Influential Leaders Of Today's Largest Companies

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Business leaders of today’s largest companies are expected to produce innovative products, increase profits, and motivate and lead its employees. Leaders have different leadership styles often driven by their unique personalities. This paper will examine one of the most innovative and influential leaders of our time, the late Steve Jobs. The paper will examine his leadership style, his greatest success, and his most significant challenge, providing a peek into what made him successful.
Steve Jobs the Leader The late Steve Jobs was a transformational leader. He was an enigma that was a creative genius, but a selfish and abrasive leader of people. He was selected because he is anything but ordinary. Great leaders who do amazing things are…show more content…
He may be viewed as a pseudo-transformational leader because according to Steinwart & Ziegler, “Unlike transformational leaders, who should be morally uplifting, these pseudo-transformational leaders are “self-concerned, self-aggrandizing, exploitative and power-oriented” and “believe in distorted utilitarian and warped moral principles”” (Steinwart & Ziegler, 2014) While Jobs was charismatic and motivating he was not necessarily moral or ethical based upon how he treated those who worked for him. Jobs often would self-aggrandize and take the credit of his employees.
Greatest Achievement
When thinking of the many products created under Steve Jobs leadership and their impact throughout the world, it would be reasonable for one to assume that any one of the innovative products would be viewed by Steve Jobs as his greatest achievement, however this would be wrong. When Walter Isaacson asked Steve Jobs about “…his most important creation, thinking he would answer the iPad or the Macintosh. Instead he said it was Apple the company. Making an enduring company, he said, was both far harder and more important than making a great product” (Isaacson, 2012). Apple has become the world’s most valuable company and as the company’s co-founder, this is Steve Jobs greatest achievement.
Most significant challenge The most significant challenge Steve Jobs ever faced was being fired from Apple in 1985. In 1983, Steve Jobs hired John Sculley, who at
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