Essay Sample on Ginny Rometty: A Pioneer in the Tech Industry

Ginny Rometty is an American businesswoman, and she is the chief executive officer as well as president of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). The organization has a presence in over 170 nations across the globe (Rometty, 2016). IBM deals with the sale of computer software and hardware as well as provides consulting services. Ginny Rometty is the first woman to head IBM since it was started in the year 1911.

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Ginny Rometty was born in July 1957 and joined IBM in 1981 as a systems engineer. She was then promoted to head global sales, marketing, and strategy department and was later promoted as chief executive officer for the company in the year 2012. In the year 2002, Ginny Rometty was recognized for helping the company to negotiate for the purchase of information technology c consulting business from PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Ginny's tenure at IBM has been characterized by better performance and increased revenues for the company. Besides, Rometty's contribution to the company has been recognized worldwide, and she has won noteworthy awards, such as Bloomberg's (Rometty, 2016). She was recognized as being one of the 50 most powerful women in business across the globe. She has as well been recognized by Forbes for her contribution in IBM, especially due to her introduction to new technologies and work ethics in the company. Besides, Rometty's leadership at IBM has been characterized by the company's commitment to diversity and inclusion. For instance, Rometty has introduced ways of extending parental leaves for employees as well as making it easy for women through returnship programs.

The company is one of the largest technology companies in the world. However, for two decades before Ginny took over the leadership of the company, the organizational revenues had declined. After Ginny was appointed as the chief executive officer, she was able to steward the company back to profitability by increasing its customer base.

Ginny Rometty has been able to use various leadership styles that have positively impacted on her contributions to contemporary management thinking. Some of the leadership styles used by Rometty to run the company include strategic, transactional, coach-style, transformational, as well as laissez-Faire leadership. Ginny Rometty is also a charismatic speaker with strong communication cues, which helps inspire as well as attract many people to her style of leadership. For instance, her leadership style is characterized by taking risks, for instance, during the Dot Com Bubble burst.

Besides, Rometty took many risks during the worldwide market turmoil between the years 2007 and 2008 (Rometty, 2016). She was able to take risks by introducing new strategies that helped beat IBM's competitors, thus making the company remain a market leader in the computer hardware and software industries.

Rometty has been able to incorporate a transactional leadership style by aligning the workforce at IBM. Immediately after she took charge of the company in the year 2012, one of her goals was to motivate and align the company's staff members to the fullest. In the year 2013, IBM posted a net profit of 16.5 billion US dollars under the stewardship of Rometty.

The company was able to achieve such financial performance due to the motivated employees Rometty had built in the last year. She was able to align over 380000 staff members in the year 2016 by following both short and long-term strategic beliefs around the employees (Rometty, 2016). Ginny believes in the potential of her employees, and she, therefore, motivated them to report to work early as well as instilling the self-belief to achieve common goals and a purpose.

Her leadership style at the helm of IBM is characterized by honesty and integrity, good communications, delegation, and empowerment, as well as the ability to inspire others and good decision-making capabilities. For instance, Rometty leads by example and incorporates the values and philosophies of IBM, such as professionalism and integrity to her employees. Besides, Rometty is able to depict commitment and passion for her work and love for computers. She has worked for the company since 1987 and has always shown passion and commitment towards the company, thus instilling the same to her employees.

Due to her vast experience with computers, she is able to solve problems, thus complementing her leadership style. In addition, Rometty always arrives at work in time, acting as a motivation to the rest of the staff members. Therefore, her leadership style is that of leading by example. For instance, her ability to solve problems has enabled her to lead the company to one of the most transformational stages as well as reinventing the company to remain relevant and lead in the new era of cybersecurity as well as quantum technologies. Her passion and commitment to the objectives of the company have helped her to invent and develop new technologies in an enduring and ethical way.

In addition, Ginny Rometty style is characterized by a commitment to inclusion and diversity among the company's employees. She employs many women and advocates for equal employment opportunities and pays for both men and women at the company. Also, since she was appointed to the leadership of the company, she introduced prolonged paternal leaves for parents to help them take more time to care for their young children, thus giving them peace of mind while they are at work.

Rometty has introduced efforts that help women to remain as part of the workforce in the company, such as extending their leave days with one extra month as well as introducing a program on breastmilk delivery and returnships. Her leadership style is characterized by humility, where she is able to take herself to the level of her employees and understands the challenges that employees face both at work as well as at their homes. Rometty has a degree in computer science and long experience, which helps her develop the skills and abilities to introduce new technologies in the company.

She is flexible, and therefore, she is able to embrace changing times and new technologies that develop. Her knowledge of issues of computer science has helped her put cognitive computing at the center of its strategy for the future of the company as well as help in making massive bets on quantum computing.

Strategic management style is also another leadership style that Ginny Rometty has used to run IBM. Her vast experience in management roles at the marketing department has made her to develop strategic management aspects such as good decision making (Rometty, 2016). For instance, in the year 2018, she facilitated IBM to purchase Red Hat Company for 34 billion US dollars. The move has enabled the company to position itself in a way that helps it compete with Microsoft as well as Amazon in the sector of cloud computing.

Ginny Rometty uses a transformational leadership style by working with teams that help her to identify needed changes in the company as well as creating a vision and inspiration that guides the organization. In her role as chief executive officer, she is guided by principles such as intellectual stimulation, idealized influence, individualized consideration, as well as inspirational motivation. Her leadership style can be described as transformational because it has caused essential changes in employees as well as the organization as a whole.

For instance, under her stewardship, the company has diversified to more countries, increased the market share, thus resulting in more profitability. Her leadership style has created valuable and positive changes to its followers with the aim of transforming employees into leaders. Besides, Rometty's leadership style is transformational since she has the ability to take the right risks, entertain new ideas, share collective organizational consciousness, as well as the ability to self-manage and inspire other employees.

Most employees that Rometty has nurtured are also heads of various departments within the organization, therefore, meaning that she is able to nurture her followers and instill the same values and principles she believes in (Choi et al., 2017). Ginny shares leadership with other employees, and she is able to delegate various roles to employees. By delegating some of her duties, she is able to mentor other employees and develop leadership traits that help them to lead appropriately. In addition, Rometty is able to exhibit a transformational leadership style at IBM by creating a vision that acts as a guideline on how to achieve the goals of the organization.

Ginny Rometty's contribution at IBM is relevant to the understanding of effective leadership that is relevant today and will continue to be relevant in the future, especially for both public and private companies in the United Arab Emirates. Her ability to embrace teamwork at the workplace helps individuals in understanding what effective leadership is all about. Besides, the contributions of Ginny at IBM, such as increased profitability and increased customer base is also a key aspect and lesson to individuals on understanding aspects of effective leadership as well as what will be required in the future in the United Arab Emirates.

In addition, Rometty's traits, such as the ability to inspire others and mentor followers to develop leadership traits, have helped in understanding effective leadership. The fact that Ginny Rometty was able to incorporate gender diversity and inclusion at the workplace has helped in the shaping of effective leadership in the future. For instance, many companies across the globe benchmark from IBM and the leadership model of Ginny Rometty to learn on ways to embrace diversity and inclusion at the workplaces in the United Arab Emirates.

References

Choi, S. B., Kim, K., & Kang, S. W. (2017). Effects of transformational and shared leadership styles on employees' perception of team effectiveness. Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal, 45(3), 377-386. Retrieved from

https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/sbp/sbp/2017/00000045/00000003/art00003Rometty, G. (2016). IBM CEO Ginni Rometty's letter to the US President-Elect. IBM THINKPolicy. Nov. 16. Retrieved from

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