Steve Jobs: A Legacy of Leadership

This assignment delves into the life and leadership of Steve Jobs. It analyzes his personal journey, professional achievements, and strategic approach to business. The focus is on how Jobs's unique vision and charismatic personality shaped Apple's success and what lessons young leaders can learn from his example.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Charismatic leadership of Steve Jobs
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Knowing Steve Jobs
Steven Paul Steve Jobs was an enigmatic personality, known for bringing radical
transformation in the brand Apple. He served as the CEO of Apple, taking the brand to every
corner of the world. Along with this, he was also an American entrepreneur, inventor of magnate
and a designer. Being a member of The Walt Disney Company’s Board of directors makes him
popular among the people from eight to eighty (Kriger & Zhovtobryukh, 2016). Apart from this,
he was also served as the CEO of NeXT. This assignment peeks into Steve’s journey as a leader,
concluding with the advice he left behind for the young and aspirant leaders.
Steve’s journey as a leader
Childhood of Steve
Adoption gave Steve a better chance to forget his disturbed childhood. Steve was a school
dropout; however, he succeeded in getting the required higher education from the prestigious
Reed College in 1972. This was a turning point in his life, when he decided to gain
enlightenment on Zen Buddhism by travelling throughout India. During these years, there were
accusations against him regarding the usage of LSD and marijuana. In response to this, he stated
that intake of LSD was one of the major things, which transformed his life (Heracleous &
Klaering, 2014).
1976 was the moment when Jobs along with Wozniak and Ronald Wayne formed Apple
computers, now knows as Apple Inc. The major drive behind this formation was satisfying the
need for a computer, which the humans can regulate according to their needs and requirements.
As a matter of specification, through the production of various products like mobile, laptops and
other electronic goods, Steve intended to empower the common people with the speed of high

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technology. This intention made him People’s Leader, as he re-invented technology for bringing
the world into the fist of the people (Niebuhr, Voße & Brem, 2016).
Leadership of Steve
To highlight Steve’s leadership, the concept of “rags to riches” can be applied. This is
because; he strived to alter his personality through intense hard work, dedication and
determination. In this perspective, he can be considered as a round character. The major drive
behind this alteration is strategic vision and clarity in the identified and the specified objectives.
Herein lays the appropriateness of the name of the article, Business Insider- Lets Get One Thing
Straight- Apple had no choice but to Oust Steve Jobs. “One thing straight” is the determination
towards undertaking strategic vision towards the exposure of proper leadership skills by Steve
(Barnes, 2015). “Ousting Steve” reflects the helpless of the Apple Board of Directors regarding
the termination of Steve. However, instead of being dejected and worried, Steve utilized the
opportunity to see what lies next for him. This evaluation is a direct agent in terms of making
noticeable advances towards leadership.
With the intentions of Steve, transformational, strategic and facilitative leadership styles
can be correlated. Development of strategies before the initiation of the projects reflects Steve’s
strategic leadership. Prioritizing customer’s wellbeing is an example of facilitative leadership.
Altering the current personality for fulfilling the needs, demands and requirements of the
customers reflects the transformational leadership adhered by Steve. Herein lays the
appropriateness of reviewing the undertaken steps and adopting cognitive learning for
upgradation of the standard and quality of the current performance. This review and evaluation
was one of the main points of his leadership strategy (Kollenscher et al., 2016).

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The attributes of simplification, control over the emotions, innovation, neglecting the
reality, confidence are the important components of transformational leadership for Steve.
Simplifying the aspects helped him to solve the hurdles tactfully. This tactfulness made him a
silent leader, making the people wonder about the secret behind his leadership. Here, regulation
over the emotions was the main element, which placed him on a higher pedestal than others.
Herein, the concept of cognitive learning can be discussed. Here, all his designations seem
meager in terms of his urge to learn more by ignoring his current position (Barnes, 2015). This
proves appropriate when he was forcibly terminated from Apple. However, his confidence,
determination and perseverance to emerge successful enabled Steve to join NeXT. This was
possible because of his attribute of adaptability. This attribute helped him to accept the situation
and move on in his life. Along with this, he also possessed a good sense of controlled urgency,
which helped Steve to control his emotions and utilize the situation for moving ahead in his life.
He was in constant quest of presenting innovative designs to the customers. He exposed
desperate attempts to bring innovation in the products of Apple. This desperation is also reflected
in being the mastermind behind the creation of the game Breakout. Steve got the inspiration from
the willpower of the aliens to provide new definitions to reality in the movie episode of Star
Trek. He opined that innovation demarcates the leader and follower”. According to Steve,
innovative, geniuses, determined are merely the masks of a person (Dobni et al., 2016).
Affirming his statement, it can be said that these masks conceals the inner and natural personality
of the person. This concealment can be positive in terms of silently working up to the
achievement of the identified and the specified goals. On the other hand, this concealment
creates a negative image in the minds of the people regarding the personality of the individual.
Silently modifying the personality alters the image of the individual struggling towards travelling

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to the path of leadership. This proved true in case of Steve in terms of emerging a successful
leader.
Critiques are full of praises regarding the review of the interviews, which Jobs had given
to different magazines and channels. In these reviews, passion towards thinking out of the box
gains prominence in Steve’s journey towards leadership (Lussier & Achua, 2015). One of an
interesting points about him is the strategy behind being rude to people. Here, his motherly
attitude is reflected from his philosophy behind being rude to the people. According to him, the
answer lies in the results, which are in front of the people. This is very much similar to the aspect
of mother being rude towards her children for their betterment in terms of development.
Considering the colleagues as “smart” is Steves’ tactics towards modifying his
personality. Working with the smart people has made him realize that brutal treatment would
help them in achieving better employment prospects (Howard, 2013). This can be considered as
his broad-mindedness in terms of providing chances to the colleagues. This reflects that he had
full control over his emotions. Being firm even in the phases of challenges reflects his
confidence over restoration of the normalcy. This is one of the qualities, which directly relates
with his confidence towards making the impossible possible. Crossing the things he found dumb
is also his confidence regarding his weakness. Strong determination and willpower invoked him
to gain victory over his weakness (Dobni et al., 2016).
Overall, it can be said that Steve had envisioned his being an effective leader. Herein, the
Great Man Theory can be brought into the discussion. After being terminated from Apple, his
determination, confidence and adjustability skills helped him to fulfill the identified and
specified goals. Effective and judicious utilization of the preconceived skills, expertise and

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knowledge in a simplistic manner made him a “great man”. Countering this, the uniqueness of
Steve played a major role in exposure of a dynamic personality to be remembered (Heracleous &
Klaering, 2014).
Message of Steve to the young and aspiring leaders
It is very unfortunate that such a dynamic and charismatic personality had to encounter
tragic death due to pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor. However, his perseverance, dedication and
commitment towards work will always be an inspiration for the young leaders in terms of
enhancing their professional development. Evaluation of own work is the lesson, which Steve
gives to the young leaders, so that they can bring noticeable changes within their performance.
Along with this, he encouraged the young leaders not to stop until the goal is achieved. Herein
lays the appropriateness of the saying that, “Knowledge has no age”. He was of the view that
evaluation of the identified goals would help in identifying self-strengths, weakness,
opportunities and threats (Howard, 2013).
Conclusion
This assignment makes the personality of Steve Jobs clear to the readers. Brief insight
about his personal life enhances the struggles, which he did for the reaching to the path of
leadership. In-depth insight into his professional life acts as an inspiration for the
businesspersons striving to achieve a better placement for their companies and organizations.
Within this, strategic leadership gains prominence in the present context of competitive market
for achieving large-scale customer satisfaction through the provision of innovative products.
According to Steve’s philosophy, evaluation possesses flexibility in upgrading the current

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performance and earning kudos from the customers. This would definitely alter the personality in
terms of gaining personal and professional development.

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References
Barnes, B. (2015). Blending Art with Commerce to Expand Aesthetic Leadership: Insights from
Steve Jobs and Jerry Garcia. Journal of Applied Management and
Entrepreneurship, 20(3), 92.
Dobni, C. B., Dobni, C. B., Klassen, M., Klassen, M., Sands, D., & Sands, D. (2016). Getting to
clarity: new ways to think about strategy. Journal of Business Strategy, 37(5), 12-21.
Heracleous, L., & Klaering, L. A. (2014). Charismatic leadership and rhetorical competence: An
analysis of Steve Jobs’s rhetoric. Group & Organization Management, 39(2), 131-161.
Howard, H. Y. (2013). Decoding leadership: How Steve Jobs transformed Apple to spearhead a
technological informal economy. Journal of Business and Management, 19(1), 33.
Kollenscher, E., Popper, M., & Ronen, B. (2016). Value-creating organizational
leadership. Journal of Management & Organization, 1-21.
Kriger, M. and Zhovtobryukh, Y., 2016. Generic Approaches to Strategic Leadership: Stars,
Teams, Clans, and Networks. In Strategic Leadership for Turbulent Times (pp. 17-29).
Palgrave Macmillan US.
Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2015). Leadership: Theory, application, & skill development.
Nelson Education.
Niebuhr, O., Voße, J., & Brem, A. (2016). What makes a charismatic speaker? A computer-
based acoustic-prosodic analysis of Steve Jobs tone of voice. Computers in Human
Behavior, 64, 366-382.

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