Steve Jobs was a highly controversial but extremely successful leader of one of the largest and most successful companies in the world. Jobs dazzled the business world and the general public with his drive for excellence, but annoyed at even angered many of his executives and employees with his single-minded vision. Jobs was remarkable and visionary, and he helped to revolutionize personal computers and the digital industry as a whole. Thanks for this, Apple enjoyed massive sales any time a new iPhone, iPad or iPod hit the market. All of this convinced the world in general and business circles in particular that this remarkable company was being led by someone who essentially never made missteps because of his fantastic leadership abilities. But the truth may be somewhat different. Jobs often seem to employee something referred to by his employees as the “reality distortion field.” In a sense, this was the kind of bullying, but it did convince people to achieve things they didn’t think they could, which served Jobs purpose (Goldsworthy, 2012). The following will examine the leadership abilities and approaches used by the unusual and ultimately successful Steve Jobs at Apple.
When considering the background of Steve Jobs, it’s easy to see the formation of many of the factors that made him a later success. Jobs was adopted on the promise to his birth mother that his new parents would find a way to pay for college. His new father taught Jobs basic electronics when he was young and Jobs enjoyed a moderately comfortable middle-class life. While Jobs was highly intelligent in school, he was also infamous for the pranks he pulled. As a college dropout after only one semester, Jobs chose to stay on a college by auditing classes and seemed a little concerned about what the future might bring. Having grown up in San Francisco, he may well have been influenced by both the antiwar movement and the hippie counterculture. But Steve Jobs is also surrounded by the beginnings of the high-tech Silicon Valley explosion.
As Isaacson pointed out (2012), Jobs had the unique capacity to motivate and inspire coworkers and employees with his passion and his conviction that they could accomplish virtually anything. Jobs’ own counterculture rebel attitude help to encourage a number of other entrepreneurs as well. Just as he is innovative ideas have been frequently copied, many others have tried to copy his leadership style as well. Jobs was driven by the idea of absolute perfection, regardless of the effect on the bottom line. His own driven nature pushed his people beyond their usual limits, and he expected Apples engineers to operate virtually as artists. Jobs went so far as to have them sign their work.
At the same time, Jobs was legendary for being unpleasant, inpatient and extremely rude. As a genius, he was perfectly willing to consult and antagonize others. Which begs the question: how did this individual with so many negative personality traits managed to become an inspirational and transformative leader? Did Jobs even bother developing standard leadership skills, or did he operate on personality only? More than this, after considering Jobs approach as compared with typical effective leadership theories, can his approach be described as positive and effective?
Jobs was dictatorial, demanding control of every aspect of the design of Apple’s products. He frequently publicly embarrassed and reprimanded staff members (de Silva, 2011). Even so, Jobs did view himself primarily as a leader, rather than just a CEO or manager (Arlen, 2011). Jobs leadership approach can best be described as “tough love.” But while he was very hard on his staff and employees, when the accomplished what he wanted he praised them to the hilt. A study carried out in 2011 by a consortium of universities revealed that unpleasant, difficult leaders were more highly respected and higher paid than pleasant ones. However, other business leaders would have attempted to copy Jobs methods have often failed to understand that successfully using such “tough love” is predicated on the existence of loyalty to the leader (Isaacson, 2012).
The pros and cons of Steve Jobs leadership methodology can best be considered in light of situational, behavioral and trait leadership theories. The following examines these:
Trait Leadership: the underlying theory of trait leadership was created in the 1940s and considers a number of different traits that a leader can potentially have. Certainly, Jobs had charisma, but his overall leadership style is a combination of several different traits. The most important traits in trait leadership theories seem to be conscientiousness (a combination of integrity and determination), extroversion (friendliness), openness and a low degree of neurotic tendencies. While Jobs was not what one could call a sociable person, he had no problem meeting with people and working with them.
Jobs throughout his career had a strong belief in one-on-one meetings, as well as unscheduled discussions and meetings (Isaacson, 2012). Also, determination was an integral part of Jobs nature. Throughout his career, he held true to his personal vision and opinions in spite of whatever criticism he might have faced. The training he received in Zen philosophy allowed him to focus intensely on his work. So much so that he frequently ignored things that his friends and family considered important, such as his own health (Isaacson, 2012). Jobs rarely compromised the integrity and quality of his products and wasn’t principally driven by thoughts of profit.
When it comes to openness, while Jobs was the driving force open parentheses creatively) behind the Apple juggernaut, the degree to which he was willing to acknowledge, implement and give credit to the ideas of others is open to debate. In point of fact, a number of former employees and competitors have accused Jobs of plagiarizing many of his ideas from others (Evans, 2012).
The last personality feature (low levels of neuroticism) really wouldn’t have mashed with the Jobs approach to management. His clearly neurotic obsession with minute details of products and management, his constant concerns about the products Apple was producing and his combination of envy/contempt for Apple’s competitors make it clear that Jobs in fact had high levels of eroticism (Evans, 2012).
Emotional intelligence is another way to evaluate how effective trait leadership is. Researchers believe that such emotional intelligence is a combination of both social and personal skills and capabilities. These capabilities include a capacity for self-awareness, self-regulation, conscientiousness, motivation and self-confidence. As the above has made clear, Steve Jobs was motivated and conscientious in certain ways, but his obsessive and often insulting behavior indicates that his abilities for self-regulation and self-awareness were somewhat limited. Moreover, although Jobs displayed a public face of extreme self-confidence, he sometimes actually cried when he believed he had been treated unfairly (Evans, 2012).
While there is a large body of research reporting trait theory, it has proven difficult to apply trait theory because it is largely intuitive, subjective and the traits involved can’t be easily taught. Furthermore, many of the positive and negative traits of an individual like Jobs were interwoven and parentheses perhaps) impossible to separate. While Jobs was a perfectionist and inspirational, he was in equal measures abusive and self-centered (Evans, 2012). In fact, the unpleasant aspects of his personality were likely one of the reasons he was first forced out of Apple. The only reason Apple asked Jobs to come back was that they were in trouble and desperately needed him. Jobs could’ve achieved as much or even more if he had been a little more generous and kind to the people he worked with. Jobs himself admitted this might be the case, but also suggested that doing so would have compromised his own inner nature (Isaacson, 2012).
Behavioral Leadership: In the 50s and 60s, behavioral leadership theory move the focus of leadership studies from leadership traits to leadership behavior. In this theory, leadership had four principal subsets:
Concern about the task – The leader is concerned about meeting goals and productivity objectives.
Concern about people – The leader focuses on the interests, needs and wishes of followers.
Directive leadership: The leader makes a decision and expects his or her employees to obey.
Participative leadership: These leaders distribute decision-making among several people.
Later research into behavioral theories found that there were more distinct categories than the theory originally defined. These included task oriented behaviors, change oriented behaviors, passive leadership, and relation oriented behaviors (Derue et al., 2011).
Jobs’s obsessive need to control virtually every facet of design was another aspect of his transactional leadership. Jobs never hesitated to micromanage a project when problems cropped up, and he was perfectly willing to blame employees and insult them if he thought it would get the job done. Those working with him frequently described him as tough, impatient, narcissistic and obsessive (Isaacson, 2012). In truth, Jobs usually preferred to work with people who either had a similar level of intellect and vision or with those who were willing to subjugate their own personalities and ignore his abuse out of personal loyalty.
Relation Oriented Behaviors: With relation oriented behaviors, the leader is focused on his employees welfare and wants to earn their respect and trust (Derue et al., 2011). This approach has certain democratic aspects, since it allows the employee/followers to take part in the decision-making process. While there were instances where Steve Jobs used this approach, it was usually because a more creative method was needed in order to accomplish the stated goals. Generally speaking, Jobs was not well known for using relation oriented behavior theory. His specific traits simply didn’t lean in this direction.
Change Oriented Behaviors: These theories relate to what is now termed “transformational leadership.” While Steve Jobs demonstrated significant transactional features in his leadership approach, it could be argued that Jobs was at his core a transformational leader. As opposed to his many negative aspects, Jobs is still widely seen as a charismatic and transformational leader (DeGrosky, 2012).
That leader not only provides a vision for future change, he or she encourages employees and staff to take risks and innovate (Derue et al., 2011). As one author has pointed out, Jobs rude behavior was to an extent offset by his corresponding charismatic ability to inspire. He engendered within Apple employees a true passion to achieve the impossible and create unprecedented new products that would revolutionize the marketplace. As such, it may be best to judge Jobs ability as a leader by his achievements, rather than by the methods he used to get there (Isaacson, 2012).
An important aspect of the transformational leadership method that Steve Jobs employed was that it made it possible for others to be drawn into his vision. Jobs used his natural charisma to promote his own ideas among his workers and followers, regardless of how insane they might have seemed on the surface. In an interview conducted with Jobs, he pointed out that upon his 1997 return to Apple after his 12 year banishment, he was quite surprised when he saw that many of the same people he had worked with before were still there. Because of this, Jobs original vision for designing and building astonishingly high quality products still existed in the company while he was gone. Jobs suggested that Apple was organized in a collaborative way like a startup business. This relates strongly to the largely transformational leadership approach that Jobs employed during his time at Apple, and particularly following his return in the 90s. These included:
Inspiration – Inspiring followers to desired behavior.
Idealization – Providing an ideal for workers to appreciate and follow.
Intellectual challenges – Stimulating the king and greater creativity.
Individual acknowledgment – Acknowledging the interests and needs of the employees.
In many ways, Steve Jobs was like a superhero to his employees, and they largely appreciated his abilities and trusted in his judgment. One of Jobs most remarkable abilities was his capacity to motivate and inspire his employees. He took a fairly basic company and a relatively basic concept and turned it into a colossus by introducing a revolutionary new culture. In doing so, Apple became one of the most respected companies in the world, and produces some of the most desired products in the world. While it’s certainly true that Jobs genius and his ability to encourage creativity and innovation among his employees played a major role in this success, it’s also true that (in many ways) Jobs happened create Apple at just the right time and in just the right environment.
In conclusion, Jobs leadership abilities and approach tended to give his employees a feeling that they were valued and doing valuable work. This encouraged them to a higher degree of self-actualization and ate it easier for them to accomplish the highly ambitious goals that Jobs had for Apple (Odetunde, 2013). From a certain perspective, Apple was more than a company, it was also a family. Apple employees were willing to work long arduous hours, used on-site gyms, eight of the company Café drop their kids off at the company campus daycare and even sometimes slept on the premises. Still, Jobs transformational style ultimately resulted in many employees later recounting personal abuse under his leadership. In fact, many of these employees were so overworked they eventually burned out (DeGrosky, 2012). Other workers became so caught up in their work and in the Apple culture that they became (in a sense) dependent upon Apple and Steve Jobs. Jobs quite literally seduced them into his way of thinking, his vision and his approach to running a business. But as suggested above, it may be that the best way to judge Steve Jobs as a leader is by looking at what he achieved with Apple, rather than looking at his personal idiosyncrasies.
References
Arlen, G. (2011). Steve Jobs = leader. we need more. (2011). Multichannel News, 32(38), 32.
DeGrosky, M. (2012). Drawing lessons from the life of Steve Jobs. Wildfire, 21(5), 10-11.
Derue, D. Scott, Nahrgang, Ennifer D., Wellman, Ned, & Humphrey, Stephen E. (2011). Trait and behavioral theories of leadership: an integration and meta-analytic test of their relative validity, Personnel Psychology, 64, pp. 7–52.
de Silva, Z. (2011). Steve Jobs - best corporate leader ever? New Zealand Apparel, 11712287, Nov2011, Vol. 44, Issue 11.
Evans, R. C. (2012). Steve Jobs. Magill’s Literary Annual 2012, 1-3.
Goldsworthy, S. (2012). Steve Jobs. New York, NY: AV² by Weigl.
Isaacson, W. (2012). The real leadership lessons of Steve Jobs. (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 90(4), 92-102.
Odetunde, Oladimeji Jamiu (2013). Influence of Transformational and Transactional Leaderships, and Leaders’ Sex on Organizational Conflict Management Behavior, Gender & Behavior, 11(1), pp. 5323-5335.
