to support this quotation mark, and they can be found in the Chinese, Italian, ancient Greek, Babylonian, and Egyptian literature.
Allport (1961) defined a trait as a “neuropsychic construction holding the capacity to render many stimulations functionally tantamount and to originate and guide equivalent (meaningfully consistent) signifiers of adaptive and expressive behaviour” (p. 347). Personality traits, which seem to be the most widely recognized manner to sort personalities, will be used to describe the personality of Mark Zuckerberg.
This theoretical model has been divided into five major dimensions: Surgency or Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism or Psychological accommodation, Conscientiousness, and Openness to see. The Surgency personality dimension includes leadership and extroversion traits such as more specific traits like chatty, energetic, and self-asserting.
Mark showed his strong Surgency as he wanted to be the person who led the team and definitely did not want to be a subordinate. When he was asked to work for the Winklevoss brothers, he never truly accepted the inquiry to design the dating social network so-called Harvard Connection.
Mark demonstrated on numerous occasions his assertiveness and his energy while he was building Facebook, as much in the court when he was standing alone supporting himself against the attorneys of his enemies and his ex-friends.
Furthermore, his talk ability and his communication skills are unchallenged since he argued down a lot of people while he was defending his concept around Facebook, although he impressed a lot of people with his presentation and persuasion skills.
Until recently when Mark was on a business trip in China – the only country in the world that Facebook is banned by federal law – he dazzled everyone when he started speaking Chinese fluently during his address in Beijing. The brawny extroversion led Mark into prosperity, wealth, and prosperity.
Ricky Griffin and Gregory Moorhead (2010) argue that agreeableness refers to a person’s ability to get along with others. Agreeableness causes some people to be soft, cooperative, forgiving, understanding, and good-natured in their dealings with others. But it also results in others being cranky, choleric, uncooperative, and generally counter toward other people.
It is said that Mark was not always an easy-going person, particularly during the period that he was programming Facebook. Back then, he was more of a manager because Facebook was his idea and not a leader as he developed himself later on.
There were many contentions all these years about his determinations, how he treated his friends and co-workers, as well as how he was addressing diverse issues regarding the improvement of the house. Although later he became a true leader, according to his co-workers, he stood up and led his house to the top.
Neurosis, sometimes reversed and called emotional stability, includes traits like tension, moodiness, and anxiety. Costa and McCrae (1992) suggest that “the general inclination to experience negative affects such as fear, sadness, embarrassment, anger, guilt, and disgust is the core of the neurosis domain” (p. 14).
Watson and Tellegen (1985) specify this sphere of personality as negative emotionalism, negative affectivity, or negative disposition. Although the broad trait of neuroticism/anxiety includes other negative emotions, such as depression, guilt, and ill will, and character traits such as low self-esteem, neurosis and anxiety are virtually identical as traits (Zuckerman, Joireman, Kraft & Kuhlman, 1999). Mark’s reactions in various situations indicate that he does not have pleasant emotional stability and he acts irrationally.
An example of this is that before he conceived the idea of Facebook, he had a fight with his girlfriend, and they broke up. He was so furious about it that he decided to write about her on his public blog, and then he hacked all the houses of Harvard University because he wanted to create FaceMash. FaceMash was a software that compared students to different farm animals, which seemed unethical to the majority of students and the school board.
Nevertheless, that software was an important step to recognition since it made him famous among the students of Harvard. Conscientiousness includes traits like being organized, thorough, and planning. Ricky Griffin and Gregory Moorhead (2010) suggested that conscientiousness refers to the number of goals on which a person focuses.
People who focus on relatively few goals at one time are likely to be organized, systematic, careful, thorough, responsible, and self-restraining. The high degree of conscientiousness that Mark had led him to success. He was the one that always wanted to put in extra effort and extra time. For example, when he created FaceMash, he worked eight hours straight in the middle of the night.
In addition, when he created Facebook, he spent numerous hours, days, and weeks working on this project. Therefore, when he led a team of coders to help him make Facebook, he guided them to work focused, carefully, responsibly, and consistently, just like him. Openness in experience reflects a person’s rigidity of beliefs and range of interests.
People with high levels of openness are willing to listen to new ideas and to change their own ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in response to new information. They also tend to have broad interests and to be curious, creative, and imaginative (Ricky Griffin, Gregory Moorhead, 2010).
Mark was not always an easy-going person, but he was willing to change his attitude and his way of thinking in different occasions. For example, he was the creator of Facebook, and obviously, he had his own ideas and way of working, but he changed a lot while he was working because he was influenced a lot by his co-workers. Facebook would never be possible if Mark was not open to new experiences.
There are many definitions regarding leading because an assortment of psychologists and sociologists worked on this leadership theories undertaking. Therefore, there are multiple theories based on leadership.
Some of them are singular such as: “Leadership is the ability to measure and/or calculate a long-term program or policy and act upon the followings towards the accomplishment of the said scheme” (Adeoye Mayowa: A Leadership Manager in Nigeria, 2009). ”
A leader is best when people hardly know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst when they despise him. ‘Fail to honour people’ they fail to honour you.’ But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his purpose fulfilled, they will all state, ‘We did this ourselves.'” (Lao Tzu, Chinese founder of Taoism, writer, sixth Century BC) “Leadership (according to John Sculley) revolves around vision, ideas, direction, and has more to do with inspiring people as to direction and goals than with daily execution.
A leader must be able to leverage more than his own capabilities. He must be capable of inspiring other people to do things without actually sitting on top of them with a checklist” (Bennis, W. ‘On Becoming a Leader’ Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1989, p. 139).
It is a fact that there are a lot of traits, abilities, and styles, and based on them, a leader can be categorized into managerial constructs or managerial styles. Mark, like every other leader, has certain abilities, traits, and a managerial style that differentiates him from every other leader and makes him loved or hated by his co-workers and subordinates.
Ceci and Liker (1988) state that work-related knowledge and skills obtained as a result of experience are more important to job performance than cognitive ability or general intelligence. That is what makes Mark so special; when he was just a college kid when he invented Facebook, he worked his own way up and gained his traits and abilities from on-work experiences separately or working with others.
Therefore, he developed a variety of skills for himself, as well as he adapted a certain managerial style which was fit for his house according to him. For Zuckerberg, leadership as a concept is about producing focus.
It is about finding the right people for the right job, staying focused all the time, dedicated, careful, and stuck to the goals. From the way he is doing things, it is said that Mark is more of a democratic style leader.
“He does not truly act like a dictator as he is open to taking into consideration others’ sentiments and thoughts. One day, an incident occurred and Facebook’s employees started to despise their leader until Mrs. Reed stepped in and showed Mark the way.
She suggested that since he had problems managing his employees, he should take lessons or seminars on leadership and human resources management. Nevertheless, Mark is one of the people-oriented types of leaders. He asked for help from Sean Parker, who is a very talented man and the one who invented Napster, although he was known for his controversies in his personal life with drinking problems, women, and the law.
Zuckerberg did not care about his bad reputation but wanted Sean Parker’s talent, who is also described as a business entrepreneur. Parker did help Zuckerberg with a lot of things to achieve the success of Facebook with the talent that Parker had. Zuckerberg is a good leader who leads Facebook to a greater and more successful way.
It is obvious that Mark implements a managerial theory in his company, which is the situational theory.
The Hersey-Blanchard Situational Leadership Theory was created by Dr. Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard. The theory states that instead of using just one style, successful leaders should change their leadership styles based on the maturity of the people they are leading and the details of the task.
Using this theory, leaders should be able to put more or less emphasis on the task and more or less emphasis on the relationships with the people they are leading, depending on what is needed to get the job done successfully. Therefore, in every situation, Mark was able to adapt his style in order to manipulate and determine the outcome of every problem.
Besides that, Mark Zuckerberg is a perfect example of the path-goal theory, which was developed by Robert House. House (1996) suggests that the path-goal theory is a dyadic theory of supervision. It concerns relationships between formally appointed superiors and subordinates in their daily operations. It is concerned with how formally appointed superiors affect the motivation and satisfaction of subordinates.”
It is a dyadic theory of supervision in that it does not address the effect of leaders on groups or work units, but rather the effects of superiors on subordinates. Consistent with the dominant leadership paradigm of the time, the path-goal theory is primarily a theory of task and individual-oriented supervisory behavior.
The more common mark is to provide followers with information, support, and resources to help them achieve their goals. Furthermore, Mark has to clarify the path to the employee’s goals, and in this situation, he can demonstrate multiple leadership styles depending on the situation.
This can be achieved by being participative, directive, supportive, and achievement-oriented. Mark meets all criteria. Although the growth and prosperity of his company were expected and uninterrupted, he managed to change his leadership style several ways.
First, after he created Facebook, he acted as a directing leader and provided the necessary guidance and psychological support to his employees to ensure constant expansion. Later, when Mark was certain that his company was on the right path, he could finally take a more supportive role.
He is an excellent example of a participative leader in the present day, where Facebook is finally sustainable, and a hardheaded leader is not required among the ranks of the company. This can be proved by looking at Zuckerberg’s Facebook personal page, where he is trying to inspire and attract self-motivated individuals such as himself to join his company.
Additionally, as a leader, Zuckerberg has a place in the managerial grid theory (diagram 1 in appendices), which demonstrates the relationship between productivity and people. Mark shows extreme interest in both productivity and people because he is looking for good quality as well as employee satisfaction.
That would put him on a score of 9.9 in the leadership grid theory. Furthermore, if Zuckerberg were judged based on the Leadership Continuum Theory (diagram 2 in appendices), it would be evident that Mark falls somewhere around the sixth defined trait. He has received a colossal approval rate from his employees, and they have said that they love working at Facebook because what they say and think is considered and it matters to their leader.
Every decision taken at Facebook is a group decision. Zuckerberg has showcased a variety of traits based on the trait theory that makes him an effective leader. The trait theory of personality best explains the notion of emotional intelligence.
Traits are underlying tendencies to act in a consistent and typical manner, and they describe the frequency or strength of a person’s feelings, thoughts, or behaviors (Nilanjan Sengupta, 2009).
Some of Mark’s traits are authority or dominance, passion or high energy, intelligence, focus, confidence, self-awareness, fearlessness, integrity, shared vision and actions, and he is also empowering, collaborative, communicative, and genuine. The outcome of this mixture of traits shows that Mark Zuckerberg knows where he is going and has a strong stated mission to lead people. He has a strong focus and stays on course. He is very passionate about what he is doing.
He has stated that he lives, breathes, eats, and sleeps for Facebook. He definitely believes in himself. He is honest and committed. People want to work for leaders and companies that genuinely care about their employees and the communities in which they operate.
They want to be a part of the dream and feel that they are productive and important. Mark makes his co-workers feel empowered and powerful. True leaders share their vision or strategy frequently with those around them, and Mark does.
Certainly, he is not afraid to try new things, take risks, and he knows his strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of his team. At this point, it can be said that Zuckerberg has emerged and evolved as an employee-centered CEO with a democratic style. He has come a long way to reach this point by bringing a lot of changes in himself and to others around him. When it comes to personality traits, without any doubt, his strongest trait would be his openness to experience and willingness to always try something new.
In conclusion, Mark Zuckerberg is considered my role model since from a very young age he managed to become popular and provide the world with the best social network, and the most recognized one. Additionally, the leadership traits that Mark possesses are very similar to my personality traits.
His achievements are very hard to be attained by someone in the foreseeable future. His way of leading, however, is the most important aspect for me because it is very similar to my way of thinking and acting regarding leadership and human resources management.
Since in every type of business in the world, the human factor is the most important and plays the most significant role in production, sales, customer & employee satisfaction, which are the key elements for a company to continue to thrive and succeed, I believe that the democratic style of leading and the path-goal theory that motivates employees is the best for a company.
Bibliography and Mentions
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- Some of the facts used in the essay were taken from the film Social Network (2010).
