Business leader profile: MICHAEL DELL

Group assignment

Conflict management

By its nature, conflict represents one of the most common social issues occuring worldwide in public and domestic environments. I aggred to develop my part of the Michael Dell leader profile not because he is one of the top billionaires of the world or his assets, but because of his personal skills and his effective form of leadership. Basically, he is promoting his personal persuasion policy in his company by encouraging his employees to be communicative, at the same time implementing the art of listening to everyone. I personally assume that communication is conflict’s biggest most feared enemy and by challenging people to boost their conventional wisdom throughout expressing themselves is like cultivating the prized crops.

It seems tabloids always worked in every market. Otherwise I can not explain why, knowing the series of stinging verbal rivalry between Michael Dell and Steve Jobs, a publication from overseas asked Dell how he sees Apple’s situation due to the fact that the company was facing various difficulties in 1997, at a Garner symposium. Apple remained without its CEO, Gil Amelio, and once that information was outed, certain voices wanted Steve Jobs back in the company. Among the opponents behind the entrentchment there was also Michael Dell, who had a more radical solution: “I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders"1.What is “psychologically” interesting is the fact that Steve Jobs was most likely stimulated to return due to this claim of his rival. This was confirmed later in 2006 when Apple surpassed Dell as the value of the company based on the quotation on the stock exchange, and Steve Jobs has shown that he can forgive, but never forget: “Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn’t perfect at predicting the future. Based on today’s stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell. Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today. ” 2

Most people are uncomfortable with conflict and are unaware of the possibilities of handling it. I believe that Dell’s approach towards a conflict-handling style, according to his interviews and public appearances, is a joinder between competition and collaboration, (with a hint of which means that he wants to reach his goal based on assertiveness and cooperation, always aiming for the win-win type of situation.

Dell genuinely believes that he can build many future successes on a solid foundation of people and principles, contributing positively in every community, both personally and organizationally.

1 http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-dell-1997-apple-quote-2013-2, accessed on the 14th of January at 16:17;2 http://blogs.marketwatch.com/cody/2011/05/18/steve-jobs-has-always-made-michael-dell-look-like-a-punk/, accessed on the 14th of January, at 16:24;