Steve Jobs’ Leadership Style
Discuss About The Leader Governance Understand Virtue Ethics.
My leader of choice is Steve Jobs. He has been the chief chairperson and co-founder of Apple Inc (Apple.com/iphone, 2018). Steve Jobs left the company in the year 1985 and returned to Apple after more than a decade during which he launched the animation studios known as Pixar. Steve Jobs was however, an unconventional leader whose leadership style led to the success of Apple. His leadership style included the importance of working in teams, higher expectation, shaping the way of designing products that becomes synonymous with Apple’s success.
Brilliant Style of Communication: While confronting challenges, defenses and arguments, Steve Jobs however, expected the operations for viably communicating the responses based on the delivered issues. Communication acted as a key factor in determining his leadership success thereby enabling him in executing the plan for the battle of a better economy.
Considering Morality as Priority: Steve Jobs displayed stronger moral values while leading the folks and managing them. His perseverance as a leader turned him into a legend. Steve Jobs trait of morality and responsibility towards his followers was evident from his honesty.
According to Nawaz et al (2016), the theories of leadership include Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Contingency Theory, Behavioral Theory, Transactional Theory and Transformational Theory.
The Great Man Theory: It represents an idea of the 19th century against which history deems an explanation of the great individuals or heroes who represented influential individuals of the society and used their intelligence, wisdom, personal charisma or political skills in manner that left an historical impact (Spector, 2016).
The Trait Theory: Also known as the dispositional theory represents an approach used for studying the personality of the individuals (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015). Trait theorist expressed their desires in the management of the traits of the individuals in the form of habitual pattern of thought, emotion and behavior.
Contingency Theory: It represented an organizational theory that puts forward the fact that there exists no concept of best way of organizing a corporation, making decisions or leading a company (Mikes & Kaplan, 2013). However, the theory represents the optimal course of action that remains dependent on the external and internal situation.
Behavioral Theories: Focuses on the specific behaviors of the leaders (Feldman, 2014). For the behavioral theorists, the behavior of the leader represents the ideal predictor of the influences of leadership and is the determinant of his or her success for leadership.
The Transactional Theory: It represents the leadership style that focuses on the supervision, performance and organization (Galda, 2013). The theory represents the style of leadership where the leaders promote compliance by the followers through punishments and rewards.
The Transformational Theory: It represents the approach that leads to causes of changes in the individuals and the social systems (Avolio & Yammarino, 2013).This theory leads to the creation of positive and valuable change in the followers with the ultimate goal of transforming the followers into the leaders.
As stated by Shockley (2014), teamwork represents a powerful way of getting a work done since an entire group works towards a common goal. There exist various theories of teamwork that includes:
Theories of Leadership
Bruce Tuckman’s Theory: This theory helps in determining team stages. The four primary stages include forming, norming storming and performing (Tuckman, 2013). This theory represents the origin for successful building of a team.
Belbin’s Theory: Belbin led to the creation of a list of nine roles that every team should possess (Batenburg, van Walbeek and in der Maur 2013). This includes plant, coordinator, resource investigator, monitor evaluator, shaper, team worker, specialist, implementer and finisher.
Abraham Maslow Hierarchical Needs Theory: In this theory, Maslow put forward a pyramid for the motivation of human beings (Maslow 2013). The bottom of the pyramid represented psychological items like food with the following consecutive levels representing safety, belonging, respect and lastly self-actualization.
The Isabel Briggs-Myers Theory: This theory refers to a type of indicator that represents a personality test of understanding the perceiving ability of the individuals and is good for the teamwork (Sethuraman & Suresh, 2014).
Carl Jung Color Theory: This theory represents how the color acts as the determinant of the human behavior. This theory helps in better understanding the teams.
Tajfel’s Theory: This represents a theory of social identity and acts as a greater means for describing the behavior of the intergroup.
Douglas McGregor Theory of X and Y: The X and Y theory represents how individuals are motivated.
Theory of Strength: This theory puts forward the fact that for ensuring the best teamwork it is necessary to work towards it and make it stronger.
Theory of Team Analysis: This theory implies the reevaluating and analyzing the situation when something goes wrong otherwise, the team will eventually fall apart.
According to Kaptein (2017), three competing approaches to ethical analysis are Consequentalism, Kantian Deontologism and Virtue Ethics.
Consequentalism: The ethical theories that falls within the category of consequentalism states that the wrongness or rightness of an action depends on the consequences that result produce and viewed in that perspective (Armstrong, 2016). Therefore, in other words, consequences are viewed to the extent of serving certain intrinsic good. However, the most widespread means of consequentialism is utilitarianism that proposes the fact that one should act in a manner so that it is able to produce greater food in the greater number.
Deontologism: The theory puts forward the performance of an action because such an act not only conforms to the moral law but also characterized by its universality and is appropriate for all (Altschul, 2014). According to this theory of ethics, the rightness and wrongness of some of the acts remains independent of the consequences that it results in.
Virtue Ethics: There exist two different approaches to this theory of ethics. The first approach represents some dispositional traits of character that are not only appropriate but also praiseworthy (Van Hooft, 2014). The theory of virtue ethics thus represents that the systematic formulation of character traits make the human behavior praiseworthy and blameworthy. The second approach to the virtue ethics identifies the virtues along with focusing on the integration into the right person or practical wisdom. Practical wisdom used for describing the ability of a person for choosing the patterns of desirable actions. These action patterns are influenced partly by the habits of the emotional virtues or experience and partly by the breadth and depth of the available experience of the human beings as per their position of the society.
Theories of Teamwork
According to the Moazzam and Salman (2016), there are two general approaches to diversity management. This includes the Institutional Theory of Diversity Management and Resource Based Theory of Diversity Management.
Institutional Theory of Diversity Management: It depends on the theory of organization that helps in recognizing that for determining the structure of the organization it is not possible for separating the social environment found in the organization (Cole & Salimath, 2013). Thus, for understanding the structure of an organization, it is important to understand the behavior of the employees in the organization along with the organization are limited by forces such as laws, regulations, rules, legislations and professional and social norms.
Resource Based Theory of Diversity Management: The primary focus of this theory remains in how the implementation of the diversity will affect the resources of the organization. There exist four kinds of resources for an organization like financial capital, physical capital, corporate capital and human capital (Reiche et al., 2016). These resources are responsible for either assisting or inhibiting the organizational operations. However, organizations use such resources in a manner that could not only improve but also assist the course of the business. From the perspective of the business, diverse organizations gains advantage compared to the organizations that remain homogeneous. In addition, racial diversity within the organizations increases the financial performance in the light of the innovation or growth strategy that is used. According to the theory, firms having more diverse management practices experiences lower turnover, higher levels of productivity and better performance of the market. Thus, diverse organizations stand at an advantageous position compared to the organization that fails in implementing such policies.
According to Ansari et al (2013), there are various theories of change. This includes health behavior theory, precaution adoption model, theory of planned behavior and social cognitive theory.
Health Behavior Theory: This theory helps in examining the beliefs that helps in influencing whether someone will take necessary action for changing his or her behavior.
Precaution Adoption Model: According to this model, an individual is unaware the improper or the desired behavior. It is therefore necessary for informing and motivating the individual about the required behavior for viewing it in a positive manner.
Theory of Planned Behavior: This theory helps in understanding that a learner might not be ready for a desired performance or behavior (Montano & Kasprzyk, 2015). It also focuses on the fact that learner’s perception of adopting newer behavior depends on the social influences, personal beliefs and their perceived control over the outcomes.
Social Cognitive Theory: This theory takes into consideration the impact of the social interactions on learning and recognizes the fact that personal autonomy or agency acts as a motivating factor.
Steve Jobs represented a leader of the modern times. He clearly knew his wants and succeeded in transforming the dreams into the realities. He followed the philosophy of a winner who undertook the promotion of Apple II thereby making it the most valuable company of the world (Toma & Marinescu, 2013). He designed the initial platform for the windows which came to be known as Mac. He created and popularized and helped funded Pixar thereby turning it into the largest animator in the history. In spite of many failures he was positioned at the top. Steve Jobs was a visionary and genius in addition to being a complex leader. The distinctive personality of Apple acted as the primary factor while explaining the manner in which he led Apple. However, some of the personal traits of Steve Jobs that is worth a mention include being passionate, flexible, overly critical, impulsive, obsessive perfectionist, highly intuitive, egotist, charismatic, persuasive, open-minded and inspiring. Steve Jobs built a successful and strong corporate culture that assisted the employees in knowing one only when they one.
Approaches to Ethical Analysis
Apple represented a company that was influenced profoundly by the founder and still sticks to the kind of logic and the modes of justification that develops from logic of the inspiration. Steve Jobs was a story teller who was one of its kinds and inspired people and the customers with the various stories (Steinwart& Ziegler 2014). The greatness of Apple lay in the fact that it was built in an inspirational logic that acted as a push factor for the company to seek for perfectionism. Steve Jobs is considered one of the great modern leaders of America. There were certain fundamental elements to support the view. The personality of Steve Jobs remained integral in determining the ways in which he did business. Although he had the affinity to be rough towards the people but he had a surrounding comprising of the intensely loyal colleagues inspired by him for a longer period of time. Steve Jobs was not only a perfectionist but he did not give up and pursued his dreams in a steadfast manner. Under Jobs, Apple became one of the enduring companies through the implementation of creative strategy based on leadership, organization, innovation and entrepreneurship. He had his focus ingrained into the business philosophy. This helped him in deciding what to do and what not to do. Steve Jobs also helped in the promotion of simplicity for the achievement of ultimate sophistication. He was a leader who took the responsibilities in an end to end manner and considered the products before the profits. In addition, Steve Jobs also possessed the capability of pushing Apple in accomplishing the impossible. He also believed in face to face meetings with the people and provided intellectual stimulation and challenges to the people of Apple. Steve Jobs also possessed the ability of creation of smaller teams with top talents and provide ideas to the team for realization. Hence, Steve Jobs proved him to be a highly successful leader in a highly competitive industry. Therefore, Steve Jobs thus represents a transformational leader who possesses the abilities of inspiring the people in doing greater things which they have not done.
Conclusion:
The leadership style followed by Steve Jobs had certain strengths and weakness. Steve Jobs represented great visionary but possessed uncanny capacities for knowing their weak point and knowing what exactly will make the employees feel small. He is also believed to take credit for the ideas that belonged to someone else. He was also not a good team player and possesses a highly destructive nature. Steve Jobs was also known to be impatient with a relentless mission for perfection. He also had a domineering presence and expressed an obsessive need to spread fear within the Apple Culture. Thus, Steve Jobs often described as willful, brazen, smug, volatile, manipulative and demeaning.
There suggestions for improving his/her leadership are based on the four strategies:
- Ensuring controlling of the Choices: Various choices paralyze the ability of decision making. Thus it is important for controlling the choices.
- Ensuring Value Progress: This is the most important aspect of making progress in an organization in addition to other things like boosting emotions, perceptions of a working day and motivation.
- Ensuring Adaptation: One must learn to adapt when a weakness becomes a part of the success.
- By Avoiding Assumptions: By avoiding the assumptions, one can explore various alternatives and gather information as much as possible, instead of assuming that one who worked previously will hold the same interest towards work.
- Redefining Wining: Instead of letting weakness defeat a leader, he must acknowledge the realities of the particular situation and thereby redefine winning
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