Ursula Burns Dominant Leadership Styles

Ursula Burns

In February of 2010, Ursula Burns became the chief executive of Xerox Corporation. Burns has successfully led the Xerox Corporation through difficult financial straits, by divesting much of the outmoded commodity-based business strategies towards a broader service-oriented one. Repositioning the company has enabled Xerox to weather the economic storms, poised for a bright future. A large part of the reason for the positive outlook for Xerox is the leadership style of Ursula Burns, and the corporate culture Burns subsequently creates.

Several leadership theories can provide a foundation for describing Burns' leadership styles and philosophies. Trait theory suggests that Burns's success as a leader is partly or fully rooted in her innate personality traits: her notable extraversion, toughness, and commitment to the Xerox company. Burns is known for being assertive, as well as creative in her approach towards managing the company and managing organizational change, too. The President of the United States teased Burns for her toughness, which is one of the reasons she got noticed at Xerox in the first place (McGirt, 2011). It was Burns's willingness to speak out and up at meetings, even before she was in any position of power that would have enabled her to make a formal change to the organization (Bryant, 2010). Burns became the executive assistant to two senior Xerox managers prior to her becoming Vice President, then President, and then finally as CEO. During her work as executive assistant, Burns's directness, honesty, and forthright character highlights some of the ways trait theory accounts for leadership styles and philosophy.

Burns's leadership styles are difficult to pigeonhole because the CEO believes in the need to "manage people in different ways" rather than stick to a formal protocol (Bryant, 2010, p. 1). However, Burns's track record reveals a clear visionary style of leadership. The first step Burns took when she stepped up to the plate was to acquire Affiliated Computer Services, an outsourcing company that would transform Xerox's entire business model and organizational culture. At $6.4 billion, the acquisition was a huge risk. The gamble could only be played by a person who had a distinct vision of where Xerox was headed, and more importantly, where the company should be heading. As someone who worked for the company for 31 years, Burns knew that Xerox's model based on hardware sales was falling by the wayside. If the company was to pull through, the leader needed to conceptualize a whole new vision of what Xerox meant. That vision was provided by Ursula Burns.

Leadership style is also defined in part by interactions with others and how the individual motivates or guides others in the organization. In terms of behavioral theories of leadership, Burns is more a production-oriented than an employee-oriented leader. Although she stresses the importance of employee empowerment, listening, and good communication skills, Burns started out as an engineer and does focus more on what specific tasks a team or the organization, as a whole, must accomplish in order to achieve its core goals. When Burns was learning more about Xerox's organizational behavior during her series of stints as executive assistant, she gleaned information about how to motivate others via frankness and honesty. Burns advocates treating the company like a real family: not a phony family that is always nice but a real one that is willing to argue and confront problems immediately (Bryant, 2010). Burns did not become a leader so that she could be "nice" to others, but at the same time, Burns understands the need to treat employees with respect. Avoiding authoritarian approaches like intimidation or the use of power over others, Burns instead aims to make others feel comfortable in her presence by listening "carefully," (Bryant, 2010, p. 1). Burns also learned the importance of taking the ego out of important decisions by planting an idea and allowing a follower/subordinate to run with it. By "giving people credit for ideas that they didn't have, but you sold to them" will "give them ownership," (Bryant, 2010, p. 1). Burns knows the need to build "followership," which corresponds to situational leadership theory.

Burns certainly has the formal power as CEO to run Xerox. In terms of bases of power, Burns does not use coercive power to intimidate others into performing according to company standards. Burns also does not pander to petty extrinsic reward schemes that might create a false sense of collaboration in the workplace. Instead, Burns opts for legitimate power. With the formal authority to lead the company, Burns also obtains the power that has been legitimized by 31 years of familiarity with the company. The Xerox Corporation helped to pay for Burns' graduate degree, engendering a mutual sense of trust between the current CEO and the organization as an entity. Therefore, Burns possesses a personal power that is based both on her expertise as a Xerox employee and engineer; and on her referent power that commands organic respect and admiration from employees. Xerox also depends on Ursula Burns, especially because of the CEO's commanding vision of where the company is headed. The creation of dependency on Burns for enacting the vision she created for the new Xerox is crucial for Burns to remain an effective leader.

In terms of sheer managerial effectiveness, Burns possesses the technical know-how, the people skills, and the conceptual skills in order to effectively run the Xerox Corporation. Burns manages over 100,000 employees at Xerox. Although she might not mentor or work directly with the majority of Xerox personnel, the organizational culture and climate Burns creates has an immediate impact on the daily lives of all employees. By engaging in frank, straightforward, and sometimes brutally honest communications, Burns avoids unhealthy organizational behavior that could damage the company's reputation. Communication is central to Burns's leadership philosophy, which is not necessarily confined to any one style but instead amalgamates the best of many. Burns may not be a charismatic leader like Richard Branson, and yet she commands as much appreciation and respect within the Xerox Corporation. With the possible exception of her innate outspokenness, Burns does not act in any sort of unconventional manner. She is a rather traditional leader, yet one that possesses a natural sense of transformational empowerment.