Leadership Styles and Their Effect on CEOs
Leadership Style and Their Effect on CEOs
LaKisha Feggins
November 21, 2012
Leadership Styles and Their Effect on CEOs
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to analyze, compare, and contrast the leadership styles of two influential CEOs. I have collected information from many internet sources that elaborate on the life, achievements, and misfortunes of Jack Welch and Steve Jobs, and how they overcame their obstacles to become the best CEOs of all time.
Leadership Styles and Their Effect on CEOs
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. Jack Welch and Steve Jobs
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He managed to make GE the world’s second largest company with a market capitalization that was only exceeded by Microsoft. Through hard work and perseverance Welch managed to attain legendary status of being one of the greatest CEOs of all time.
Leadership Styles and Their Effect on CEOs
Steve Jobs was an entrepreneur, co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. As the CEO of the company, Jobs covered the development of the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, and on the services side the company’s Apple Retail Stores, iTunes store, and the App store. The success of these products under Jobs provided stable years of financial return, and propelled Apple to become the world’s most valuable publically traded company. The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history (Gallo, 2011).
Jobs was a “one-in-a-billion” innovator with a bulldog mentality. He created a vision and relentlessly drove it into completion. Jobs was a demanding perfectionist who always aspired to position his business and products at the forefront of the technology industry by understanding and setting trends with innovation and style. His reputation was built on being a brutal force and often destroyed staff for their “bozo” ideas and typically shrugged off his associates suggestions in favor of his own gut instinct. Moreover, he only wanted what he called “A-players”. Meaning that they had to be
Leadership is “the fusion of heart and mind, selfless action, encourage betterment of others, and to make a difference. It is the process of influencing
Leadership, which is defined as “…The action of leading a group of people or an organization” is used in many different ways. Most people think being a leader is mostly about being the boss, having people work under you and just becoming successful, but it boils down to more than that. Leaders are those individuals that actually utilize their many abilities in leadership and administration to help make a better change for themselves, the people around them and the goal that needs to be achieved. Leadership is not an expertise that can essentially be grabbed from a book or article based on leadership but instead it is one of those initiative abilities that are increased through experience and understanding those real life situations.
Leadership is the process of influencing individuals or a group of individuals by providing purpose, direction with the support of others, and motivating those individuals with the purpose of accomplishing a certain obligation which is helpful to all individual that is involved.
Secondly, Steve Jobs used tyrannical leadership style – hire and fire at will – to ensure that his employees were always delivered products of extremely has high quality. The American author Andrew Keen's wrote “There's not an ounce of democracy at Apple. That's what makes it a paragon of such traditional corporate values as top-down leadership, sharply hierarchical organization and centralized control. It's Steve's company – pursuing his vision, at his pace, with his team, making his products. Without Steve Jobs' authoritarian leadership, Apple would be just another Silicon Valley outfit...” (Keen, 2007). CEO of Enterprise Management Associates, said, “Steve Jobs is a special example of a leader who dominated his company employees and guided them rightly with his authoritarian leadership style and unmatchable vision" (Chaudhuri, 26th April, 2012). Steve Jobs employees were always highly concentrated in work and delivered products of extremely high quality,
Leaders have a “the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals” (Robbins & Judge, 2007, p. 402). In the past leaders have been described by certain traits or characteristics. These traits can help an organization identify potential candidates who may be strong leaders. Later behavior approaches of leaders were identified that could be taught. In short, leaders could be made. Situations have an impact on which leader behaviors will be most effect at any given time. Several contingency theories have been formulated over the years to identify how situations influence leadership behavior. Each style has strengths and
Leadership goes beyond management, for some, leadership is instinctual and pours over into your personal life. This paper will discuss a leader I admire in my personal life, and analyze their leadership style. I will discuss how that leader has influenced my leadership style, as well as how things like environment and the economy affect my leadership approach.
Leadership means the period during which a person occupies the position of leader. A “leader" is someone who brings a group of people together, and directs them toward a common goal. Someone can easily
This research focuses on four leadership styles that have been used within the organization. These styles play apart in the success of objectives and tasks being accomplished.
Leaders have a profound effect on employee performance because they shape workers’ perceptions of the working environment. Consequently, some leadership styles are more effective with meeting particular objectives. Although personal attributes dictate a leader’s natural leadership style, effective leaders recognize the benefits and limitations of each style, understand the impact a style will have on the organization’s environment, and are capable of developing and incorporating a variety of styles to ensure the desired outcome is achieved.
Leadership is the ability or authority to guide and direct others towards achievement of goal without force that leaves them feeling empowered and accomplished. Besides, leader has a significant impact on ethical decision making. This is because leaders have the power to motivate others and enforce the organization norms and policies as well as their own viewpoint. Leadership involves establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with others, providing the information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision, coordinating
According to Business Dictionary.com, leadership is defined as the individuals who are the leaders in an organization, regarded collectively. It also can be define as the activity of leading a group of people or an organization or the ability to do this. Leadership involves the establishing of a clear vision, sharing the vision with other so that they will follow willingly, providing the needed information, knowledge, and methods to realize the vision and coordinating and balancing the conflicts interests of all members and stakeholders.
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.
Over the years, a great deal of time, and research has been dedicate to the study of leadership. Even with extensive data on the topic, many still disagree on what leadership really means. Hence, leadership is a word that has many different meanings and different researched theories associated with it. On a basic level, leadership involves having and establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with followers, respecting followers, and leading an organization with excellence while ensuring that everyone is part of the team. Leadership is also a method by which a leader uses his or her influence towards getting a group of followers to take ownership or buy into a vision.
Leadership is an approach for a leader to guide, motivate, supervise, manage, and influence others in different situation to reach a goal. According to the Pettinger (2007), the leadership can be explained in several situations. First, the leaders have the responsible to provide vision and direction to the followers. Second, the leaders shall energise and motivate the followers. Third, the leaders shall set and enforce absolute standards of behaviour, attitude, presentation and performance.
Jack Welch’s vision of what GE was possible of gave the company a vision for twenty years while he was the CEO and chairman. He states, “leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.” (Winning, pg 67) He not only allowed for employees to stretch, but demanded it. In teaching workers to stretch Welch knew that workers “may fail. In fact, they probably will fail. But stretching, and stretching the business, is going to improve performance results.” (Jack Welch on Leadership, pg 105) He also states that “only by setting the performance bar high did it become possible to discover people’s capabilities.” Jack Welch’s emphasis on candor and breaking the bureaucracy of modern business separated him from his contemporaries. He excited others of the possibility of being the biggest and best company in the world and rewarding his best employees that shared the values of GE. According to FORTUNE Editorial Director Geoffrey Colvin In "The Ultimate Manager, Welch leads the annals of management history not for anticipating the new world's changes ahead, but for acting on them: "His great achievement is that having seen it, he faced up to the huge, painful changes it demanded, and made them faster and more emphatically than anyone else in business. He led managers into this new world, which we still inhabit, and just as important, he showed business