High Profile Manager ( Ceos Listed ).

¶ … high profile manager ( CEOs listed ). Please include information person's personal professional background, management style skills research person effective manager/leader.

High profile managers -- Meg Whitman

Fort Lauderdale

Margaret Cushing Whitman was born in 1956 in Cold Springs Harbor, New York to Margaret Cushing and Hendricks Hallett Whitman. She went to Cold Spring Harbor High School, which she graduated in three years, being one at the top of her class.

Whitman had wanted to become a doctor and even enrolled in the math and science classes and the Princeton University. During one summer vacation however, she was attracted to economics due to an activity of selling advertisements for a magazine. She as such dropped out of medical preparation and started to study economics. She earned a B.A. cum laudae and an MBA from the Harvard Business School in 1979.

Throughout her career, Meg Whitman has occupied several functions, some of the more notable of them including:

Leading positions in several firms, such as toy company Hasbro Inc., flower products company FTD Inc., footwear company The Stride Rite Corporation, entertainment firm the Walt Disney Company or consulting firm Bain & Company.

President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay Inc., from 1998 through 2008

Part time strategic advisor to Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers, a firm activating in the private equity sector

Starting with September 2011, Meg Whitman became President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard, where she had already been serving as a member on the Board of Directors since January 2011 (Website of Hewlett-Packard, 2012).

Meg Whitman is mostly known for her position as President and CEO of eBay. She had been with the firm since 1998, when eBay employed 30 staffs and generated $4 million in revenues. Upon her departure, the company was employing 150,000 staffs and generating $8 billion in revenues (Santa Maria Times, 2009).

The managerial style of Meg Whitman while at eBay had been characterized by structure and vision. She took the product the company had created and assigned executives in charge of all aspects related to the product and the management of the firm. She was also in charge of company expansion, listing on the stock exchange market and the purchase and sale of Skype (for a considerable gain for eBay).

In 2007, Whitman resigned from her position at the auction website, but remained as an advisor to the new CEO until 2008. She stated that her time at eBay had been personally and professional beneficial, but that ten years was sufficient time to be spent in one institution. She also added that the move would be good for herself and the company, which was in need of a new leadership style and a new vision, in order to further evolve (Kopytoff, 2008).

The leadership style implemented by Meg Whitman represents the primary reason for her success and popularity within the business community. Whitman has developed her leadership style by working in several firms, and collecting feedback from the various situations. While she worked with Proctor & Gamble in brand management, she learned the importance of placing the customer first. Then, while employed with Bain, she experienced the decentralized business environment, where she learned how to get the most of people by collaborating with them, rather than by controlling them. Through these experiences, Whitman learned several valuable lessons, such as listening, collaborating, learning and building relationships; she learned how to influence people in order to be a successful leader (Terry, 2011).

Meg Whitman as such developed her own personal leadership style, based on persuasion. She places an increased emphasis on promoting a positive attitude and communicating in an easy, confident and flexible manner. Whitman is also charismatic and this is a positive influence on leadership, helping to influence people, rather than employing authority. She is patient and flexible when listening, yet she is determined and fast-paced when decisions have to be made and carried out. Meg Whitman is confident and inspires trust; she is optimist and enthusiastic and these traits have helped her be declared the only women in the top of the 100 best performing CEOs (Geronimo Coaching Now, 2010).

After her departure from eBay, Meg Whitman became tempted by a career in politics. She as such ran in the 2009 elections for governor of California; her scope of running was represented by the belief that her business expertise would be necessary in these times of economic hardship, resulted from the economic crisis. Still, despite this logic, Whitman was unable to defeat her opponent -- Jerry Brown -- and this inability was mostly observed at the level of lack of experience in politics (Bio True Story, 2012).