Leadership Analysis : Steve Jobs

Before defining an individual as a great leader, one must first understand the definition of leadership and the qualities that make a leader. According to businessdictionary.com, “leadership involves establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, providing the information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision, and coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members and stakeholders.” The website goes on to say that “a leader is the one who steps up in times of crisis, and is able to think and act creatively in difficult situations. Unlike management, leadership cannot be taught, although it may be learned and enhanced through coaching or mentoring” (Leadership).

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple in California in 1976. Their mission was to introduce an easy to use computer to market, which led to a computing revolution and quickly became the industry leader by selling more than 100,000 Apple IIs in 1980. After IBM entered PC market, IBM PCs, which used Microsoft’s DOS (OS), gained more market share and became the new standard for the PC industry. At the same time, Apple introduced the Macintosh in 1984. However, Apple’s net income fell 62% due to the Mac’s slow processor speed and lack of software limited sales. In 1985, Steve Jobs was forced out and John Sculley took charge of the Mac. Under the direction of Sculley, Apple

Leadership can be defined as the ability of a company 's management to make sound decisions and inspire others to perform well (Investopedia, 2014). From the beginning of time, in the middle of all the major changes and historical events there where effective and motivated leaders having a wide sphere of influence and inspiring other groups of people to be creative and efficient. A leader is defined as a person or thing that holds a dominant or superior position within its field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others (businessdictionary,2014).Leaders have always played a major role in the evolution of technology as well as in forming the very lifestyle of today’s society. Effective leaders are able to set and achieve challenging goals, to take swift and decisive action even in difficult situations, to outperform their competition, to take calculated risks and to persevere in the face of

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California. Steve Jobs showed an early interest in electronics and was mentored by a neighbor, who was an electronic hobbyist. In only the eighth grade, Steve was assembling a frequency counter and noticed that he was missing a crucial part. He then gave William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, a call to let him know about this missing part. Mr. Hewlett sent Jobs the missing parts and then offered Steve Jobs a summer intern job. Jobs met his future partner, Mr. Wozniak, while attending Homestead High School. He

Steve jobs once said, “if today were the last day of your life, would you want to do what you 're about to do now? Steve Jobs today would be worth about $31.6 billion. He was a very smart person, becoming a very successful man. Jobs was born on February 24, 1955. His parents Joanne Schieble and Abdulfattah Jandali, gave him up for adoption. Steve Jobs 's father was very hard on him, saying he did everything wrong. This probably led to him being a perfectionist. He went to school at Homestead high school in California. When it came time to go to college, he went for one semesters at Reed College in Portland, Oregon , and dropped out. After college, Jobs met Chrisann Brennan. They ended up having a child together, Lisa, but Steve Jobs claimed she wasn’t his.Jobs experimented with different pursuits, before starting Apple. Later, Steve jobs became the Co-founder of Apple computers. Steve Jobs was the co-founder of Apple, and was a leader for new technology; his legacy was leading the innovation of the computer and other technologies, which are user friendly and market leaders.

Steve Jobs first co-founded Apple in his parent’s garage. Not long after he unveiled the Apple II computer at West Coast computer fair. It didn’t take long for Apple to take off after that. Jobs was worth one million dollars when he was twenty-three, ten million at twenty-four, and close to one hundred million at twenty-five.

A few years after the release of their second model, Apple II, sales went up to $139,000,000 dollars.

He was born on February 24, 1955 in San Francisco, California. After high school Job’s would go on to college. After six months, he would drop out of school. Steve would go on and take classes learning about technology and discover his passion in this field. Wozniak and Steve are known for revolutionizing the computer industry and making technology smaller and cheaper for everyday easy access. In 1985, while Jobs was being pushed away from the Apple company which he was a co-founder of he would later make a company called NEXT incorporation. And the following year Steve would then purchase an animation company that is now known at Pixar Studios. Pixar would go on and make many great animation movies, soon Walt Disney and Steve would join forces and Steve Jobs would be known as the biggest shareholder for

Leadership is “ critical in codifying and maintaining an organizations’ purpose, values, and vision. “ ( PM World Today Journal ). Having good leadership methods in place at an organization is vital in bringing success to a company. Steve Jobs is highly stimulated and has a strong idea of what he wants for Apple to achieve in upcoming periods. He is a transformational leader, and this, “ represents the most popular current view of leadership. This leader is characterised by a capacity to create a highly motivating and absorbing vision of the future, and has the capability to energise others to pursue the vision. “ ( Claremont McKenna College Journal ). Jobs has put in a huge effort to create a strong framework of control and direction, for example, “ Since returning to Apple, Steve has put as much energy into creating a strong management structure as he has into the products. “ ( www.ft.com ). This is highly effective leadership, trying to improve the design of the organisation in order to achieve more efficiency.

Leadership is defined in Webster’s Dictionary as the “action of leading a group of people or an organization.” Leadership is also the ability to set trends, inspire, motivate, and sway others to produce desired results. There are different styles and ways of performing leadership and a good leader has the ability to take ordinary people, put them all together, and hopefully yield successful results. For organizations to have sustained results from their performance there must be a good balance of business insight, technical and interpersonal skills, and good team dynamics. A leader must know how to use all these areas as well as trust and communicate with their people in

Leadership style is a leader's style of providing direction, implementing plans, and motivating people. There are many different leadership styles such as leaders in the political, business or other fields. Steve Jobs (24th February, 1955 – 5th October, 2011) is one of the most remarkable leadership people in modern history and he is well-known as the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Apple Inc (Misa, 2011, p. 919). In any cases, Steve Jobs had displayed personal characteristics as a leader. Steven Jobs returned back to Apple when the company was going through a terrible

“Leadership is the capacity to develop a vision that motivates others to move with a passion towards a common goal. Therefore, leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent” (Democracy, 2014). Apple CEO Tim Cook will predictably be compared to his antecedent Steve Jobs, but in one way, he 's greatly more like Bill Gates -- he has encouraged philanthropy at Apple (Stone, 2014). Under his leadership, Apple has become a much more socially aware company, working to enhance conditions in foreign factories and planning to reduce pollution caused by data centers and the devices themselves. In contrast to Tim’s leadership, a successful legend spread out at Microsoft Company where leader Bill Gates has many leadership qualities. One of the most important attributes is his capability to analyze, interpret, and be competent. His methodical intelligence is mentioned in his biography that corroborate of his abilities by scoring 1790 on an 1800 Harvard entrance exam (Stone, 2014). The excellent skills and mentality that Bill Gates has develop places him with to be one of the most powerful transformational leaders who motivate the crowds of whom he shares his vision.

In this ever growing, rapid developing world as we can see today, there are many different successful leaders. As we know it, leaders are humans just like everyone else. How did they manage to stand out from the crowd? What did they do to achieve great success for an organization? As of all the successful leaders in the world, Steve Jobs is one of the successful leaders that managed to achieve great success for an organization. Therefore, Steve Jobs is the leader that I personally admire and would like to emulate.

Steve Jobs , Steve Woznaik and Ronald Wayne founded Apple on 1st of April 1976 to develop as well as sell PCs. Initially it was called the Apple Computer INC but was later renamed to Apple Inc on 9th January 2007. This was done to position the company and shift its focus towards consumer electronics from being a computer company. It is an American MNC headquartered in Cupertino,California. Apple develops and designs its own range of products and follows a ‘close door policy’. Some of its best known products are Mac PCs, iPod, iPhone, IPad, iCloud, iTunes, Safari, Siri, and App Store etc. In 1998, Jobs reshaped Apple, with senior managers who had a enriched

Effective leadership is one of the most important key factors for success and longevity in every organisation. So it does not come as a surprise that the topic of leadership has continued to be a subject of interest in the modern world both from practitioners as well as academics and the extensive research for decades has not exhausted the topic (Bennis W., 2007).The purpose of this essay is to apply the three relevant leadership theories in relation to Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Inc., one of the most admired leaders of recent times. The essay firstly introduces the concept of Charismatic leadership, transformational leadership and transactional leadership and then briefly reviews Jobs and his leadership styles in relative to the theories.