Situational leadership is a form of leadership in which
manager or director adjusts his leadership pattern and style to meet the
situation or the people that he is dealing by adopting supportive, coaching,
directing or delegatingrole (Stein, 2016). In the case of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs
leadership is not specific to single style and varied over time. Steve adopted
situational leadership style to direct Apple. He played the role of a
"teller” as he mostly did not work with his sub ordinates, or even looked
at their worked. He would simply define the purpose of new application, its
design and how it works and then demand same to be built as his vision (Kingsley-Hughes,
2018). Jobs played role of
"seller" by attending several news media, and convincing people why
they must buy Apple. He built personality of Apple and used different
innovative strategies to launch and create desire for Apple. While jobs seemed
perfectionism, he would also participate personally by calling customers and
developers. He discovered blobs as a form of communication along with other
medium (Lashinsky, 2015). Finally, Jobs adapted delegation by delegating
responsibilities to reliable and correct people. It shows that Steve Jobs, the
founder and CEO of Apple is an example of a situational leader (Apple, 2019).
System
leadership ensures that the leader of the company create work environment where
people belonging to different work levels feel productive and work at their
highest potential (Miller and Laurie, 2018). Steve jobs played role of system
leader by firing people that do even one work in incorrect manner. He also
helped people by training and development program and also encouraged team by
meeting every Monday. Similar strategies helped Steve Jobs to build most
productive work environment (Stephan, 2017). Finally, Steve Jobs also used
contingency leadership approach to direct Apple Inc. towards success. He molded
his leadership as per the need of the company (Bai et al, 2018). Steve jobs
used autocratic style of leadership, but adopted transformational,
transactional and other forms depending of various situations encountered by
the Apple Inc. Tim Cook is recent CEO of Apple, that was initially regarded as
a shy personality and someone that avoid confrontation and public meetings.
Recently, according to Khushhal et al (2017) Tim has altered his leadership by
sitting with subordinates, having lunch and discussing corporate affairs with
investors and public. There are many other unique approaches of leadership that
help a company succeed and grow within different crises and situations.
The Strengths and Limitations of the main leadership
theories from this case study are mentioned below.
Situational
Leadership Theory of Critically analyze and evaluate the different theories and
approaches to leadership in given contexts
The Situational Leadership Theory denotes to the leaders who
implement different styles of leadership depending on the situation and their
team members’ development level. The Strengths and Limitations of this
Situational Leadership Theory explained in the table below.
Strengths
|
Limitations
|
The
situational leadership is quite easy to understand and fairly intuitive to
most leaders
|
The
situational leadership insists particular procedures and rules which able to
demoralize to the staff
|
The
situational leadership places the relationship between the staff and the
leader at the core
|
The
situational leadership sometimes difficult to be defined and quantifying
maturity
|
|
The
situational leadership might create high extensive on urgent needs, thus, it
will shift away from the attention from further long-term goals
|
System Leadership
Theory of Critically analyze and
evaluate the different theories and approaches to leadership in given contexts
The System Leadership Theory has a relation with the
development that allows the staff to perform the activities efficiently within
a systematic way. The Strengths and Limitations of this System Leadership
Theory explained in the table below.
Strengths
|
Limitations
|
The system
leadership theory integrates the function of the environment
|
This
system leadership has only a few control of management
|
This
system leadership theory offers an ideal pattern
|
This
system leadership could only be adopted in certain particular conditions
|
This
system leadership theory decreases the possibilities of error
|
This
system focuses on the results rather than the effectiveness of the results
|
Contingency
Leadership Theory of Critically
analyze and evaluate the different theories and approaches to leadership in
given contexts
The Contingency Theory claims that the followers should able
to follow the development scale, in order to accomplish the main goal. The
strengths and Limitations of this Contingency Leadership Theory explained in
the table below.
Strengths
|
Limitations
|
This
contingency leadership theory is easy, intuitive, and practical to implement
|
This
contingency leadership theory has ambiguity in the development levels
|
This
contingency leadership theory states what needs to be done on certain
situation
|
This
contingency leadership theory fails to address demographic differences
|
7.0
Conclusion of Critically analyze and evaluate the different theories
and approaches to leadership in given contexts
It is
concluded that leader and manager have great influence on a company. A leader
works on developing corporate system while a manager serves within the system.
A manager helps to plan, coordinate, control, direct, and communicates with
workers. On the contrary, a leader delegates responsibilities to managers, tell
what the vision is, and participate in its achievement while also selling it to
the people. A leader helps to direct with example, charisma, high interpersonal
skills, setting examples and taking bold risks. On the contrary, a manager
works within guidance, responsibilities and roles provided by the boss or
supervisor. Managers set regulations and may be specific to an area or
department instead of overall company; such as process manager, etc. Both
leaders and managers play crucial role in effective, productive and efficient
working of a company.
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the different theories and approaches to leadership in given contexts
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