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Steve Jobs Leadership Analysis
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Introduction This presentation aims to analyze the leadership styles of Steve Jobs. For analyzing the leadership style, we have also tried our best to present and understand his personal accomplishments, company achievements as well as his personality traits. After having understood this, we have provided a detailed analysis of Steve Jobs as a leader. We have also in depth analyzed the elements of transformational leadership of Steve Jobs.
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Biography & Major Personal Events
Born on February 24, 1955 and adopted by Paul & Clara Jobs. Worked with HP for summer internship after High School. Dropped out of college after the very first semester. 1976: Started the company Apple computers with Steve Wozniak Apple I, II, III all were successful. 1984: Conceptualized and introduced the revolutionary Macintosh the market. 1985: Was forced to resign by the board of directors of Apple computers. 1986: Founded Next Computers 1986: Co-founded Pixar Animation Studio and thereby revolutionized the Movie Industry. 1997: Next was sold to Apple & Jobs became the CEO of Apple Inc. 2001: Introduced the ipod and thereby revolutionized the Music Industry 2007: Introduced 3G iphone, first of its kind in the market and thereby revolutionized the cell-phone market.
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Personality Traits Impatient:
Right from the childhood, Jobs was very impatient and believed in experimentation. He always felt that he had a short time to live and had to accomplish a lot of things in that period. Visionary: Right from his early days of building blue boxes while in school, he wanted to create a dent in the universe and impact the lives of the whole world. He was indeed successful in that later as he transformed the computer industry, the movie industry, the music industry and then the cell-phone industry.
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Personality Traits Dreamer:
He had a dream to make computers a personalized product which everyone in the world would use. And he received an unparalleled response for the same from the world as a market place. Artist: He possessed a great urge for theatrics. Any new product launch would always happen in a magnificently scripted theatric way in which Jobs would suddenly appear and do something that would make the crowd go berserk. Innovator: Right from the childhood days, Jobs was very much creative, innovative and kept experimenting with electronics. He made these experiments fun even for people around him.
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Reality Distortion Field
Personality Traits Passionate & Enthusiastic: Steve Jobs always micro-managed things never leaving control. His passion and enthusiasm were direct motivators for everyone around him. Powerful: He had amazing ways with people. He believed in and created a reality distortion field around him. A lot of his colleagues have confirmed that things which were impossible otherwise were possible with Jobs around. He made everything seem so easy and simple. Reality Distortion Field
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Personality Traits Bi-Polarity:
For Jobs, there were only two kind of things and people, either the worst or the best. No third dimension existed for him. He would reprimand people claiming the product they presented as shit if there was even a minor scope of improvement left in it. Focus & Determination: He was focused in whatever he did. He would be working for days together without even worrying about self-cleaning. He would be restless till he achieved what he planned. A desire & yearning for the best: Jobs always wanted nothing but the best. He was not someone who would compromise even with one small carpet lying untidy in the office or home. He would rather not buy furniture for his home than to compromise by getting mediocre furniture. He also had a very good eye for detailing and designing.
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Personality Traits Control:
Jobs was a control freak. He needed to have everything best around him. He could not tolerate mediocre people and mediocre products. If he organized a party, he would design each drink and the food menu also perfectly. He would want a completely dirt-free production house and controlled in a subtle way the working of everyone else around him. Loci of Control: Jobs had an internal Loci of Control. He was self-motivated and self-driven. He always believed that his personal actions would dictate the outcomes. Lack of Emotional aspect: Jobs lacked empathy towards his employees and hence came across as a rude person to a lot of people. He was emotional in his own life and hunted down his real parents also in the later years but he never let this emotions overpower his work and business.
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The Big 5 Model of Personality Dimensions
Extroversion: Jobs was an extrovert, he would say anything he wished to anyone at any time. However, he was generally not much sociable. Agreeableness: Jobs was never agreeable. He would not agree with your ways if they don’t match with his. Rather he would just drive you to agree with his ideas by his smart and charismatic ways. Conscientiousness: Jobs was responsible and dependable at times. But then sometimes, he was completely unreasonable and wanted to do something only because it would thrill him.
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The Big 5 Model of Personality Dimensions
Emotional Stability: Jobs was never emotionally involved while at work and that made him emotionally stable. He was always self-confident and positive about things and approach. Openness to Experience: Jobs was always curios and had an artist within him which led him to change the whole arts and entertainment industry. His openness to experience also took him to India for soul-searching where he realized his dream. He would also experiment with consciousness time to time and followed Zen Buddhism, had a ‘Guru’ in India and strictly followed Vegan Diet time to time.
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Proactive Personality
Jobs always identified opportunities in different industries which no one else envisioned. After seeing these opportunities, he did not sit back but achieved what most people claimed to be impossible back then. He is someone who takes action and persevered to attain his dream. He created a positive environment around him and never waited to be told what to do, rather he was the one who constantly told people what to do. He had an internal locus of control as described earlier. All these traits make him more of a Proactive Personality than a Type A Personality. However, he did possess the impatience that is a typical attribute of the Type A Personality.
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Quotes reflecting personality & leadership
This quotation reflects his needs for self-actualization. He also had a nonconformist hippie side of himself which complemented very well with his business acumen and engineering interests.
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Quotes reflecting personality & leadership
This was a statement he made to John Sculley, the then CEO of Pepsi who refused Jobs’ offer to be the CEO of Apple. Sculley has confirmed that this was one final statement by Jobs which left him pondering and led him to join Apple as the CEO. John Sculley has further confirmed that in a lot of ways he was negatively affected by the reality distortion field that Job would create around you. You would not even know and you are under its influence.
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Quotes reflecting personality & leadership
Jobs would strictly not tolerate anyone below par in his team. He had a theory that he had to have all A Players in his team because A Players cannot work with B Players and the B Players just ruin the work culture. Non-confident employees were scared of even seeing him as they had an impression that an elevator ride with him might cost them their job. He used to fire people out of impulses in his yearning for quality.
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Quotes reflecting personality & leadership
Jobs would always put product before profit. He always made sure that the product that he offered to the world would be not like any other and would be a work of pure innovation. He nurtured an unprecedented culture of innovation at Apple.
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Quotes reflecting personality & leadership
This quotation personifies Jobs’ focus and simplification of things in life. Making the correct use of the focus that you have and rejecting the thousand other things for the one you really want to do is very important.
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Quotes reflecting personality & leadership
Steve Jobs was a visionary leader and always ahead of time. Along with himself, he drew the whole world towards technological advancement. He did not anticipate what the customers would want, he rather built something completely new that the customers could never expect and then create a whole market for the same. The computer technology was limited just to the military and he brought it across to everyone around the world. “You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new” – Steve Jobs
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Leadership Style Analysis
Direct Leadership: Steve Jobs was more of a direct leader who himself had control and influence over all the employees. Even for the outside world, Jobs was the only face of Apple. Autocratic: His urge for control resulted in an autocratic way of decision making most of the times. He had a flat and centralized organizational structure whenever he was involved in the game.
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Leadership Style Analysis
Internal Locus of Leadership: The leader, the followers and the situation was all driven by Steve Jobs and his inner drive for innovation and technology. Intra-Individual Process: The whole company Apple was guided by the processes occurring within one charismatic individual who could smartly drive everyone around him in his own ways.
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Leadership Style Analysis
Personalized Power Orientation: The first thing Jobs would do anywhere or with anyone is to assume to power and control of the situation or discussion. Technical & Conceptualizing Skills: Jobs was brilliant in technical aspects where he accepted nothing but the best and also had remarkable conceptualizing skills. It was him who conceptualized to change the whole music scene of the world where a computer could play and perform live music instead of people. Musicians including his own girlfriend believed this was not possible and this actually turned out to be true with the whole electro music revolution.
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Leadership Style Analysis
Weak inter-personal skills: He was not particularly good with people around him in office. He would reprimand anyone impulsively without even thinking. He would claim someone’s hard work as stuidity. But the people around him had come to know the bi-polarity that exists for him according to which things are either the best or the worst. Technical & Conceptualizing Skills: Jobs was brilliant in technical aspects where he accepted nothing but the best and also had remarkable conceptualizing skills. It was him who conceptualized to change the whole music scene of the world where a computer could play and perform live music instead of people. Musicians including his own girlfriend believed this was not possible and this actually turned out to be true with the whole electro music revolution. People around Jobs claim that the two categories of employees that existed for him were “A Hero” or “A shithead roller coaster”. And you were in trouble if you were in the second category. However one could jump from one category to the other within nanoseconds, Jobs was so impulsive.
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Task Motivated Leader Relationships and people did not inspire Jobs much. He was more of a task motivated leader who achieved self-esteem by completing work. He always focused on task more than people and was generally very harsh to failing or even slightly lower than the best category of employees. He thoroughly enjoyed detailing in developing his products and everything else and considered competence as the only major trait in a person.
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House’s Path Goal Theory
Directive Leader: The most important thing for Jobs was the work. That would be his sole focus and point of consideration until accomplished. Achievement Oriented: He would always set challenging goals for himself and his employees. He once asked his team when would be their new computer ready, they replied ‘1 year’. Impulsively, using his reality distortion field, he ended the discussion saying that they would launch it within 6 months.
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Charismatic Leadership
Jobs’ personality and behavior made him a heroic leader with extraordinary capabilities. Just by his charisma, he could make people do whatever he wished to. He had a vision for each initiative he started and also took a lot of risk. After his ouster from Apple, he risked all his Apple-earned-money into establishing Next Computers. He further invested a great deal in Pixar too.
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Charismatic Leadership
Jobs exhibited a behavior which was extra-ordinary, beyond normalcy. He acted as per his impulses in a totally unconventional way. This makes it difficult for us lot of times to categorize him with a particular leadership attribute. Jobs was always confident about his proposals and even in crisis situations. He saw a lot of failures but never gave up and rose to power again and again. He got all that he wanted finally.
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Transformational Leadership
Along with being a charismatic leader, Jobs was also a transformation leader. He facilitated a complete transformation within the company, then within the industry and eventually transformed the whole world. The vision and core values that he possessed were very clear and he aligned the efforts of everyone towards that direction for a unified purpose. He not only created but also successfully sustained the culture of innovation that maximized the human potential and thereby the organizational capabilities.
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Transformational Leadership
Jobs’ enthusiasm was contagious, people around him have reported. His conviction about his own ideas was remarkable. That brought along great deal of energy and enthusiasm within himself and the people around him. He could very well guide the people around him to excellence. He had this innate capability and always expected above par performance from all his employees also. He showed confidence in employees who were capable of this and supported them also like he supported to fame the first director of Pixar who went to win an Oscar for his first film with the help of Steve Jobs.
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Transformational Leadership
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s Individualized Consideration: This was absent in Steve Jobs. Generally when at work, his focus used to be the excellence in the same and not to the needs and well-being of the employees. This aspect was missing. But the people who were heroes in his eyes did get their due respect time to time.
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Transformational Leadership
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s Intellectual Stimulation: All his employees were conditioned to be innovative and creative. Jobs gave them bigger challenges always and made sure they are all time stimulated with some or the other innovative idea or execution. This transformed the whole organization which has the roots of innovation and excellence.
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Transformational Leadership
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s Inspirational Motivation: Jobs was perhaps the best motivator for almost everyone who worked closely with him. He articulated his vision down the hierarchy lane very strongly. He showed dreams to people and made them achieve them too. This could be very well exemplified by the quote to John Sculley presented in the earlier slides.
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Transformational Leadership
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s Idealized Influence: A lot of people around him idealized Jobs and more & more people have started adhering to his leadership style & preaching specially after his death. His smartness, tendency to make impulsive decisions and hard work earned him great respect from his employees.
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Leadership Limitations
Contorl & Obsession: Steve Jobs sometimes would become too obsessed with control and at one point of time had more than 100 direct reportees. The control aspect could be seen in his products as well. The Macintosh system could only be opened by Mac Engineers and there was no slot for adding anything random that might affect the best performance of the system. Weak at Human Aspect: Jobs never gave the field of HR its due respect. That was never his focus while he designed the organizational strategies.
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Leadership Limitations
Outspoken: Steve Jobs was so outspoken at times that he would start publicly abusing the people he doesn’t like. His bold and passionate oratory inspired people and at the same time instilled fear within them too. He exhibited stormy behavior very often. Tantrums: Jobs threw maniacal tantrums at times by firing an employee who could not answer his one simple personal question or by disrupting everyone else’s work so as to realize his own vision. These cannot rightly be termed as limitations as somehow it is this shrewdness in the character combined with the charisma that drove Jobs and Apple to such an unprecedented success. New leadership theories and approaches are being developed by the modern day world based on his approach towards leadership.
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Bibliography Butcher, Lee (1987). Accidental Millionaire: The rise and fall of Steve Jobs at Apple. Paragon House. ISBN Caddes, Carolyn (1986). Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon Valley Pioneers. Tioga Publishing Co. ISBN Cringely, Robert X. (1996). Accidental Empires. HarperBusiness. ISBN Denning, Peter J.; Frenkel, Karen A. (1989). "A conversation with Steve Jobs". Communications of the ACM 32 (4): 436–433. Deutschman, Alan (2001). The Second Coming of Steve Jobs. Broadway. ISBN
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