Walmart CEO: William Simon

Part of the long-term success of Walmart is the effectiveness of the leaders within the organization, including CEO William “Bill” Simon. An exceptional leader achieves goals for and with their business for the reason that “successful and effective leadership means, fundamentally, influencing others by establishing a direction for collective effort and managing, shaping, and developing the collective activities in accordance with this direction” (Lather, A., Jain, V. K., Jain, S., & Vikas, S., 2009). According to Derue, Nahrgang, Wellman, and Humphrey (2011), “leadership is one of the most discussed and debated topics in the social sciences [beginning] with a search for heritable attributes that differentiated leaders from non-leaders and explained individuals’ effectiveness as leaders” (p. 7). William Simon, without a doubt, carried each of these qualities, and as such, has helped to develop Walmart into the amazing conglomerate that it is today.
William Simon has been Chief Executive Officer and President of Wal-Mart.com USA, LLC since 2010, and has been the Executive Vice President of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. since 2010, as well. He has over fifteen years of experience employed by major consumer brands, as well as worked for many marketing and development positions for major companies. I consider William Simon to be a transformational leader which, to me, is the most effective of leadership styles and philosophies. Simon, as a transformational leader, posits van Eeden, Cilliers, and van Deventer (2008) is a visionary, takes risks to make positive changes, is proactive in social action and is involved in innovative planning methods and “shape[s] and create[s] rather than react[s] to environmental circumstances” (p. 254). Transformational leadership consists of four major components: Charisma, inspiration, stimulation, and