Analytic Profile of Mark Zuckerberg

The following article is written by Cross Accountancy Services - Accountants Sydney. The author is Sargon Odisho.

Analytic Profile of Mark Zuckerberg

The following analytic profile is a about the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg the founder of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg is a social media guru and the youngest billionaire in the world having Facebook's value in excess of $104 billion after initial public offering on May 17, 2012, bargaining a share price of $38 per share.  Facebook reported having 1.11 billion monthly active users globally. Facebook reunited family members and friends who have been separated by wars, social issues and other reasons. Facebook made the status and the news of many individuals accessible to members of society, including school friends, old neighbours, club members, political party members and other Facebook users. Facebook was also used for political motivation such as the revolution in the Middle East. Furthermore Facebook is a very powerful advertising tool and used daily to promote ideas and businesses worldwide. Mark Zuckerberg has adopted certain leadership characteristics which will be analysed in details, including charismatic and transformational leadership theory, including why, how and when these leadership theories were exercised. 

During the Harvard university days and as an undergraduate student Mark wrote “Facemash", the predecessor to Facebook. A prototype website used as an experiment to observe the behaviour of society that pointed toward implementation of Facebook conceptual strategies. With a real life example in hand this helped Mark to quickly utilize his emotional intelligence skills to discover that people were not interested to learning about people who didn’t know nor were looking at the photos of random people on the internet. Instead people were more interested to learn about the people that they knew. Hence Mark had the ability to monitor others feeling and emotions, to differentiate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and action.
People will follow a person who inspires them with passion and vision.  Although at the beginning Mark had no idea if Facebook will be the most used website in the world, he predicted that Facebook is going to be big. Facebook phenomenal success was driven by extraordinary vision, as Mark encouraged followers to strive for excellent by setting high performance goals such as worldwide expansion and continues improvement, making the company a target for takeover. Hence during 2005 the Facebook received multiple buyout offers. To such a degree the situation in Facebook quickly turned tense after widespread rumours of selling. Mark moved quickly to calm the situation down and re-assured his followers of rejection to all offers, including Yahoo’s $1 billion offer. Thus he clearly demonstrated that he was intelligent, optimism, sociable, self confidence, energetic and mature by rejecting all the buyout offers and maintain his leadership as an inspirational CEO. Having possessing certain characteristics he emerged to the followers as a great decision maker who will guide them to glory. In this situation the followers were inspired by charisma and self confidence allowing them to trust the expert programmer who wrote most of the Facebook website.
Mark motivated his follower by focussing on product development, and global expansion. Additionally he centralised his efforts on tracking performance, company achievement and the number of Facebook members. Mark’s dream allowed him to gain more incentive by maintaining his vision to keep Facebook and refusing to sell, taking enormous personal risk. This extraordinary decision is one of the main reasons that inspired his followers to seek the same vision.
Mark was an excellent work facilitator, from side to side providing distinctive resources for the company, including hiring Sheryl Sandeberg of Google. Additionally He encouraged collaboration such as setting up an alliance with Sean Parker who became the first president of Facebook, demonstrating immense interaction facilitation. 
Rewards and punishment strategies were also used to managing employee relationship and eliminating conflicts, including the settlement of $65 Million for the two brothers Cameron Winklevoss and Tyler Winklevoss. Also Mark dealt promptly with Facebook Co-Founder Eduardo Saverin, which latter escalated to a lawsuit followed by a settlement and early exit of the Co-Founder from the Facebook. Mark used his emotional intelligence skills to evaluate the impact of those decisions on his followers. After seeing the Co-Finder leaving the organisation without doubt it slashed wounds leaving everlasting scars among employees causing anxiety, incompetency, uncertainty, loss of direction and concerns for the future of the organisation. Consequently impacting the structure of Facebook as an organisation. It is commonly know that structure confers clarity, predictability, and security. Also executive roles prescribe authority and high responsibility. Losing an important person such as the Co-Finder will leave a gigantic gap. Creating ambiguity, confusion, distrust among employees and undermined existing arrangement. Formal allocation of authority will define responsibilities in relation to who, what and what period. Having the organisation ripped apart, each of its members taking a large piece of the kill leaving Facebook appeared to be mowed by vultures. It is the worst situation that any organisation will go through having their team of executives fighting over their stakes. In the time of dire Mark emerged as a winner to his follower calming situation down. Preventing this issue from escalating to lingering trials and media hysteria. The world has witnessed Mark’s first serious leadership challenges and his triumph over the obstacles. Having resolving major issues Mark focused on healing the injuries and prolongs his vision of expansion and domination. After resolving serious leadership issues Mark used his power to attract Sheryl Sandeberg of Google to fill the COO position and splitting the responsibilities between the two. With an experience executive such as Sandeberg, Facebook continued its journey toward Initial public offering. Hence Mark maintained the position of product developer while Sheryl focused on dealing with Wall Street and investors.
In addition Mark was honest who created trust among the employees allowing his personal integrity characteristics to be observed. Additionally Mark was not just passionate about his work but more considerably valued people effort and remains passionate about his team performance and achievement. Demonstrating to be participative toward motivating his followers to attain common goals.

The leadership style of Mark Zuckerberg was explored using examples and event that he lead while developing Facebook into a global empire. It is very clear that Mark was a charismatic and transformational leader who inspired and motivated his followers to seek extraordinary vision. Facebook remain the most commonly used website in the world and Mark continued his role as CEO and Founder.

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By Sargon Odisho - Marketing and IT Manager 20/7/2013