Leadership Approach Paper - Essay Example

Leadership Approach of Apple Inc. Leadership Approach of Apple Inc. Leadership has been important in any organizations to function well. People with good leadership skills can bind people together and provide them with the developmental direction. The members may be able to fully discover and use their skills in the process of achieving the vision provided by their leaders. Sometimes leadership is confused with management as they both functions in organizations. They are both essential in making the organizations well-rounded and function at their optimal level.

Without them, there would be chaos in organizations brought by the confusion and selfish desires of the members (Yuki, 2010, p. 7). Both functions provide order in groups and give them the chance to improve. The difference between management and leadership is subjected to various interpretations. It may be suggested that management focuses on short-term situations of the company like being systematic, stable and effective. On the other hand, leadership considers long-term conditions of the organization by being flexible, adaptive and non-traditional (Yuki, 2010, p. 7). It seems that leadership is concerned with the future years of the organization while management focuses on months to a year of the organization from the present.

In studying leadership, there are various approaches. Those approaches have been developed through time as people become interested with the benefits of learning leadership and the advantages or exhibiting good leadership skills. Then, the interest of people upon it is able to produce a wide range of documents and studies. Scholars tend to arrange and categorize the approaches with limited success. The common way to group the theories on leadership is through its dominating variable. The three considered variables in leadership approaches are qualities of leaders, followers and situations (Yuki, 2010, p. 12). Qualities of leaders are studied since they show the good skills of leaders to influence their organizations while followers are studied regarding their abilities in doing the assigned tasks to them.

The situations involve the environment, culture and the system of the organization. The leadership approaches consist of trait approach, behavior approach, power-influence approach, situational approach, and integrative approach (Yuki, 2010, pp. 13-15). It seems that the emerging approach among those approaches is the integrative approach wherein it mixes the characteristics of any of the approaches. Despite of that, it is rarely seen that integrative approach makes use of all those approaches at the same time.

A good example is the study on the charisma of good leaders. That specific quality of leaders can truly attract their followers to do whatever it takes to accomplish the given objectives (Yuki, 2010, p. 15). It may look good, but it is still has a disadvantage. Lack of focus may be seen since more than one variable is considered and it would be too complex to analyze. In the case of one of the biggest computer companies, Apple Inc. may be analyzed using integrative approach. One of the founders of Apple Inc.

named Steve Jobs had shown exemplary leadership. He had charisma wherein he motivated his employees by sharing stories, but he did not stop there. He also pushed the employees forcefully that even made some employees think of him as autocratic. In terms of motives, he had his own motives mixed with social motives since he also considered the development of his employees (Kramer, 2010). Though he may be aggressive at times, his self-confidence and passion made a huge transformation in Apple Inc.

Various leadership approaches may be used for researches, but integrative shows promising potential to better understand the importance of leadership in making organizations improve wholly. References Kramer, D. (2010, February 15). Leadership behaviors and attitudes of Steve Jobs. David Kramer’s blog. Retrieved from http://davidkramer.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/leadership-behaviours-and-attitudes-of-steve-jobs/ Yuki, G. (2010). Leadership in organizations. USA: Prentice Hall.