What Makes Steve Jobs succeed as a leader?
The success of Apple following return of Steve Job is credited to the effective leadership Steve has used. Leadership effectiveness is often dependent on other factors such as environmental influences and certain situations. Hence, a lesson learnt from leadership is that a leader can judge the situation and can adapt different style of leadership and this makes a leader more effective and efficient. In Steve jobs style of leadership a soft approach adopted with his employees will prove him to be more affective. Because his job involves handling people who are highly knowledgeable in the field of technology, being soft on his employees or benevolent leadership can help him get best of their performance and in return profit from his human resources and realise his vision.
Leadership Styles
Creativity in decision-making, charismatic leadership, transformational leadership and the ability to adapt to changing market conditions mark Apple Computer’s success under Steve Jobs. He co-founded Apple Computer and assumed leadership positions that helped it grow into a respectable company in hardware and software. The company contributed to the digital age in a remarkable way by introducing the first commercially successful graphical user interface. Jobs creativity skills are evident in the major decisions that allowed Apple to emerge as an innovation leader. For example, the alliance with Microsoft ensured Apple’s survival by making an interested friend out a formidable foe.
Steve Job as Charismatic Leadership
Charismatic leaders create an atmosphere conducive to knowledge creation, sharing and exploitation. In particular, by using charisma, encouraging intellectual development and by paying individual attention to workers, charismatic leaders motivate their workers to create and share knowledge. As charismatic leader, articulate a clear vision, based on values.
Jobs had a vision to turn Apple around by focusing on producing software and customer and experience. Also, he is clearly prepared to take personal risks to achieve his vision. For example, his approach to former foe, Bill Gates, and partnering with Microsoft carried a great deal of risk. In addition, Jobs exhibited a high level of sensitivity to his followers by attributing the success to them when he credited the company’s ability to maintain focus on innovation and customers. Finally, he exhibited out of the ordinary behavior by his ability to turn the company around from near failure to astounding success.
Steve Jobs as Transformational Leadership
Transformational leadership is about encouraging innovation, bringing about a change in the thinking of its followers and being visionary in implementing transformation in the organisation performance. Steve Jobs as a transformational leader is seen in his efforts to bring innovative digital technology to mass consumer so that they can open their wallet.
Evidence of Steve Jobs vision in making innovation accessible was Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.
Another strategy established by Jobs for the company’s main goal that is pre-established. He then worked on guiding and motivating followers by assigning roles and tasks to ensure the goal is achieved. He helped the company take determined steps towards the music industry. He also hired Jeff Robbin to develop iTunes.
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