Leadership in the Time of Crisis: Authentic Leadership and Apple

This report examines authentic leadership in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, using Apple as a case study. It explores the challenges faced by leaders during the pandemic, including employee fear, remote work transitions, and the need for new communication strategies. The report analyzes the role of leaders, emphasizing the importance of vision, architecting, coaching, and acting as a catalyst. It highlights the characteristics of authentic leadership, such as transparency, honesty, self-awareness, and balanced processing, and discusses the significance of female leadership in shaping the future of organizations. The report concludes by offering insights into how authentic leaders can navigate crises and foster organizational success by focusing on long-term goals, consistency, and open communication. The report also discusses the importance of female leadership and the unique skills they bring to the table.

Authentic leadership

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM CURRENT COVID - 19 CRISIS............................................3
Issues due to Covid - 19 ..............................................................................................................3
Role of leadership........................................................................................................................4
Authentic leadership and female leadership................................................................................6
Lessons to the leadership.............................................................................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Leadership styles chosen by the company will affect the organisational culture and
working performance of its employees. Leaders are important to look after the needs and
requirements of the team and their preferences based on their strengths and weakness. Authentic
leadership is is where the leaders have to practice genuine and easy behaviour in order to built
relations in the workplace and create the environment of trust. Apple is an American
multinational company which specialises in technology (Gardner, and et.al., 2021). It sells
consumer electronics, software and other online based services to its customers. Apple is
considered to be the most largest company when defined by revenue and thus, it is the most
valuable company. The current CEO of the company is Tim Cook. He is known for his great
leadership within the organisation which has lead the company remain in the positions of top.
This current pandemic has set bars for creating the new normal trend. The changes in the
organisation has developed different roles and responsibilities on leaders.
LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM CURRENT COVID - 19 CRISIS
Issues due to Covid - 19
The current pandemic has created some extra ordinary demands for leaders in the
organisation. It has created the feeling of fear in the employees and even the stakeholders of the
company. This massive outbreak of the virus has made things unpredictable and challenged the
traditional working methods. This crisis has lead to some sequence of events with the
overwhelming speed resulting in high degree of uncertainty (Alvesson, and Einola, 2019). This
uncertainty has given rise to disorientation and feeling of losing the control with a strong
emotional disturbance. Many organisations are diverting their way towards the new delivery
channels, creating new products and services and trying to find ways to adjust and survive this
pandemic. organisation had their employees to work remotely in order to keep them safe from
exposing to the virus and following the Covid norms. This rapid shift of work from home has
created many challenges in the organisation especially for leaders. The working of the
organisation become more virtual where t is easy for the employees to become more invisible not
giving their best performance. In such situation it became difficult to reward and recognise the
best performing individual or team and also to deal with the challenges coming in the way of
performance.

The need for the leaders to be more attuned increased from more than ever. They had to
mange their own stress due to covid and the business and its people which has all increased
during the time of Covid. Organisations were working with the videoconferencing and following
the remote working arrangements have now become important and very useful in the recent
years. However, the sensitive conversations and relations of the business are supposed to be
handled better in person. Having more transparency and building more trust are very important
for developing effective forms of communications within the workplace as well as sharing the
information and building up commitments are more welcomed when the relation is maintained
face to face (Novitasari, and et.al., 2020). The inability to bring the stakeholders together in
person to show them the future of the company makes it more difficult for the leaders to make
the decisions and increase the potential related to the conflict. The main challenge in the
organisation is the engagement of leaders in the decision making process in the teams in such a
way that will help in enhancing trust and increasing team work.
Organisational leaders of each industry has to come up with different ways of learn,
unlearn and even relearn the new and adaptive ways to the new normal made brutally from the
current pandemic. Leaders are expected to manage the threats well and leverage the opportunities
coming from this crisis. It is important for them to manage the change in individuals at the
organisational level which can survive in the flexible situations and improving future. Leadership
in human resource is to manage the crisis and input critical efforts to the increase in
organisational learning and restructuring system. During the pandemic, the leader of Apple,
Cook called the situation uncertain and stressful moment but handled it in a confident way which
lead the company emerge strongly from the crisis. Apple is not immune to the changes in
economic trends and covid has changed the balance sheet creating stress which company has to
invest in a significant way in order to develop and put in the future products. The company is
still not sure when the employees will be back to working from offices and this will happen
while following the safety norms such as social distancing and temperature checks. Apple started
the online training systems and virtual meetings for important and everyday matters.
Role of leadership
The role of leaders in the traditional methods was to maximise the value for shareholders.
They played the role being a planner which includes developing strategy and translating the plan.

They directed and even controlled the process making sure that everyone is on board and there is
minimum variance against the plan. In today's world business has become more complex and
requires a new approach to leadership. This contributes in defining new set of roles to the leaders
and focusing more on co-creating some meaningful values with stakeholders and also the
customers and employees. One of the important role the leader is to be visionary which helps in
shaping the emergence of clear and compelling the purpose of vision (Chaudhary, and Panda,
2018). The leaders supposed to observe and listen to the people with a proper established system
while offering ideas and considerations to other's perspectives with original thinking. Leaders in
the Apple are working with the teams to make the desired vision of the organisation into some
measurable outcomes by empowering the team to work efficiently. When the goals of
accomplishment is clear it is the role of leaders to act as architects. Leaders from a large
company like Apple have to take on the sophisticated roles which are related to the designing
and empowering the system along with proper execution of plan and adjusting to the availability
of the resources.
Leaders are supposed to make the space for reimagine the development of product and
different ways to generate sales. It is important for the leaders to let go of the restricting
assumptions and allow the business to bloom with different business models. Another role of the
leaders is to coach by building mindsets, knowledge and skills which are very important areas for
a leader. This is done by creating a wide range of formal as well as informal learning initiatives
which even evolves the learning with the help of organisational culture. Coaching is used to
build team interactions and having many perspective regarding different problems. Lastly, the
role of leaders is also to work as a catalyst. This will help in unleashing the energy throughout
the system. This is done by removing the obstacles which are coming in the way of making ideas
in reality. This helps in foster the connections present in the organisation and helping the
employees connect more (Elrehail, and et.al., 2018). Leaders create a welcoming work
environment which builds up the energy and push to pursue full range of personal and
professional aspirations. These leadership roles together will create a powerful kind of the
leadership and let the leaders find new and effective approach to deliver more value.

Authentic leadership and female leadership
This leadership style is helped to focus more on leader's transparency and honesty present
within the workplace. Authentic leaders are known to build strong relations which are also
honesty in the members of the team and make them follow the leader, just as in Apple. Leaders
from Apple such as Steve Jobs and Tim cook have inspired trust and motivating in their
employees and a result of which is workers being more consistent and present their leadership
authentically. Authentic leaders are there to constantly assess the strengths and weaknesses of
their own as well as the values present within the work space. Getting to know all these factors
will allow the leaders to be more authentic and capable of sharing with the team members. Self
awareness of authentic leaders also creates self reflection which leads to asking for feedback and
remaining aware of personal and professional feelings coming from some experiments in the
work place. Authentic leaders are also very balanced in processing as in they take into account
both the supporting opinions as well as the opinions against it (Lee, Chiang, and Kuo, 2019).
Authentic leaders considers both which given them all forms of perspectives and help inn
illuminating the flaws while avoiding any problems. Exhibiting a balanced processing
encourages employees to be more open and honest about their ideas and problems during the
time of decision making. Relational transparency is yet another component of authentic
leadership where they are willing to be more transparent in the workplace relations and stay
honest while sharing their thoughts and feelings. They are ready to offer and receive more
constructive feedbacks when ever necessary.
Authentic leader leads its way for the employees with the help of examples and admitting
why they are wrong. They show internalised moral perspective where the leaders put the needs
and requirements of organisation first rather than focusing on own feelings and needs. Authentic
leader like Tim Cook has lead to company's success with his primary objectives and facing
challenging situations like having additional work. The characteristics of the authentic leaders
include, having the focus on long term results Authentic leaders are capable to see the long term
goals of the organisation while encourages the team to maintain their focus and stay committed
to the work and attaining the desired goals. Authentic leaders do not change their way of leading
the team and the values they exhibit. They remain consistent in their own ways and promote the
sense of reliability in the team. Addition to this, authentic leaders are true to what they value and
practice the same (Miao, Humphrey, and Qian, 2018). The do what they preach in a serious way

and because of this they earn high level of respect from the team members. High level of
integration is showcased by Steve Jobs at very high levels. He stood up to his values and focused
more on the product rather than gaining more profits. He was very controlling person. Such
authentic leaders are active in regularly assessing their strengths and weakness and how they
affect the leadership process. Authentic leaders are against hiding things from their team
members. They like to keep the book open for everyone and getting know about what they are
dealing with. They believe in open communication with everyone to build more strong relations
and do not behave differently behind their back.
Workplace in the modern market is looking to promote more equality. Females have
battled a lot to attain the high position sin the organisation and treated equally. UK is moving
on with the greater gender diversity to uplift the high performance in their data. When females
become the leaders they bring in different set of skills within the organisation. Females have
perspective which are very imaginative and structured in proper way along with giving effective
solution to the problems due to cultural differences (Liu, and et.al., 2018). They come up with a
creative viewpoint and a sense of awareness on the fine details which might be neglected
otherwise. A company like Apple must bring in female leadership as female leaders will paint
the future. This means that a women in high position will inspire and motivate other females and
younger generation to lead and set good examples of the females who are smashing their role as
leaders in the work place. Female leaders bring in unique transformational ideas to the front as
female leaders are more transformational and exhibit more reward behaviour than the active and
passive management by male leaders. Females lead the way with high passion and enthusiasm
and are always ready to command the given situation. Females are more honest than males and
even more smarter. They are ranked as being more compassionate which makes them have the
superior leadership values. Most importantly, women have the capability to wear many hats and
performing different roles at a single time. Female leaders can quickly adjust to new situations
and focus on generating new solution to the problems.
Lessons to the leadership
In this continuously changing market world, it is important for the leaders to look after
the opportunities to learn rather than sit back and fear about the failure. Covid - 19 has changed
the world into upside down. Working with this pandemic has become a part of lives of all the

people going through this. People have been numbed to the daily lost of lives because of the
Covid and this all was considered to be unthinkable (Gill, and et.al., 2018). The situations of this
pandemic is still not over yet and can even mark the beginning of the end. The leadership quality
is also changed with this new working strategies. Some of the lessons learned to the leaders
about this current covid - 19 situation is that:
Welcome to the unknown: Pandemic affected the global economies as there was the
sudden suspension of economic activities. It was profound and instructive and have given the
taste of unknown. Being unknown created many challenges for the leaders. Leaders have to
become the masters of uncertainty and finesse the small changes in the decision making areas as
change is the only constant. Leader cannot rely on the expertise or experience during the time of
unknown. Unknown asks for different decision making and leadership styles. This current
situation cannot work on traditional sources especially in this case where the assumptions made
does not have any assurance and probabilities are more than suspicion. Current pandemic
situation is more unknown as it caught up when people were unprepared and made this an
incredible scale of tragedy (Oh, and Oh, 2017). Future will require to manage with the same type
of situations not just in the sense of unforeseen changes but also changes which were not
thinkable like climate change, new epidemics and mass human migrations which will give
unstable conditions. Managing these unknown changes will increase the characteristics of
leadership for the future purpose which can be seen very unusual for now. Leaders have to
promote more innovations with the advocacy of the experiences from the customers and even the
experimentation . They have to be open for the unusual ideas and give fast responses along with
having the value for the curiosity. The experience with Covid - 19 has given more insights in the
leadership practices.
Becoming more curious about the future: It is important to take the future more
seriously and set up the early warning mechanisms which will alert the people with the
unanticipated developments. Being failed in this early warning signals can cause high costs of
response time like present crisis. The absence of data for the current situations has created human
go through this. The lack of efficacy of the responses which lead to contagion. Leaders must
have the alert during decision making about the what if moments in the organisation. Leaders
should be skilled in order to be ready to move the information faster. They have to keep an eye
for the future along with managing the present. It calls for an innovative form of leadership.

Look upstream: The slow responses in the current situation is an impact of moving in
wrong direction. In all the hassle, organisation forgot to look on what to don when the situation
is upstream in order to prevent the exhaustion of the available resources (Weiss, and et.al., 2018).
Prevention is always undervalued and often neglected. Taking downstream actions will solve the
problem when they have already occurred however, upstream efforts are focused to prevent the
problems to happen. Not having a tracking process and looking upstream is very futile because
of the insufficient data and give more shape to the emerging problems.
Be more outside in: Failure happens more when the leader is focusing more inside out.
Being successful in today's world requires a strategy of innovation with an outside in
perspective. Adapting to the new processes and new technologies helps in flipping side of
innovation along with good ideas which matters at large extent. Leaders have to focus more on
the having innovation and new ideas because if that will not happen the there is not point of
leading the organisation in the old ways.
Be experimental: In the unknown future and situations, the organisation works on luck
and taking risks. Placing many small bets in parallel is a better approach when addressing the
unknown. The success lies in approach of breaking rules and placing bets which has resulted in
being more optimism which is important for today (Oh, Cho, and Lim, 2018). There is no place
to have the modest ambitions. Leaders must have the bold thinking and not being bound to
linearity. Traditional methods slows down the operations of organisation especially when they
need pressing. Leaders must have the mission oriented approach with focus on resources even
the complex organisation. It makes the mission be more clear and in compelling manner.
CONCLUSION
This current pandemic due to Covid - 19 have made the organisations as well as
individuals to change there ways of working. This even requires leaders to change their
leadership styles in order to sustain the unpredictable and uncertain situations. For a
contemporary company like Apple, the current and past leaders have set a great examples. he
authentic leadership is best in all the ways important for the current leadership. However, Apple
does need a female leader to take the company in the places which were not explored before.
Leaders must never underestimate the innovations and its energy even when coming from
unexpected places. Leaders must become more of an explorer than being a discover.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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other traps in leadership studies. The Leadership Quarterly. 30(4). pp.383-395.
Chaudhary, R. and Panda, C., 2018. Authentic leadership and creativity. International Journal of
Productivity and Performance Management.
Elrehail, and et.al., 2018. The impact of transformational and authentic leadership on innovation
in higher education: the contingent role of knowledge sharing. Telematics and
Informatics. 35(1). pp.55-67.
Gardner, and et.al., 2021. Authentic leadership theory: The case for and against. The Leadership
Quarterly. p.101495.
Gill, and et.al., 2018. Using theory on authentic leadership to build a strong human resource
management system. Human Resource Management Review. 28(3). pp.304-318.
Lee, H.F., Chiang, H.Y. and Kuo, H.T., 2019. Relationship between authentic leadership and
nurses' intent to leave: The mediating role of work environment and burnout. Journal of
nursing management. 27(1). pp.52-65.
Liu, and et.al., 2018. Linking authentic leadership to subordinate behaviors. Leadership &
Organization Development Journal.
Miao, C., Humphrey, R.H. and Qian, S., 2018. Emotional intelligence and authentic leadership: a
meta-analysis. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
Novitasari, and et.al., 2020. Authentic Leadership and Innovation: What is the Role of
Psychological Capital?. International Journal of Social and Management Studies. 1(1).
pp.1-21.
Oh, J. and Oh, S., 2017. Authentic leadership and turnover intention: does organizational size
matter?. Leadership & organization development journal.
Oh, J., Cho, D. and Lim, D.H., 2018. Authentic leadership and work engagement: the mediating
effect of practicing core values. Leadership & Organization Development Journal.
Weiss, and et.al., 2018. Authentic leadership and leaders' mental well-being: An experience
sampling study. The Leadership Quarterly. 29(2). pp.309-321.