Transformational Leadership : Assignment
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Added on 2020-11-30
Transformational Leadership : Assignment
Added on 2020-11-30
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Steve Jobs also known as the wonder kid of Silicon Valley and was considered as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his time. He was a hero, a curious and a committed person with high dreams. At the same time it is said that he was impatient, stubborn, hypercritical and cruel as well. He was genius and had a huge contribution in making Apple what it is today. Analyzing his behavior towards employees and the way he used his power, Jobs has be characterized in two ways; “transformational leader” and a “toxic leader”. In this essay, the professional life, behavior, attitude and leadership style of Steve Jobs will be discussed. This essay will examine characteristics of Steve Jobs whether he was a transformational or a toxic leader. This essay will only talk about politics and leadership style. According to KK & Kumar (2004), “Transformational leadership is a leadership in which leaders develop themselves first and then they develop others”. Transformational leadership environment can turn follower into leaders(Burns, 1978). According to Jean Lipman-Blumen, “Toxic leadership is a leadership style in which the leaders are engaged in various destructive behaviors that harms their followers and organization. “The great leaders are not the one who does the greatest things, great leader is the one who gets the people to do the greatest things”(Ronald Reagan, A Former President of USA). In the confusion between Steve Jobs being a transformational or a toxic leader, there are various characteristics of Steve Jobs that support him as a transformational leader whereas there are other characters which supports him as a toxic leader also. A transformational leader are those who have a vision which directs and provides meaning to their followers (Cogner, 1999,Kotter, 1996). Steve Jobs was also a person with great vision. He always had high target and dreams. Still after his death he is being remembered as a visionary genius. His ground breaking innovations such as iPod, iPhone, MacBook andiPad Tablet was because of his vision. He used to take things as inspirational way. He was able to see how computers and other technologies could drive the future. He had a vision and wanted to change the world. He directed his employees and the organization as per his vision. As a result, today Apple is the most leading technological brand. Steve Jobs was avery committed, focused person. He always expected the best result from his employees. To do the things with perfection was what he wanted. Transformational leader expects very high performance from their employees (Den Hortoy and Belshak, 2012). Steve Jobs was very demanding and had high expectations from his employees. Along with transformational leaderhe was also considered as charismatic leader. Charisma is known as gift of grace. Charisma can be explained as a form of influence, based on the perception of followers, and of the leader’s extra ordinary qualities (Max Weber, 1940). Confidence, creativity, determination, vision are some of the features of charismatic leader. Steve Jobs was a very confident, creative leader with great vision and high technological knowledge. He always had the power to face the risk and try new innovation. He was so creative that he knows how to transform technology into a magic(John Scully, A Former CEO of Apple).
Charismatic leaders and transformational leaders are considered same as they have multiple similarities. Steve had all the charismatic and transformational traits. Who hired him said, “I hired him because I saw a spark in him and found some energy and attitude of getting it done. I saw a vision in him supported by external facts.” The spark in Steve was because he was very confident, visionary and the attitude of getting things done was because of transformational leadership behavior. Transformational leadership gives freedom to followers, it allows followers to think and investigate about new ideas. Transformational leadership is about encouraging employees, enabling them to act and challenging the process (Kouzes and Posner, 1995 and 2002). Steve Jobs always inspired his employees to think out of box, motivate them to take risk and think great. He always gave his employees the task that seems highly impossible at the beginning, but he always motivated them and as a result he and his employees used to come up with world-shaping changes and innovations. He used to highly appreciate the employees who could standout and think differently. Encouragement and recognition to employees inspire them to perform better (Kouzes and Posner, 1995 and 2002).He encouraged employees to dare to face the challenges. He is considered as transformational leader because his leadership style worked for Apple. The role for transformational leader is to uplift the organization and he did the same. His innovations changed the life of his employees and other peoples too. Ipod released in 2011 changed college student’s daily schedule and also changed the whole music industry (Jobs and Beahm, 2011). Steve Jobs created a significant change (Isaacson 2011) because of which even today he is also called as a visionary leader. There was organizational politics in Apple. Organizational politics is the process of getting power by using other or through means of others (Durbin, 2011). After the success of Apple I they brought Apple II which was also a great success. Steve Jobs requests John Sculley to join Apple as the new CEO. Sculley was CEO of one of the most successful company and did not agree to come but Steve Jobs convinced him. In 1983 “Lisa” was introduced and was expected to take over the industry by storm, however, it did not go well, hence to overcome it Steve Jobs started working on the Macintosh computer and OS. Now there were three teams; Apple two upgraders, Lisa and Macintosh and there arise competition among different teams, Macintosh was highly successful at the beginning but could not go well as expected later. Hence, unhappy with competitions and power battles Jobs planned to ask Sculley to leave the company. When Sculley knew about it he used his power of CEO and talked to the board and played politics to kick out Steve Jobs out of Apple. He talked about Job’s destructive behavior and told the board that he was harm for the company. The board took Jobs as threat and fired him. Due to the power of Sculley and the organizational politics, Jobs whose entire life was Apple, was fired from Apple. “He never forgave me for that.” (John Sculley, Former CEO of Apple). However after eleven years of being fired he was again back in Apple in 1996. Even after being fired he had no ego and returned back. It was a greatest comeback in technological history. Apple was in its worst when Steve Jobs came back. He agreed to run it as interim CEO. When Michael Dell was asked that, what would he do if he was in Job’s position, his answer
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