Leadership Skills of Tim Cook

RUNNING HEAD: LEADERSHIP
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Leadership

Leadership
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Introduction
Leadership is considered as the potential or ability of an individual to influence others
to achieve the goals. Leaders are the ones who develop visions and motivate members of the
organization to achieve those visions (Northouse, 2018). In this essay, in order to understand
the concept of leadership a leader is chosen, which is Tim Cook, current CEO of Apple. In
the below sections leadership traits of Tim cook are explained and impact of a leader’s
accomplishments and life on the society and how his traits and activities influence others are
also described. At last, considering the leadership style of a leader, one trait is identified that
is the best and can be admired in the future.
Tim Cook
Leadership Traits
Tim Cook is an American business executive and is the CEO of Apple since 2011.
Tim cook kept running Apple after the death of Steve Jobs that was unimaginable to think of
Apple without Jobs. But the leadership style of Cook helps to run the company in a
successful way. Tim cook possesses many traits of leaders that help him to take Apple to
next level such as the ability to take risks, the leader's life is not as easy because leaders have
to make difficult decisions by considering the lives of others. Tim cook knows the
importance of taking the risk and take risks in order to succeed that leads him to a successful
leader. He believes that the confidence in taking a calculative risk is necessary in order to
have the support of people (Kahney,2019).
Cook has the ability to trust others and delegate responsibilities to them in order to
gain the support of others. Tim Cook always trusts others and listens to their voices as he

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believes that the support of the people around them is important. He feels fortunate to have
experienced people around who help him to share the workload and he allows them to take
lead and contribute more in the business with innovative ideas. The main aspect of being a
successful leader is understanding that everything cannot be handled by an individual and
delegating workload will help to become a successful leader.
Tim Cook focuses on promoting diversity as Apple is an organization that is based on
innovation and requires high skills and a different mindset. The CEO understands this and
promotes diversity and Cook tries to bring the best of the abilities of different individuals in
Apple. Strong leaders are those who accept their mistake when they are wrong, Cook has a
trait of admitting his mistakes and ability to take responsibility for decisions that go wrong in
an organization. Another trait that is reflected in Tim Cook is believing in “what you are
doing and take actions that reflect”, Cook as a great leader always trust its decisions and his
actions always reflect. For instance; when the stock prices of Apple were tanking, Cook
decided to forfeit his one-third of stock compensation worth $130 million to stabilize the
stock performance in the market (Dhiman, 2018). Hence, Cook always chose to lead by
example and reflects all this in its decision and actions.
Leader’s Influence
The influence of Tim Cook's leadership style seen in society and employees of
Apple. The company under the leadership of Cook offers innovative products and remain at
the top in market capitalization. Further, Tim cook is a social person that contributes more to
the development of society. The way Cook shows respect and dignity towards its employees
changed mindset of many business executives and in order to bring awareness about this
aspect, Tim Cook took a seminar on how to interact with people and show dignity and respect
to them that changes a lot many things at the corporate level and personal level (Kao,2018).