Of late, leadership has become the crucial issue challenging organizations functioning in a more volatile and complex business environment. Business leaders do have both positive and negative leadership traits. Until recently, business leadership literature has ignored the dark side of leaders believing that it does not favor implementing changes in the workplace. Historically, narcissism, a personality trait that continuously pursues gratification from the egotistic admiration of a person’s personal attributes, has been found to dominate the leadership characteristics of many leaders. Problems in sustaining healthy relationships, lack of empathy and taking insults to heart are certain common traits of individuals prone to narcissism (Thomas, 2015). Even though narcissism as a leadership trait is often looked down as an unfavorable one, a little tempering with humility now and then would make it a positive attribute for leaders to manage things effectively.
One of the prominent leaders in recent history who positively used narcissism to influence his organization and the marketplace is Steve Jobs, former Chief Executive Officer of Apple. It is unbelievable that Jobs, a young man filled with arrogance and who was thrown out of the very organization he founded, still managed to become one of the inspiring visionary business leaders of the modern world. Even as Jobs is still popularly known for his narcissism, he apparently tempered it with humbleness towards steering Apple to become the most sought after company in the world (Owens, Walker & Waldman, 2015). No doubt, Jobs’ organization and products that completely transformed the way individuals think about computers today changed the world for ever. However, Jobs’ means to the ends are not justifiable to many as he left many of his long-term business colleagues and others devastated at his narcissistic personality.
The personal traits of a leader affect the effective functioning of an organization as they significantly influence the behavior of employees in the workplace and the organizational culture (Simmons & Sower, 2012). Jobs employed his narcissistic leadership trait more productively that led him to take risks and charm millions. He was one among the rare leaders who were passionate about innovation in the recent times. The classic entrepreneur and pioneer in developing personal computers started his dream venture, Apple, in a bedroom of his parents’ house only to get fired from the own company some years later. Jobs developed the Macintosh with his own team. Even though he insisted perfection in all aspects while designing Macintosh, he was forced to compromise on a low quality chip that led to the poor performance of Macintosh in the market (Isaacson, 2011). The fact that Jobs ultimately had to quit the team speaks volumes about his passion to excel and brining laurels to his organization. Also, Jobs’ cooperation with the Macintosh team during product development reflects his humility. Jobs returned to Apple 12 years later to save it from bankruptcy. In addition to saving the company, Jobs reinvented and explored diverse industries like music, entertainment and telecommunications. No wonder, Fortune magazine named him the CEO of the decade in 2010.
Steve Jobs is more of a proactive narcissist than a reactive one. Jobs’ life was tough since the very beginning. He was unwanted by his biological parents in the first place and was given to adoption to a middle class couple. He knew that his adoptive parents were struggling to put him in college. He neither blamed his biological parents nor the adopted ones. Instead, his proactive personality and self-confidence inspired him to quit the college and pursue his cherished path. Soon he started along with Steve Wozniak his own company Apple that grew to a billion dollar company soon. Even when the board of directors of the company fired him, he did not allow his perseverance to change path; he later publicly admitted that quitting Apple was the best thing that ever happened to him. True enough, his narcissistic leadership acumen urged him to quickly adapt to the change (Chatterjee & Hambrick, 2011). Jobs transformed adversity into new opportunity and concentrated on his new ventures. Later on, he came back to apple to make it still bigger.
Jobs inspired his organization and employees through his innovation and critical thinking abilities, two essential attributes of narcissistic leadership. For instance, he questioned the traditional appearance of retail outlets and introduced a new model for the Apple retail outlets. He motivated his colleagues to think out of the box as a result of which the Apple retail stores began to appear like hospitality centers rivaling prominent hotels. Amazingly, concierges replaced cashier in Apple stores as geniuses continued to dispense valuable advices to clients (Gallo, 2015). Jobs’ leadership style made even seemingly impossible things possible to his team members. His encounter with Larry Kenyon, an engineer who worked on the Macintosh operating system and believed that it was almost impossible to reduce the booting time, which finally inspired Kenyon to considerably reduce the booting time, is noteworthy to affirm Jobs’ charisma (Isaacson, 2011).
Steve Jobs typifies a transformational leader who strives with all his might to bring about drastic changes in the organizations he works for. His uncompromising proactive nature, which is part of his narcissistic leadership attribute, enabled him to direct many individuals with whom he worked to do things they have never tried before in their life. Interestingly, the things he did through others were crucial for him to achieve his cherished visions; in other words, Jobs channelized his unbending narcissistic values to become a successful business leader. More importantly, jobs may have lacked many qualities of an effective team player and business leader. However, his pragmatism, self-confidence, and passion to innovate and make life easier for others overshadow all the flaws he carried as a human being towards making him one of the fascinating business leaders in recent history.
References
Chatterjee, A., & Hambrick, D. C. (2011). Executive personality, capability cues, and risk taking: How narcissistic CEOs react to their successes and stumbles. Administrative Science Quarterly, 56, 202–237.
Gallo, C. (2015). How Steve Jobs Inspired People to 'Dream Bigger' Retrieved from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/251476
Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Kuran, E. (2013). Leader as storyteller, Industrial and Commercial Training, 45 (2).
Owens, B.P., Walker, A.S., & Waldman, D.A. (2015). Leader Narcissism and Follower Outcomes: The Counterbalancing Effect of Leader Humility. Journal of applied psychology. DOI: 10.1037/a0038698
Simmons, A. L., & Sower, V.E. (2012). Leadership sagacity and its relationship with individual creative performance and innovation, European Journal of Innovation Management, 15 (3).
Thomas, D. (2015). Narcissism: behind the mask. Sussex: CPI Antony Rowe.
