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 conflicts 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 Apples 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: Id 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 wasnt perfect at
predicting the future. Based on todays 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 Dells 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.

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-mademichael-dell-look-like-a-punk/, accessed on the 14th of January, at 16:24;

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.