The real leadership lessons of steve jobs harvard business review

Leadership Assignment

Individual Paper Outline: Steve Jobs

Introduction:

I have selected Steve Jobs who was the founder, chairman, and the Chief Executive Officerof Apple Inc. I have read the biography, a few articles, news, and analysis about him and found him being worthy of the individual paper assignment. Steve Jobs was an unconventional leader with a pearl of strong wisdom and vision. He was a very innovative leader. Under the leadership of Steve Apple introduced Apple Store, iPod, iPad, iTunes, iPhone, App Store, iMac, etc. These were proved successful products in Apple's history. His autobiography depicted the extraordinary qualities of Steve Jobs in both personal and professional life.

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 and raised as an adopted child. The parents were not wealthy, so Steve had to struggle from his childhood and learned from the various lessons in his life. In 1976 he and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer company which designed the first Apple -1 computer. The company’s initial office was in the garage of Steve Jobs. After struggling with investments in 1977 they have introduced the Apple II which was the first computer sold by Apple Computer and one of the first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products in the world. In 1985 due to some internal problems, Steve Jobs resigned from Apple and founded Next Inc in 1986. With his strong leadership skills and efforts, Next Inc becomes one of the successful workstations’ manufacturers in the world. In 1997 Apple acquire Next Inc and Steve Jobs returned to the company he founded. His visionary leadership and dedication to develop unique products led Apple to become one of the most successful companies around the world.

I found several leadership traits and styles within Steve Jobs which make him one of the best leaders. I admire him because he had the characteristics of charismatic, transformational and strategic leadership. After becoming the CEO, he transformed the existing work process,close several projects and brought a massive change in the workplace. He always motivated and inspired his team to achieve extraordinary results even if Jobs was irritated and harsh with his employees but for him it was the key of inspiration for his team to attain the goals ( Wozniak ,the co-founder of Appel Inc). According to a former Apple employee, he refers to Steve Jobs and his field of distortion of reality as In his presence, reality is something malleable. On several occasions, the distortion of reality allowed Jobs to inspire his team to alter the course of computer history (Heracleous&Papachroni, 2016).In addition he believed in teamwork. He was clear about the importance of becoming a great team, he was always listen to their followers and taking their suggestion on consideration in order to find the solutions for their problems. In his life, both professional and personal, he always sought to surround himself with people who were smarter than servile. I learned over the years that, when you have very good people, you don't always need to be on top of them. He believed that one needs stubbornness, tenacity, belief, and patience to stay the course of innovation and growth. In a famous speech delivered by Steve Jobs at Stanford University for a generation of graduates, he said something very important: "Be confident in following your heart and your commitment.". Steve Jobs was very much focused and didn’t compromise with quality. Apple products just revolutionize mobile communication and took the use of portable devices at a new level. He was driven by his passion for perfection and making elegant products to provide the customers with superior experiences.

Steve Jobswas very focused on his emotions, he was so successful in reading people, identifying their psychological strengths and weaknesses and insecurities, that he was able to disintegrate a victim with an emotionally loaded uppercut unaware of this, he could sense whether a person really knew or was pretending. They worked better than fear and desire to please employees, as well as they knew they were expected to do so. In fact, since the Mac team is well aware of this feature, each year, starting in 1981, they have awarded Jobs with the best opponent. It is clear that as a leader, it affects its employees in a different but positive way. His employees even said so. "Jobs saw himself as an artist, and we wanted the design team to see ourselves that way."

Jobs was known for his harsh character and strict behavior, his leadership style generated love and hate in equal parts. For some, he was considered a genius, for others only a brilliant seller. In contrast, Zuckerberg has also been criticized by former Facebook employees for appearing to be a rare and not very social robot, who only works according to his vision and has a very strict leadership style. Despite being one of the most recognized leaders in the world, Steve Jobs went through times of failure when he was fired from his own company in the 80s. But it was precisely that time he spent outside Apple that made him develop better his abilities to return through the big door and leave the company at the top. On the other hand, Zuckerberg has not yet gone through any failure, has been fortunate to grow and evolve over time, leaving Facebook as one of the most recognized companies in the world (Nawaz & Khan_ Ph.D., 2016).

Steve Jobs took many risks in his life and become successful. He always strives for success and stayed persistent in his work. In his personal life, he was very much modest, amiable and humble. He was happy in his married life and humble to everyone.

Conclusion
Steve Jobs wanted to fix something elusive, the imperfection of the world that would not leave him alone. Hence his perfectionism following this inner goal, he was able to subordinate his life to him and then to the lives of others. His leadership resulted from the certainty of the direction in which he was heading. He knew what he wanted to achieve. He knew what he really loved in life. Therefore, he did not lose faith when fate seemed to turn against him. He inspired his strength and actually forced others to accept his goal as the most important. The secret of Steve Jobs' leadership was the goal he believed in, even if it sometimes seemed unreasonable.To conclude he was a very successful man both in his personal and professional life. Leadership can be defined as the process by which a person influences or directs the activities of others to achieve certain personal or group goals under certain circumstances. A leader is a person who can influence and direct others for certain purposes. The leader does not have to have an official authority or powers. Furthermore, it is not necessary for the leader to be a formal organization. The distinction between active and ineffective is usually the suitability of the leader's behavior to the situation in which the behavior is used, not his own. With the addition of the event, there were eight leadership styles, four of which were broken down, related, dedicated, integrated management styles, four effective and four ineffective.

References:

Isaacson, W. (2012) The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs; Harvard Business Review retrieved from https://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs.

Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. New York ; Toronto: Simon & Schuster.

Wilson, Suzan (2001) Steve Jobs: Wizard of Apple Computer. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow,

Brashares, Ann. (2001) Steve Jobs: Think Different. Brookfield, CT: Twenty-first Century Books,