Abstract
The paper below is a research analysis on charismatic and transformational leadership in Apple. The paper discusses the two types of leadership traits and includes the study of the charismatic and transformational leadership that applies to the company and how Steve Jobs has lead the company on the principles of leadership and what were the consequences of same. Further, the paper also highlights how leadership can lead to the success or failure of a company and hence the importance of choosing the right leaders who can lead the company in right direction. The multi-tasking and various leadership skills of Steve Jobs and how individuals responded to each one of them have been discussed in detail in the paper. His leadership skills made him an impactful and truly an aspiring leader for other employees and lead to the great success of the company.
Charismatic and transformational leadership:
Leadership has a lot of characteristics and types. This is a term which has a quite large and broader meaning. Leadership, if followed and practiced in a proper and decent manner, can do wonders and bring success to the organizations. The leaders holding the responsibility of driving the organization and the resources of the organization are to be confident, emotionally stable, trustworthy, reliable, effective, enthusiastic and charming. This would impact the work force and the working environment on a huge basis. Charismatic leadership tends to explain that leadership is a natural gift which a person gets since birth. The leaders are not developed, they are born. The charismatic leadership is a strong kind of leadership under which the people get affected hugely by the decisions and the power of the leader. The leader has a huge influence and impact on the team members and due to the leader’s charisma, he /she is able to drag an entire team. This leadership includes methodologies to get the work done easily by the team mates by providing extreme support and motivation to the employees. It is believed that charismatic leadership is a gift and acts as supernatural powers. The team members are highly dedicated to the leader and work very hard for completion of the tasks (Tourish, 2008).
The charismatic leader is an adorable and respectful leader which leads a team with ease and elegance. These leaders do not have to put many efforts on the employees to get the best out of them. The employees are finely dedicated and complete all the tasks desired by the leader. The transformational leadership is a type in which the leaders are so influential that they can bring huge change in the team members (Montesinos et al, 2008). Whenever a change or transformation is required in an organization for the enrichment and success of the organization, the transformational leaders are the one which can drag the company from failure to huge success. This kind of leadership is observed in huge organizations where the leaders have a huge and diversified personality. The vision and mission of the transformational leaders are clear, they know when how and what can bring a change to the company and take the company to new heights. This both, the transformational and charismatic leaderships are very important and beneficial for various organizations (del et al, 2012).
Leadership is a huge factor which affects the success and failure of a company. If the leaders are selected in a proper manner by identifying the correct requirements and personalities for leaders, the company can attain immense success. There are various organizations following different styles and kind of leaderships and the leaders of the organization is quire unique and impactful. If we consider the huge and developed organizations, it could be witnessed that under the influence of different leaders the company would have performed differently and some of the leaders must have stand out from the other traditional leaders which would follow the conventional techniques of leaderships. Today’s leaders are strong, enthusiastic and diversified. These leaders know how to drive a company and lead a huge quantity of people. These leaders do not only bring a huge transformation in the organization but also sets an example of diversified and stunning leadership (Goffee & Jones, 2009).
We can take an example of a highly successful and renowned company, Apple. This company has been working number of leaders. These leaders changes and also brought various transformations and changes in the company under the influence of such charismatic leaders the company has developed some amazing products and services due to which the company has a strong market position and recognition in the market (del et al, 2012).
The company’s very famous leader which can never get forget, Steve Jobs has driven the company in a very smart and tricky way. This leader is an example of a transformational and charismatic leader both. The company assigned Steve jobs as the CEO due to his amazing leadership skills and the ability to run the team members with ease. Steve jobs’ mentality regarding developing new and innovative products brought a significant change in the company. Steve jobs wanted to make the company outstanding producers of amazing, innovative and technologically advanced products. The ideologies presented by Steve Jobs were highly influential. The team members working under Steve Jobs were highly satisfied and motivated. There were strategies which were proposed by Steve jobs for efficient working and success of the company
Steve jobs focused on developing new and advanced model rather than creating and updating the same products. This idea of the e leader made the company develop some amazingly new and unique products like macbook, iPod, iTues etc. These were the new and technologically advanced products which the customers did not get ever before and were soon addicted to these products. Te Company then developed such products under the readership of Steve jobs where the employees were free to present their thoughts and wises. The leader provided a free and flexible environment where the employees can work hard and can give their best. Pressurized environment makes the employees stressed and our perform. Thus the flexibility and freedom in the company were the best points which Steve Jobs could offer. Rather than this, Steve Jobs had a huge space open for innovation. The employees were motivated to bring successful and innovative idea for the development of new products. As a leader he promoted the idea to develop new and innovative products which would drive the company’s success on a huge level. Innovation is thus now known as the strongest point of apple which the company masters (Hamel, 2009).
Along with this, Steve jobs had a lot of faith in his team members. After assigning tasks and duties, the leader gave the members the time to think and develop the ideas to complete the tasks. The effective leader has a huge quality to trust and have faith on the members. This motivated the members to work more hard and dedicatedly for the leader. The members came with new and fresh ideas which were appreciated by Steve Jobs. Another amazing quality of Steve jobs was to appreciate the members. This quality must persist on all the leaders. The leaders must develop a habit to appreciate the work done by their team members as, appreciation and motivation goes hand in hand. Due to high appreciating the employees would get motivated to work even harder.
His thinking and direction has been incredible. When there were more jobs in Apple in 1997, it was creating a random series of computers and other accessories, not excluding the multiple new versions of Mac. Soon after a couple of weeks of the product review meetings, he stopped everything and worked on the plan of action and the ultimate goals and within minutes came out with a two by two grid saying, “This is what we need”. The two columns on the top had “consumers” and “pro” and the rows had “portable” and “desktop”. He was able to figure out the right direction the company should be moving in and declared to the team members that their focus should be centered in and around developing great products for each quadrant and remaining all plans should be cancelled. His direction to focus only on making four computers actually saved the company. This also proved that by deciding what not to do is also equally important as is deciding what all to do. That’s true for almost all other companies and the products they develop.
Furthermore, the end to end responsibility which Apple and Steve paid to enhancing the user interface is something too few organizations actually work on. Right from the functionality of an ARM microprocessor to making the decision of purchasing an Apple product from an outlet, every single aspect of customer behavior and experience were integrated in a seamless manner. His far-sightedness and focused approach allowing operating systems and software’s to be functional by various hardware manufacturers has been commendable throughout and has led to an enhanced business model.
Another quality of Steve jobs was to motivate the employees to take risks. It can be seen that for effective outcomes and results, the companies need to take risks (Mintzberg, 2009). Risks are dangerous. This thought was promoted by Steve Jobs and the employees were ready to take risks and develop products. Due to this factor, the company had been able to develop effective and fresh products. These factors are working still as an influence for the employees. Steve Jobs was a significant leader as he understood the requirements of the company and the employees both. The leader is never dominant and one sided. Steve jobs too, were a leader who did understand the needs of the team members thus provided a very flexible and dynamic environment to them.
These qualities of tee jobs made him the most significant and impactful leader of Apple. His designation was clearly as a leader but used to perform like a hard working employee of a company (Defazio et al, 2009). The workers and employees under him were hugely satisfied and performing amazingly. This was due to the amazing role of a leader Steve Jobs played. All the qualities of an amazing leader are present in Steve Jobs which can increase the success of the company in a significant manner. These qualities must be proposed and observed by every leader. The leader’s aim is to give immense success and growth to the company and also understand the requirements of the team member and the employees. This practice would allow the leader to sustain the position and designation by getting the trust and faith of the company and the employees too. Thus a company can get better by the leader which rules the company and the practices, ethics and morals followed by the leader.
References:
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