Oprah Winfrey’s Leader Background
US talk show host, philanthropist, TV producer, author, and actress Oprah Winfrey. She is renowned for the Chicago-founded talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show. From 1986 through 2011, the show was shown across the nation in syndication. Oprah was the most affluent black American during the 20th century and is known as the “queen of all media” (Wise). She formerly had the title of both the best African-American patron in the US account and the only black millionaire. She was named the most powerful female on the globe in 2007.
Winfrey was born into dearth to a single adolescent mother in rural Mississippi and was brought up in the central municipality of Milwaukee (Rosa Parks Biography). She was shifted to Nashville, Tennessee, to stay with her barber dad, Vernon Winfrey. While still in high school, Oprah landed a position in radio, and at 19 years old, she became a co-broadcaster for the region’s evening reports. She eventually transitioned to the daytime talk show scene due to her frequently emotional, impromptu anchoring. She started her production business after uplifting a third-place neighborhood Chicago chat show to the peak position.
Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership and Management Path
Oprah started to show leadership skills from a young age. The very first step that helped her to grow as a true leader was teaching in the Bible. She learned how to read the Bible when she moved in with her grandmother on a little ranch. When she taught Oprah to read the Bible, Oprah’s grandmother laid the groundwork for her career.
In other words, the Bible became an education for her, where she learned a lot that would be useful in life, including leadership. Oprah spent time reading Bible tales to the farm animals when she was just three years old. Her grandmother educated her about faith and God, which encouraged her to become strong and assist needy people (Goudreau).
When Oprah was sent to Nashville to live with her father, she got a job at the local radio when she was 19. She managed to upgrade a local radio in Chicago, which was ranked third to the top level. She later started her production company and, in the 1990s, reinvented her program to focus on mindfulness, spirituality, literature, and self-enhancement.
In the 1900s, Oprah enlarged her company into numerous fields aside from TV. She ventured into several areas like publishing, education, music, health, and film. Oprah established her business meticulously, utilizing her TV show to base a creation firm, differentiating into publishing, online, and radio media industries, and starting a prestigious generous organization. The Oprah Bill, a novel law intended to protect children from abuse, was signed into law by US President Bill Clinton in 1994 as a result of Winfrey’s initiative for the protection of children from abuse.
Despite running a sizable company empire, she did not follow any corporate models and had no idea how to read a balance sheet. She had refused offers from numerous firms like Ralph Lauren, AT&T, and Intel to be on their boards because she did not comprehend what she would do on their boards. However, Oprah Winfrey did not stop working on her career.
Oprah Winfrey’s Leadership Behavior, Motivational Style, and Personality Traits
Oprah uses two leadership styles: the transformational leadership style and the charismatic leadership strategy. A transformational leadership strategy is a course of management that transforms and changes individuals. Transformational managers give the logic of mission and vision, individual attention, and coaching followers, can inspire via communication of high expectations, and boost intelligence usage for solving challenges. Such leaders value emotions, long-standing objectives, ethics, and standards (Wise).
As a transformational leader, Oprah has an apparent mission and dream best revealed in her multi-award show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, in which she inspired and influenced many people to dream large. Her communication abilities allowed her to interact with persons from different settings (Wise). Individuals have managed to associate with Oprah due to where she comes from and how she prospered in a male-dominated world. Winfrey shed a tear over touching narratives in her shows, and her human part connects her with individuals who view her as kind.
On the other hand, charismatic leadership involves acting in exceptional manners, which has particular charismatic impacts on followers. Such leaders are strong examples of the values and beliefs they wish their audience to have. They are famous for being central and having a burly will to sway other people. Besides, charismatic leaders are self-assured and possess a burly logic of ethical standards. Being the first lady to have her net transmission and influence many people’s lives, Oprah is seen as a charismatic leader. She is self-confident and shares personal narratives about her joy and pain.
Winfrey is an original communicator who links her viewers robustly (Rosa Parks Biography). Oprah has an immense logic of ethical standards, and when she is mistaken, she is ready to declare that she is incorrect. That is why most of Winfrey’s audience strongly associated with her. Moreover, Oprah managed to make her audience acknowledge that she was one of them, regardless of her undisputed celebrity status. Her audience felt that they were comprehended since Winfrey had similar challenges and worries with her relationships or figures.
Performance in the Workplace
Oprah’s communication skills have enabled her to interact with people from different backgrounds. She used her emotions as strengths to connect with people, including her guests and workers. This has made her an excellent businessperson who has built an empire of shows, influence, books, and magazines. She comprehends that narratives and emotions are key to establishing connections.
Her leadership authenticity enabled her to change her shows and concentrate on self-enhancement. She has taken opinions founded on the right time, devoid of planning, directed by her burly instinct (Goudreau). Oprah’s charismatic leadership skills and how she motivates her employees and implements her dream while upholding a crowd outlook make her an extraordinary entrepreneur who became the world’s finest women entrepreneur and the queen of all media.
Oprah leads and inspires others, and her leadership style emphasizes that nothing should be taken for granted. Oprah also shows a burly job standard. Whereas she worked as a newscaster, she further assumed the work of a host on a morning show. In all her professional life, Winfrey has never shunned away from hard work but accepts it (Zitelmann). This enabled her to establish a professional support network, and she has reached out to some of the most prosperous business persons in the globe for assistance.
How Employees Respond to Oprah Winfrey’s Management and Leadership
Oprah’s employees feel motivated because she knows how to encourage them. They are top-talented, smart, and keen on valuing customers and enriching relationships. The employees know that Oprah values competence and compatibility and appreciate her standing by them. Some have become successful under her management, like Dr. Phil and Rachael Ray (Zitelmann).
A massive team of employees follows her anywhere because she has invested in them. Oprah’s employees share her vision of success and her dreams of rising step by step. They are positively empowered to live their best lives and hold Oprah in the uppermost regard since her humor, generosity, reliability, and hopefulness connect her with superior excellence.
Features That Make Oprah Winfrey a Great Leader
Oprah is a great leader because she is motivated by her capacity to visualize her success, transmit her dreams to those around her, and be steadfast in putting them into action. Oprah has the guts to aim high and the intelligence to ascend methodically. Her best traits include being people-oriented, lively, quick-paced, social, emotional, kind, and loyal.
She is also positive, hopeful, resolute, motivated, strong, driven, brave, focused, insistent, and tough. Oprah is the eventual self-made business head; her essential management method is supreme and extremely productive. Her fundamental philosophy goes to three branches, including her values, vision, and group (Zitelmann).
Moreover, Oprah values her viewers because she understands that they are her consumers; without them, she would not be successful. In order to show her audience that she is paying attention, she frequently incorporates them into her content. Oprah expresses her gratitude by giving them gifts, like paying for their trips to another country. Most importantly, Oprah talks to them as equals whom she greatly values, making her a great leader.
Additional Information of Interest
Since childhood, Oprah knew she would overcome poverty and become a superstar. She worked hard to make her dreams come true in real life. However, her grandmother was preparing her to work as a maid, and the Opera did not listen to Hattie May and did what she considered necessary (Hinton). In addition, Oprah’s path to success is personified by the Cinderella fairy tale, where a girl turns from a maid into a princess (Hinton). Opera goes almost the same way, but she becomes not a princess but a queen.
Works Cited
Hinton, KaaVonia. “What are these biographies not saying? Colorblindness in biographies about Oprah Winfrey.” Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 46.3 (2021): 244-262.
Goudreau, Jenna. “How to Lead Like Oprah.” Forbes, Web.
Parks, Rosa. “The Queen of Daytime TV” Academy of Achievement. Web.
Wise, Julie. “Build Your Business: Oprah Winfrey Style.” Her Business. 2022, Web.
Zitelmann, Rainer. “The Seven Secrets of Oprah Winfrey’s Success.” Forbes Magazine, Web.