Abstract
In a multicultural context, leadership is of great significance. When a diverse workforce is working together on a task, sound leadership is required because there is no room for conflicts. Leadership provides direction and motivation to the workforce and keeps them focused on their goals. Steve Jobs has been the CEO of Apple and is regarded as an excellent leader even after his death. It was under his leadership that Apple gained success and even the employees became strategic thinkers and decision makers. A leader is powerful and possesses a charismatic persona. A true leader has a clear vision and makes certain this he communicates this vision to his followers and achieve objectives in an effective manner. A leader is someone who possesses influential personality traits and keeps the organizational members motivated and focused on their goals. A leader does not have to have a formal designation of leader. He can emerge from within the group, can be an immediate manager or someone from the senior management position.
Keywords: Leader, Leadership style, Charisma, Power, Steve Jobs
It is really important to understand the concept of leadership because sometimes, the definition comes in distorted form and makes it difficult to relate to the roles and responsibilities of leaders. A leader is someone who makes use of his personality characteristics and experiences to lead the people. Since we are looking at leadership in an organizational context so we would be limiting our concept of leadership to business and organizations only. All organizations need leaders to ensure that the organization is going in the right direction and that all the goals and objectives are fulfilled. In order to achieve this, the presence of a leader becomes mandatory. The organization is basically made of people and a leader come from people and then it the duty of a leader to make people realize that they need to play their part in the fulfillment of organizational objectives.
A leader is someone who possesses influential personality traits and keeps the organizational members motivated and focused on their goals. A leader does not have to have a formal designation of leader. He can emerge from within the group, can be an immediate manager or someone from the senior management position. A leader never tells the workers to finish their task within a deadline. A leader follows a very different approach. A leader emphasizes why a task is important and what role it would be playing in the personal and professional development of employees. When employees understand the significance of the task or project assigned, then the leader would himself become a part of the task and demonstrate how the employees need to go about achieving it.
The debate that leadership is innate or learned is a long one and we would not get into it. Sometimes, it is believed that leadership is genetically inherited and comes from within whereas the other assumption is that the environment in which an individual lives and interacts teach him the basics of leadership which he then implements into his personal and professional life to see results. Whether leadership is inborn or learned behavior, there are certain traits which make a person a true leader.
The leader chosen for the purpose of this task is Steve Jobs who is a multicultural leader. A multicultural leader is someone who has to deal with a diverse workforce. Steve Jobs has been the CEO of Apple, Inc which is a famous multinational company. Steve Jobs has been fulfilling the responsibility of a multicultural leader as he dealt with employees coming from different racial, social and cultural backgrounds. He ensured that his leadership style should be effective for all employees belonging to different backgrounds.
A leader has to have a charming personality. It is quite obvious that people within the organization are impressed by the one who possesses charismatic features. A strong and charming personality indicates that the person carrying it has strong values and beliefs, keeps his headstrong and stays focused. When a leader possesses charisma, he would be acting as a strong influence on his followers. People would listen to him and agree with him in all matters of personal and professional nature. Steve Jobs made use of his charisma to pull talent towards the new world of technology and innovation.
If a leader wants to achieve a goal, he never imposes it on his followers. For instance, if he wants to bring a cultural change within the organization, he would not set rules and make people follow. He would rather become a part of the change and implement the change within himself first (Northouse, 2012). He would make use of his actions to communicate others that this is the kind of change he would want to see in others. This trait is a very significant one and separates a manager from a leader. Steve Jobs made sure that before expecting others in the company to bring innovation, he came up with innovative and creative ideas and products.
Steve Jobs has also been known for persistence in his personality and business approach. He has been one of the most innovative CEO. His idea was to change technology and make it as innovative and user friendly as possible. His decisions were usually disagreed with by employees but he never really gave up and he taught his employees to stay calm and persistent too (Isaacson, 2012).
The leadership style being followed by Steve Jobs has not been an ordinary one. He has been a leader of people’s heart. He is not only appreciated by his employees but also by those who know his leadership stories. He has been the kind of leader who we would label as a a transformational leader (Bass, 1990). When Steve Jobs joined Apple, he had a clear vision in mind. He knew that the only way he could bring the company to a success level is by encouraging innovation. He transformed the image of the company under his leadership. Apple became a top competitor for Nokia, Samsung, LG, Microsoft and several other technology based companies. The entire philosophy of the company was changed because of the efforts of Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs not only transformed the concept of Apple from a traditional technology based company to a highly innovative and progressive one but also polished the skills and productivity level of employees. This leadership style was not appreciated in the beginning because it asked for the re-recruitment of people for innovative technology positions. The existing employees were not happy about it and raised their voice but somehow had to give in because they knew that Steve Jobs was a hard working, committed and serious individual and he would cross any boundaries to make his dream come true. The majority of the existing staff was impressed by the charismatic personality of Steve Jobs and wanted to follow his vision because they knew that the vision of Steve Jobs is also aimed at personal growth and development of employees (Teece, 2012).
Steve Jobs transformed the employees from inside out and made them think and act in a creative and innovative manner. The employees became quick in decision making and performed their duties with more responsibility and enthusiasm (Bryant, 2003). Steve Jobs never followed an autocratic leadership style as he believed that making others follows you blindly is no achievement. The real achievement lies in considering the voice of followers and winning their loyalty. So he relied on a democratic approach to leadership (Sharma & Grant, 2011). Although, his vision was broad and unusual but he made certain to discuss it with the stakeholders in a prompt and effective manner.
A leader is usually very powerful because he can direct people to achieve their personal and professional goals. It would be interesting to notice that a leader never makes use of forced methods to make the subordinates obey him. A leader makes other follow him because of his personality traits and effective leadership approach. A leader keeps his followers motivated. Motivation is the key to achieving success in an organization. If the employees are motivated from within, they can achieve even the challenging of targets but if they do not feel ignited, they would never perform no matter how much they are incentivized by the management.
A leader has a very clear mindset and vision and he makes sure he communicates it very well to his followers so that he could achieve his final objectives. Take the example of Apple which flourished under the extraordinary leadership of Steve Jobs. If Steve Jobs did not have a vision for developing the company or the employees, the success of Apple company would not have been possible.
In the context of multicultural leadership, a leader has to make sure that all the members included in a diverse workforce are motivated and influenced by that charisma of the leader. A leader provides direction to his employees and makes use of his persona and experience to help them achieve targets by eliminating cultural and racial differences. A multicultural leader sometimes has to change his leadership style so as to gain acceptance from a group of multicultural employees. It is really important to influence all members of the company belonging to an organization because if all the organizational employees accept the leadership, they would be willing to deliver excellence in performance.
References
Bass, B. M. (1990). From transactional to transformational leadership: Learning to share the vision. Organizational dynamics, 18(3), 19-31.
Bryant, S. E. (2003). The role of transformational and transactional leadership in creating, sharing and exploiting organizational knowledge. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 9(4), 32-44.
Isaacson, W. (2012). The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs. Harvard business review, 90(4), 92-102.
Northouse, P. G. (2012). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage.
Sharma, A., & Grant, D. (2011). Narrative, drama and charismatic leadership: The case of Apple’s Steve Jobs. Leadership, 7(1), 3-26.
Teece, D. J. (2012). Dynamic capabilities: Routines versus entrepreneurial action. Journal of Management Studies, 49(8), 1395-1401.
