Leadership Characteristics of Steve Jobs

This article evaluates the leadership characteristics, skills and knowledge of Steve Jobs, the former Chairman, co-founder and CEO of Apple Inc. It also discusses how his past failures influenced his current leadership characteristics and skills. The article explores the leadership methods, approaches and concepts employed by Steve Jobs in his role as a business leader.

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Evaluate the leadership characteristics, skills and knowledge of the business leader
A leader selected that allowed him or her to lead an organization in today’s
economic environment.
The leader in Focus is former Chairman, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO)
of Apple Inc. he is presumed to be among the best corporate leaders of all times having
led Apple from an insignificant company to the biggest brand in today’s Fortune 500
companies. He was a business magnate and an inventor whose name will always be
associated with the success of the company. This is highly attributable to his leadership
skills, knowledge and characteristics. Besides Apple Inc, he had a fair share of success in
Pixar and NeXT, some of the other companies he founded and was the chief executive. In
short, he was the creator, the leader and developer of the products that have made Apple
Inc. the biggest corporate brand in the world (Abraham, 2014). . Steve Jobs had the ability
to highlight the essence. The ability to understand the essence of complex ideas and to
give them a simple form is the best of all intellectual tests that I know. A leader’s
behavior should demonstrate: a few well-weighted words are preferable to an endless
stream of eloquence. Ability to generalize. A leader constantly have to analyze the
opinions of various experts and use a large arsenal of sources (Anderson & Sun, 2017).
The ability to synthesize will be invaluable in a leaders search for truth. Inferences. It is to
be hoped that A leader have an acute mind. Hence, a leader should be able to read
between the lines, feel the nuances, hear unspoken words and recognize the hidden
meaning. Naturally, a leader may have to transmit information in the same way. Intuition.
Although it is often considered the opposite of rational thinking, I believe that this is an
intellectual reaction to the world around us. I constantly use the term "judgment", and
perhaps judgment is the rational step that follows an intuitive understanding. Over the

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past few years, much has been written about "emotional intelligence," which includes
intuition. Psychologists describe various types of mental abilities. Steve jobs was a good
leader, he was a pioneer and an inventor. In personal life, a leader is able to create strong
and good relations with people of different ages and easily communicate with them, it will
be very useful in professional interactions and will help to easily cooperate at different
levels of the corporate hierarchy. 3. The influence of "Weights" is to a certain extent
connected with the influence factor. Nevertheless, an uncovered love of power hardly
guarantees a leader stay on top. As the head of the organization, a leader cannot act in
isolation, but are part of a system of interests that require reciprocal concessions and a
very delicate diplomacy. A leader will have to reckon with shareholders and partners and
take into account the interests of even the conflicting parties. A leaders business will be
under the close attention of political and fiscal bodies, and a leader will be forced to
maintain close relations with international, regional, national or local authorities. These
are all good qualities in which (Arnold & Martin Ginis,2015)
How have any past failures influenced his or her current leadership characteristics
and skills?
Past failures in Apple Inc. led Steve Jobs to quit on the company and founded other
companies like Pixar and NeXT. However, he came back to manage apple and engineered
its turn around. It influenced jobs such that he
Tactical leadership
At this stage, jobs had to set tactical goals for the participants of his own group,
distributes roles, builds interaction and communication based on his vision of the

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situation, determines the rules and norms of behavior (Bell & Taylor,2016). An important
element at this level is the ability to inspire trust and loyalty with side of the team, as well
as the skills of retaining the motivation and structure of the group for a large amount of
time. In business at this stage, it is especially important to take into account the basic
elements of management: setting the task, the distribution of roles and areas of
responsibility, the function of motivation and control. Since the level of team leadership
includes internal and situational leadership, it is worth remembering that, especially in
critical situations, the team leader must have all the qualities inherent in internal
leadership in order to first find support in himself, and also have the capabilities of a
situational leader to be able to moments of loss of confidence of the group to restore their
leadership status.
Strategic leadership at the level of system or strategic leadership the size of the team
increases, the team appears more and more people deeds with claims to leadership of
different levels and scales. In this regard, the system leader needs to be able to manage a
team consisting of ambitious people with developed leadership potential. And the talent of
the leader of this level is to be able to manage such a team without suppressing the
ambitions and inclinations of its participants, but developing and supporting them, while
maintaining their status (Goleman, 2017). The necessary tools at this level are: setting
strategic goals, skills of system thinking, the ability not just to motivate team members,
but to inspire them. Thus, the system leader needs to see the development trends of the
system, society, culture, the market in which he is included a few steps forward, having a
good vision of the situation. And, of course, you need to be a strong personal example, be
able to do things, have the charisma to be able to inspire people. When, thanks to his
personal strength and charisma, his intellect and system vision, his communicative skills
and the ability to inspire, the leader is the legislator of rules and the guide for the entire

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system in which he is included. Thanks to him, the world in which we live is just that, and
does not look any different (DuBois & Kerr, 2015).
Steve jobs become assertive due to failure. He was a little bit more cautious in his ability to
make decisions. He became the trend setter in the industry. To successfully master a new
role, he needed to revise the usual ways of communication and even self-identity. In addition,
it was important not to forget about self-observation and self-evaluation in the early stages of
developing leadership qualities, since it was only possible to develop leadership qualities in
oneself, analyzing their failures and successes.
When and how did the business leader develop these characteristics and skills? For
example, did he or she learn them later in life from formative life experiences, or
did he or she always seem to possess leadership qualities?
Jobs was born a leader. According to many of the team mates and colleagues he worked
with, he always had a plan. He developed and furthered his skills through the experiences
that he had passed through in failures and success within Apple (Javed & Rahim, 2014). A
series of losses ate Apple and a dominant competitor were the reasons why jobs was
almost quitting on the position. There was also internal factors that were playing part in
the failure of the company. Too many boardroom politics gad made the company more of
a wrestling ring than a good profitable company. He had to act. However, some of the
characteristics and skills have been developed in the later life from formative experiences.
Some characteristics included, intellectual skills and problem solving tools to improve his
mental toughness. Intellectual readiness for training and humble recognition that a leader
do not know much are signs of an intelligent candidate. Within the category of
"intellectual development" there are several subcategories in which a leader also have to

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show a leader strength: Rapidity of understanding. Time is a scarce commodity for any
head of the company ( Lehman, 2015). Therefore, it is extremely important that he is able
to quickly assess the situation from day to day and develop an appropriate response or new
understanding, being within a limited time frame. The main thing for them is the interests
of the cause. This quality of a good leader can also be a product of the influence exerted
on a leader in the early years. The strength with which a leader were loved and respected
in the leader. He determines the level of self-confidence. A leader early childhood
experiences also talk about a leader predisposition to have a personal "weight". However,
quality becomes obvious to others only when a leader grow up. But if a leader are already
thirty and leader see that A leader have few chances to repeat the success of some of A
leader colleagues and superiors, do not despair.
What leadership methods, approaches or concepts does he or she employ in his or her
role as a business leader?
As a business leader, Steve jobs had to develop almost three leadership methods that helped
to improve the standings of Apple Inc. in the world. The methods include;
Strategic Leadership style-
Strategic leadership At the level of system or strategic leadership the size of the team
increases, the team appears more and more people deeds with claims to leadership of
different levels and scales. In this regard, the system leader needs to be able to manage a team
consisting of ambitious people with developed leadership potential. And the talent of the
leader of this level is to be able to manage such a team without suppressing the ambitions and

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inclinations of its participants, but developing and supporting them, while maintaining their
status (Romager & Jones, 2017). He started to strategically improve and develop products
that were more superior than the competitors. He produced a brand.
Situational Leadership
The first level of leadership is directly related to the previous one and is called situational
leadership. Situational leadership is manifested in the context of interaction with the
immediate environment and is characterized by the fact that a person takes the initiative for a
while and shows the whole set of leadership qualities. Most often it occurs when necessary or
in extreme situations, when it is extremely necessary (Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016).
Transformational leadership
Steve jobs transformed Apple to the best company that ever existed. He transformed the way
people interacted using their gadgets and communication tools.
Team leadership
In history, we know both positive and negative examples of such leadership that can be seen
in almost. Apple is a big team. He was the overall leader and the face of the company,
however, behind him were the thousands of creative who looked and did what was necessary
for the brand (Yoffie & Cusumano, 2015). That is leadership.

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