Leadership of Steve Jobs - Essay Example

?Topic Leadership – Steve Jobs Introduction A good Leadership, yes indeed it is a phrase that can excite everybody and any body, but being one is not a cake walk. Being a leader is like playing with ice and fire; it burns you at times but also at times you the immense joy of power, authority and dictatorship. However, being a dictator is not a positive side of leadership as it gives birth to destruction and spread negative qualities .A good leader is one who is productive, creative, energetic and intelligent. He should have the creative energy to bring forward new ideas and concepts and also must have the determination and will power to put the same in action. It would be wise to say that a leader is not born but is developed by experience, knowledge and practice. A good leader is one who can motivate his followers spontaneously and lead them to the path of success in a smooth manner. According to (Curry) “It goes without saying that good leadership is crucial to any successful business. But, what makes a good leader and how can someone develop himself or herself into a good leader if they are not one to begin with? The answer is that there are many factors that contribute to a good leadership. And, whether someone is naturally a good leader or not, anyone can become a good leader”. A good leader is one who sets himself as a role model and example for next generation to look upon and get inspire to follow a successful path. The leadership quality is at times inherited, while sometimes it is cultivated by practice, experience and knowledge. Leadership is the process by which a person influences people around him to achieve a particular target or goal. A leader needs to make use of his best ability and power to bring about changes in the atmosphere he is working to get a desired result. However, there are different styles of leadership and as well different types of personality in leaders. Some people have gained popularity being a good King, and some as dictators; nonetheless, they all had the ambition to rule the world by any means. But, currently the leaderships which are in vogue are the authoritative leader, transformational leader, aristocratic leader and so on. Leadership where in the leaders has the quality of being innovative, authoritative, has visionary skills and goal oriented can be termed as transformational leader. Today the world has changed in to a global business arena and the emergence of numerous businesses corporate and international business chains have made business leaders to be demanding and evolutionary. The capacity to lead a team or organization is a very tedious task and it requires a lot of skill and ability to perform a task faultless and successfully. Being a leader requires an immensely high level of vision, creative thoughts and energy and one should be able to bring up aspiration and motivation in people around him. A good leadership is performed through a social influence where in number of people are spontaneously motivated to work according to the style of the specific leader. Steve Jobs is one such leader, who has changed the face of computer technology by his intense passion and love for electronic world. History and Background of Steve Jobs Steve Jobs is a renowned business magnate of America and also the CEO of Apple Incorporation. His official name is Steve Paul Jobs has much professional experience in business world before entering his own venture of selling personal computer. His venture was initiated in early 1970s, and later years progressed to become one of the famous and successful business the American business world .Jobs have previously held positions in Pixar Animation Studio as CEO, and also has been a board member of The Walt Disney Company before starting his own venture .He has also been the executive producer for the movie “Toy Story” in 1995 which can be counted as a worthy experience in movie business. It is a matter of credit that Steve with his other business associates designed and marketed first line of commercially successful personal computers. This happened in the early 20th century and was called Apple II series. Jobs during his career acquired the status of a dynamic Silicon Valley business magnate and contributed significantly to the computer world. The highlights of his inventions are that he gives an aesthetic appeal and attractive innovative design to the computer technology which created a mind boggling sensation in the technology world and stirred up awe and admiration in the minds of millions. Moreover, his products were sophisticate and elegant and was also not far behind from being exclusively functional. Steve Jobs was determined in his abilities and proved to the world that computer technology can be a consumer based and can change the normal perception of being just a high – tech electronic device. As per (guynn) “Apple Inc. has pulled off a string of runaway hits — like the iPhone and the iPad — that have revolutionized every industry they touched. It has become the world's second-most-valuable company, worth more than $300 billion”. This very well defines the miraculously strange capabilities and innovative spirit of Steve Jobs who was the backbone of Apple Incorporation. However, he has never won these the acclamation in an easy way but by immense hard work, will power, ambition and undying passion for in the world of electronics. The life history of Steve has never been a soothing one for ears as it was all filled with trauma, dramatically movements and downturns. Steve was born to an American mother and Syrian father and had a childhood different form others in San Francisco. It was a sad part that, Steve in his early childhood was put for adoption as his mom could not afford to bring him up in the way she desired .Steve’s biological father was a mathematician and politician science professor and this could be the reason for Steve’s intelligence and exceptional ability in innovating high – tech concepts in computer technology field. Interestingly, his foster parents Paul and Clara a couple who were from middle class family assured Steve’s biological mom to give him best education possible by them Steve as a toddler moved to San Francisco, the much famed “Silicon Valley in 1950s with his foster parents. However, Steve was a difficult child in those times and was less keen on education until he reached the age of 9 years. During this time he was influenced by one of his teacher and he skipped the grade 5 and moved on to middle school. After some years, Steve’s parents moved to Los Altos where he got passionate about the electronics world and this became a turning point in his childhood. Steve was largely fantasized by the electronical gadgets in his neighbor’s garage and later was put to an electronic class in Homestead High School. According to (Moisescot),“McCollum later recalled of one time when his pupil Steve called up Bill Hewlett himself, co-founder of HP, to get spare parts for his homework, and even a summer job at Hip’s factory. Steve’s entrepreneurial skills showed up early in his life indeed”. However, it was in late 1960s that Steve got introduced to Stephen Woznaik who discussed with Jobs about the construction of a small computer board which was interestingly named “the cream soda computer”. Steve was an enthusiastic youngster in college years and he attempted to sell “blue boxes” which was a replica of AT&T’s long-distance switching equipment that almost got caught for illegal business tactics. Lately Steve moved on to Reed College but had to drop out half way through due to financial difficulties but luckily was allowed to attend drop in classes. In 1970s he also got acquainted with the spiritual side of his and desired to get spiritually connected in different means .He was also influenced by Hare Krishna temple where he used to take one meal during day in his difficult times. Jobs then traveled to India, as his quest towards spirituality, and were cheated by a fraudulent Indian Guru. He then came back as a Buddhist, and experienced psychedelics and was under the influence of LSD, a kind of hallucinating pills. However, Job had to return to Atari an organization in which he was responsible to make circuit board for a game called Break out. Later Steve joined Woznaik and Wayne to join hands with Markulla and Intel Engineer to work together to invent new technologies in the field of Personal computers. Woznaik was in charge of the assembling of the computers and marketing it and Apple Company progressed in its selling and expanded, so they recruited Mike Scott who worked for National Semiconductor as CEO, but he did not do any good for the company. In 1983, John Sculley was pulled by Steve to join his company Apple and convinced him by saying that why do you want to waste whole life selling a sugary water. Job was a very charismatic and convincing person, still his colleagues at times found him to be temperamental, erratic and arrogant. Steve is now been extensively successful in computer business and is rated as the number one business man by Forbes magazine Career Evolution of Steve Jobs Steve Job’s Career graph started prominently in the early 1970s, when he formed first sophisticated line of personal computers with Apple co – founders Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula.Later he invented Macintosh which was a great success and Steve was holding a position of Vice – president in Apple Incorporation and even was head of the Macintosh division. The main accomplishment of Steve Jobs while working at apple was his revolutionary idea of inventing such brands of personal computers which people have never experienced in life before. He had a bonafide vision, and this changed the way in which computer could perform tasks. Jobs lead to a significant change in the hardware constitution of computer which made it relatively easier for business corporate, individual users and government organizations to operate. His exclusive concepts amused the consumers and he reduced the size of computer by making it easier for the computer user to handle and use the gadget conveniently. This shows the innovative power of Jobs and how he visualized ideas and also strived to put them in practice. He was a strong willed person and his ability to work in electronic field led him to successfully occupy the most coveted position of Vice- President in Apple Inc.However, during his career as Vice – President of Apple Inc., he had come across many disputes and conflicts with his fellow workers as he was temperamental and impulsive. In his working period as vice – president of Apple he roped in the Pepsi Cola CEO, Sculley in 1983to join his company which shows that Steve is good at convincing people for the right thing at right time. Scullery was convinced by the charms of Steve Jobs and joined the Apple Inc. where Jobs would concentrate on technical works and sculley on marketing techniques. Even though, things were moving smoothly between Jones and Sculley, later days saw a clash between these executives on the sales issue of Macintosh which led to damages in their business relationship. The sales of Macintosh were very ground breaking in initial stages, but it started declining after certain periods which raised issues among Sculley and Jones. (Edible Apple) states that, “Apple’s marketing team anticipated sales of 75,000 Macs per month during the 1984 holiday shopping season - in reality, Apple at the time was struggling to sell 20,000 units per month. . Sculley naturally blamed Jobs for dwindling Mac sales while Jobs maintained that Sculley was doing a piss poor job of managing company resources”. Job was blamed for being eccentric by John and was forced to resign from Apple Inc. Apple was the foremost company to come up with the mouse and the track pad systems. The original logo of Apple which came up in 1976 was featuring the image of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. The resignation of Steve was a shock to the employees of Apple as they found him to be charismatic, intelligent and innovative Nonetheless, employees did knew that his leadership style was little extreme and close to like terrorist attitude. Still Steve Jobs were considered a leader with great visionary skills and people admired him for this ability .However, after being kicked out of Apple, Steve Jobs started a company called NeXT. With this company called Next he wanted to come forward with a new line of personal computers .He demanded that they would be superior than Apple computers but this company was a failure and hence he had to come up with new tasks to makes his dreams come true. Unfortunately Next turned out to be an unsuccessful venture and had to be sold .In later years he acquired Lucasfilm , a movie studio which was worth $ 10 million This was later incorporated with Pixar Animated Studio whose employee he was in his initial career stages.Pixar studios moved forward to bring out the first animated movie called “Toy Story” which was huge success and this studio Pixar, claimed to become the most successful animation studio on the planet. Later on Next was acquired by Apple and Steve Jobs again joined Apple Inc. and he realized the mistake that his resignation happened earlier as he was impatient and reckless .Steve commented that only thing kept him going in his profession was the love and passion he had for his job. (Lohr,34)writes that “Remember those Steven P. Jobs came back to Apple because the company's effort to develop an ambitious new operating system, codenamed Copland, had failed. Mr. Jobs convinced Apple to buy his company Next Inc. for $400 million in December 1996 for its operating system. It took Mr. Jobs and his team years to retool and tailor the Next operating system into what became Macintosh OS X.” In the mean while Pixar studios and Disney produced many animation movies on partner ship basis. As per (Grover), “Now, as rumors continue to circulate that Pixar Chairman Steve Jobs will sell his company to Disney and join the Disney board, veteran mouse watchers are bracing for new fireworks. Think of Jobs joining Disney as Silicon Valley fire hitting old-media kerosene”. Eventually Disney company did acquire Pixar studio and Jobs benefited form becoming the share holder of Disney .In 2006 he progressed to became the largest shareholder of The Walt Disney Company with 7% stake in shares .Job was also responsible for handling Disney and Pixar studio’s combined production of animation business with the helps of special committee called “six man steering committee”. Steve was a man with an outspoken nature and realized that being a board member was a nasty game where there can be lot backstabbing and politics. But by joining with Steve Jobs, the geniuses of Pixar and other talented employees of the The Walt Disney company benefited much. Being a dynamic leader, Steve has proved his talent and skills in producing animation movies and his determination was unquestionable and outstanding. Later in 1996, Jobs returned to Apple to occupy the position as CEO and replaced the old Mac Operating system with a new one which gained proved his brilliance as a pioneer of computer designing. Job brought back great profits to Apple and his commitment and devotion to his work gathered much appraisal and admiration from people all around the world. Leadership Style of Steve Jobs The leadership style of Steve Jobs was exalted to be aristocratic and authoritative as his working style was centralized and captivating. He had the charisma and extra- ordinary ability to convince people to join him in accomplishing a specific task or goal. He can be unquestionably credited to be a transformational leader but sometimes he projects to be highly demanding, rude and arrogant. Transformational leaders are highly confident as they have immense understanding about their capabilities and power and strongly desired to transform things and consistently demand a change in everything Steve is a transformational leader as he visions new ideas and concepts and transforms the old in to new with lot of energy and zest. He his highly passionate and enthusiastic about his job and injects immense energy in to the people around him to achieve a goal or mission. He is highly famous for motivating his team and fellow executives in believing in an idea and influencing them into pursuing that dream or concept which he thinks is workable and achievable. As a transformational leader, he is very competitive in changing others to work towards a particular mission .He also has the power to create a harmonious and balanced atmosphere among the employees of the organization, so that working process of the business is never hampered. In the apple Incorporation, he is looked upon as a man who has the brilliance and visionary skills to change the potentiality of the computer as an electronic tool. Being an extremely talented leader he had the power to draw other talented professionals and executives to join hands with him in his new ventures. Moreover, he had the extraordinary power to create a positive energy around him which motivated his team to a large extent. In his leadership he motivates and provokes the morale of the employees to bring out the best talent n them, as a result he at times is also categorized as a charismatic leader. Steve Jobs has said to be have a very demanding and aggressive personality and wanted to achieve what he desires and dreamt of instantly. Silicon Valley critics have also considered him as an ego maniac, as they found him very egoistic and self centered. However, Steve had a larger than life personality and large amount of talent and vibrant persona in him. Some critics have claimed that at times he becomes negative to his counterpart Microsoft leader Gates and no later he request them to work for him in creating soft wares. This reveals that he is impulsive and changes his mind and attitude often to establish his dreams and visions. However, Steve was very focused on customer demands and always had a passion to meet the future demands of customer rather than current ones. This could be the main reason he can be defines as a transformational leader wherein he brings about change in the people’s life and in world as a whole. According to (Bass)“Transformational leaders pay special attention to each individual followers needs for the achievement and growth by acting as coach or mentor. Followers and colleagues are developed to successfully attain higher level of potentiality”. This is the crucial aspect in the leadership style of Steve where he gives utmost attention to individual employees of his organization and allows them to grow professionally and morally as a potential worker for the organization. Steve like a transformational leader has a vision of ideas and concepts which bring about revolution in his field of work He brought about a dynamic change in the technological world by introducing new variety personal computers which captured the mind and hearts of people all over the world. Steve Jobs was known to have an exceptional ability in communicative skills and could convince anyone to follow him to achieve a specific goal. Moreover his grasping power is very sharp which led him to understand the business potentiality of Mouse and graphical user interface in the computer technology. He always desired to foresee the future demands of customers and believed in using his creative power in electronic field to come up with extraordinary piece of electronic computer gadgets. A transformational leader must have every quality to grasp ideas to put it in action so that a revolution can b brought about in his organization and field of work. He transformed the position of every organization he landed in and was looked up on as an icon of transformational leadership skills with highly evolved vision that changed the old view of electronic world and gadgets He undoubtedly had an obsession for creative new computer design which is portable, creative and innovative and strived hard for making it a reality. He was the intellectual asset of every company he worked for and proved that he can make things dynamic and unique with his imaginative skill and expertise in the field of electronics. ( (US News) “Jobs are the supreme example of the transformational leader who stands for higher order values. Job’s passionate perfectionism, a contradictory blend of hot temper and cool temperament, is embedded in the soul of many new machines--iMacs, iBooks, iPods”.Steve always had a positive aura around him which fascinated much of his colleagues and persuaded them in every way to work positively and optimistically. Steve’s creative skill to innovate insanely great computer gadgets can be contributed his power to transform complex gadgets into more dynamic, simple and unique one. Steve’s career with Apple has proved him to be a business innovator, entrepreneurial icon and cultural inspiration .He has put forward so many technological miracles which changed the face of digital world greatly. Ironically, he was a college drop out but the achievements in his career were so great that world forgot his education life and matched him as an ideal Mogul of Computer technology. He had to face lot of hurdles in his career and was often termed as a saint and a sinner at the same time. However, he was always appeared as the rescuer of the organization he was working for and established success and profit to them in high proportion. Shortcoming or Negative Aspects of Steve Job’s Leadership Steve Jobs has been a great business leader and innovative head, but like any other leader he also has his own limitation and short comings .Being a transformative leader he was highly ambitious and creative and it required a lot of effort and high energy from him to achieve a specific goal. He has struggled a lot to come forward in his life, and had to come across lot of hurdles and struggling to establish his dreams and vision in practical life. (Stevenson, 54) writes that “While some see Job as an arrogant and autocratic, it can’t be denied that he is able to see future technology through a marketing prism. Often criticized for his leadership style his achievements are the still the stuff of legend”. Steve is one of the most successful business men of our times, but he is many a times criticized as an authoritative leader as he his very demanding with changing attitude. People noticed that Steve wanted things to happen immediately and carried less patience .If he visualize an idea he wanted to put in to practice in less time and he would do everything to make things work faster. This cannot be considered as a positive quality as moving very fast can make things collapse and endanger the potentiality of the work. It could be this attitude of his that led to conflicts and clashed among his colleagues and executives in the company which he has worked in his career. It is a surprising fact that, Steve always considered himself to have best knowledge in computer field and thought others had ides which were inferior to him. He wants to get things done his way and he hardly listened to his fellow workers. He had his share of tantrums and was less able to control his feeling. He is very outward, when it comes to his feeling and used get angry with his fellow workers which gained some bitterness among the employees of his organization. He was not reserved when it was the question about his emotions, and, was highly temperamental which resulted in high tantrums. Steve was a rebel in his adulthood and this could be reason he challenged his colleagues during his career to the edge to make things unique .He wanted things to work his way, and, any less work than his expectation was not tolerated by him. It can be here noted that, Steve did possess little egoism and thought other had little experience and knowledge than him. This could be the reason he wanted people to work according to his instructions and decisions. Even though, this can bring positive changes in the working style of the organization, it can also bring negativism in the attitude of the colleagues as they are subjugated. In this kind of leadership, team workers can feel that they are monitored very extensively and can come out with disagreement with the leader or executive. In one way, his arrogance can be due to the way in which he led his childhood, as he was an adopted child. He lacked the love and care from his parents and was left to the foster parents for nurturing and education. He did not have the financial help and environment to study according to his wishes and had to go through a lot of hurdles and difficulties in his life to attain success. People at times considered Steve as “bad Steve” and “good Steve” and this could be due to his extreme mood and temperament. The fact is that that Jobs was mostly considered as an egoistic person and interestingly he was egoistic towards himself and his fellow workers. But this egoistic behavior was to bring out the best from his workers, and, to achieve the impossible and create products of masterpiece nature. Job was criticized to be not listening and giving attention to the opinions and suggestions of his colleagues and this created some bitterness in his relation he shared with his co –workers. He always listened to his intuition and instincts to create a product and his co – workers or team felt that he does not understand them and was much arrogant and self centered. This could be the reason why he always faced clashes and conflicts with his team and other executives which induced him to leave Apple Inc. in the initial stage. “The qualities that had worried the Apple board in 1983 continued to undermine Job’s relationship with the new CEO: he lacked discipline, was temperamental, impatient, reckless and impulsive” (Lorange,58) .So here we can see an array of shortcomings of Steve when he is working in an organizational atmosphere. First and foremost, he lacked discipline, but in this context it is not about self – discipline but question is about discipline in managerial activities. Jobs was criticized to lack the skill and knowledge of applying disciplines of management in the day to day activities of business functioning. A leader to be successful in the long run must give due attention to the managerial principles and train team and colleagues to bring about harmony and balance in the business environment. Another major disadvantage of Steve Jobs is his lack of patience, as he wanted things to happen right away. Steve was restless always and wanted action immediately; this gave less space for his colleagues to work on a particular project. Being restless and impatient he wanted to see things work instantly, as and when he vision ideas and concepts. Steve in his early years was highly arrogant and could relate to people less and this disturbed his relationships with people around him. Job was believed to be questioning why things are the way they were, as he wanted change in everything. However this attitude can shock the public as they find such behavior to be arrogant, rude and annoying. However, with all his negative aspect he still rose above many business leaders of his times and proved himself to be a UN challengeable icon in the business world. He was determined enough to change the view of other people and insisted that his idea were worth implementing f to bring about positive change in the computer technology world. Every time he joined an organization he brought about immense granitite company withies creative skill and artistic views about electronics. He was wanted everywhere but due to his arrogance and impatient nature he had row with colleagues. He directed people in an authority’s way and people found him very authoritative and demanding and uneasy to cope up with. Conclusion Being a leader is not a quality everyone acquires as it requires a lot of determination and courage to rise above all. But some people have that extraordinary ability to visualize new ideas and concepts which they bring forth into action with the help of people around them. A successful leader indeed has to be convincing, charismatic and energetic. Steve Jobs here being a transformational leader, bring about a new dimension to the electronic world and invented new array of personal computers, which people could only dream of.Inhis career, he has been subjected to great level of criticism and arguments from critics and business analyst, but his belief in his self and his creative power allowed him to rise above all in the electronic field. A transformational leader always intends to bring change in the existing style of products and desires to introduce greatly marvelous piece of products which could benefit the people largely. He has the ability to direct his people in the right way to bring out the best potentiality in them in producing something exciting and unique. Being a transformation leader, he took measure which was extremes as all he wanted was to achieve his goal or aim. He never like to take an answer for no, and wanted his creative power to come in action at any cost. A job is considered as a supreme icon in animation movie industry and computer world. Jobs have made a large impression on intellectuals around the world that transforming things is possible if one has the creative power and will to put them into practice. It is not an easy journey for a leader to prove the world that he is outstanding and exquisite; every leader has to face lot of challenging situations and obstacles in his path while walking towards success. Steve had to face lot of criticism, and negative views from public and his counterparts, still he continued strongly to walk on the path of success. Steve Jobs is not a star, but a shining star in the sky of turbulent wind and forceful imaginations of computer world. Bibliography Bass, Bermard. Transformational leadership: industrial, military, and educational impact. 1sted.,. 1. New Jersey: lawrence Erlbaum Associates,Inc., 1998. 12. Print. Curry, Myron. "Leadership: What Makes a Good Leader." http://www.business-marketing.com. Business Training Media, Inc, 10-04-2010. Web. 11 Mar 2011. . Edible Apple, ."The story behind Steve Jobs’ 1985 resignation from Apple." www.edibleapple.com. Edible Apple, 21-11-2010. Web. 11 Mar 2011. . Grover, Ronald. "Will Steve Jobs Be Disney's Big Cheese?." www.businessweek.com. Bloomberg Business Week, 20-01-2006. Web. 11 Mar 2011. Read More