Leadership in Business: Apple Case Study and Personal Reflection

This essay delves into the concept of leadership, focusing on transformational leadership as a key style for organizational success. The author reflects on their personal leadership qualities, highlighting the ability to assess risks, motivate subordinates, and navigate ambiguous situations. The essay then analyzes Apple's success under Steve Jobs, emphasizing his transformational leadership, innovative vision, and ability to foster a creative environment. It examines the challenges Apple faced and how Jobs' leadership addressed them, including technological upgrades, risk-taking, and employee engagement. The author outlines their leadership philosophy, emphasizing clear goals, employee involvement in decision-making, open communication, and the use of creative and innovative techniques. The essay concludes by asserting that the correct leadership style is crucial for both individual and organizational success, inspiring employees, fostering flexibility, and promoting cooperation to achieve financial and reputational goals. The references include multiple academic sources on leadership and organizational behavior.

Organizational behavior
Master’s in business(research)
Student’s name
9/13/2019

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PART 1
If we talk about the leadership, it is highlights about the companies’ capacity
management to set and achieve the challenging goals, outperforms the competition and along
with this, they inspire others to perform at the highest level they can. This concept mainly helps
in giving direction to companies and the people working over their as employees and also
showing workers how effectively perform their responsibilities and regularly supervising the
completion of their task. This aspect also helps in exhibits a strong character along with the
honesty, integrity, trustworthiness and ethics. Moreover, it also includes clear communication
aspect, which helps the company to move forward and achieve the new levels of success.
Similarly, when I talk about myself I mainly possess the features of transformational leadership
(Krishnan, 2012).
Transformational style of leadership mainly helps in improvising or improving the
organization as well as employees. Leaders have to outperform the basic tasks and goals and
keep pushing employees to fetch the best results by adopting the best practices and should work
out of the comfort level in order to achieve objectives, personal level as well as organizational
level. I at this level tends to establish and encourage employees morale towards work along with
this I also help them in developing and enhancing their working aspect in a long run. Along with
this, I also helps them in to value things, helps them in generating priorities and ethical working
environment which encourages them to move forward and make them work towards the
companies set objectives. In general, such style helps the company and team to generate the open
conversation and leads to decentralization approach, which allows employees to participate in
decision-making and give certain direction to organization for an easy attainment of the
organizational goals in long term (Adler, & Osland, 2016).
When I adopt transformational style of leadership, it helped in enhancing creativity
within the organization. While setting decision-making framework it important that leaders
should possess various kinds of creative techniques which are useful for employees as well as
company, such as intellectual stimulation which helped me a lot while making various decisions
and innovation at core as this tends to the most benefited aspect of the leadership framework. As
this concept consider both the problem and the creative solution which helps me to encourage the

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solicit ideas without fear and helps in boosting the employees towards the attainment of the
organization goals in creative way (Herman, & Chiu, 2014).
For leader, the most important aspect is to tackle person or employees by not being a
leader by its position but by his sense. Therefore, this statement mainly highlights that leaders
should know how to lead and manage themselves before leading others in organization. Certain
set of principles and ethics are to be followed by the leader for being on a leadership position.
Other than this, leaders’ motive is not only to lead team but along with this, they need to
motivate employees, upgrade their morale towards work, and also generates flexibilities in
communication and working aspect so that they can easily communicate their issues with them
(McCleskey, 2014).
Moreover, leaders should never ignore the purpose behind what they do, as for this;
leaders need to inspire the entire team towards the goals and the mission. As audacity works
great when a leader possess it. According to me, I have that courage, to empower others and
entire team by being strong and lead a team in better way. Such features help in creating stability
and drive change within the organization in long run. Other than this, it also leads company
towards continuous change and improvement.
Lastly, when we talk about the leadership qualities, I as leaders focus on the effective
communication aspect and should allow employees to participate in decision-making. As
different minds leads to the variety of ideas and such ideas leads to the effective communication
along with the effective decisions from employees which helps them their issues all by self and
in this leaders they use their creative aspect and further helps employees when they are stuck in
difficult situation. Conversation should be effective when leaders listens every issue and try to
generate solutions in no time also helps organization to grow in speedy way (García-Morales, et
al, 2012).
The role of belief and religious aspect also affects the leadership aspect, as it is
considered that spirituality and leadership possess a framework for understanding how a leader’s
personal belief majorly affects the decisions making aspect within the organization. As it are
states that leaders’ beliefs acts like schemas to filter the information at much greater way and
thus affects the organizational outcome. Moreover, it is seen that leaders with such higher beliefs

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leads in the category of Pseudo- transformational. Such beliefs lead to the higher self-
enhancement of values which majorly affects the organizational and a leader at large.
Other than this, leader with spirituality aspect will not be much inclined towards success
and the position and power within the organization, rather with this aspect they will be high on
self- greatness, which may not affect them but will affect the organization and employee whole
at larger pace (Steinwart, & Ziegler, 2014).
The key experience, which I have faced and which helped me in knowing this
transformational style of leadership qualities within me, that I know how to face the calculative
risk and along with this, I have an ability to take right kind of risk at a particular time. When to
take strategic risk and when not to take is one of the strength points, such aspect helped me
knowing that I possess the leadership quality within me, which I can use for the organization
benefit.
Other than this, when I worked as intern I possessed an ability to influence the behavior
of the subordinates and helps in encouraging their motivation so that they can perform well and
should strategically contribute towards achieve goals of the oragnsaition. Other than this, I have
a quality of avoiding ambiguous situations and further encouraging team members to perform
well and achieve goals effectively and efficiently. Such aspect helped me in knowing about of
within qualities of transformational leadership.
PART 2
In recent time, there are many organizations, which face many issues regarding
leadership and tend to find out various solutions to those problems. It only about the organization
but is also includes CEO’s and other top management authorities, who earlier are imperfect, but
later they are transformed in well-known with best qualities and through this, they makes the
organization work well than before. Similarly, the well-known company, which I came across in
recent time, was Apple, a well-known company whose CEO is Steve Jobs. He as a leader with
the strong vision, technology master, knowledge of the complete market and an art of combining
in a blockbuster product. But without him this entire organization will not be able to work as he
possess the great leadership quality and also helps in creating and effective and efficient
organization with great reputation in the market (Rolfe, 2011).

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As, transformational style of leadership made Steve jobs to have clear vision and to take
decisions with confidence which helps in taking the tough decisions within and organization and
in between the members who are working with the organization. Other than this, Steve Jobs
thought of opting creative and spirit of innovation, which helped the company to think ahead of
the market trends, and accordingly with time, they generated success in no time and this was all
because of the adoption of innovative and creative aspect by the Steve Jobs and hence, generates
success for organization till date.
The issues, which were faced by Apple Company, were, no upgradition in technological
capabilities, leadership challenges, taking risks, lack of passion within employees were seen. For
the same, by being a leader of the company jobs found the actual capabilities within employees
and further he encouraged his employees to challenge themselves for innovation and increased
productivity. In risk aspect, jobs think of working on a progressive path and also thinks of
creating a successful brand through an adoption of integrity, flexibility within a working
environment (Antonakis, & House, 2013).
According to my leadership philosophy, principles which I definitely consider such as
defining all objectives and goals within the oragnsaition to all the members working with the
organization. Other than this, employees are the part of the company should be considered in
every part of it, in every decisions as through this, company will be benefited from the various
solution along with the effective communication also took in between the employees and top
management
In above mentioned problem, I would sure makes my employees to participate in every
decisions which not helps in getting better solution but this aspect will also help employees to be
open minded and flow of work will become much lighter than before. Therefore, such aspect
leads to the better of the organization environment.
Other than this, to deal with the competition challenge or issue, I would have adopted
creative and innovative techniques, so, that it leads to the betterment of the product development.
In addition, along with this, it also helps in company to tries out the newer ways to improve and
leads an improvising in reputation in the market and also generates success for the longer period.
Other than this, which I as a leader would adopt was thinking of various strategies and solutions

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to make employee work more efficiently and dedicatedly. Likewise, I would have offered full
support and encouragement to the individual followers. Adoption of open communication, which
makes them feel free to share their ideas and such strategies, helps organization to grow.
Moreover, I would have also allowed my employees to adopt intellectual stimulation, in
which it helps them to adopt creativity and innovative techniques. Also encourages them to
explore newer ways of doing things and generates newer opportunities for them to grow and
learn and such concept will surely leads to an improvement of the employees as well as
organization in long run (Northouse, 2018).
Lastly, to motivate and inspire employees, I as a leader would have adopted the
recognition aspect, which can be in form of monetary as well as non-monetary ways. As by these
ways employees will definitely, gets influence towards work will generate same passion, which
he/ she had before and will surely help in improving the performance of both the employees as
well as organization in long run. Moreover, according to the specialization, employees should be
assigned with that particular tasks, so if I would be the leader in that company I would have
delegate the responsibilities and duties to the particular person for the particular work. In which
they are perfect, as this aspect helps in improving the morale, confidence of employees and will
help in improving the working skills of employees, which will benefit both the employees in
future, and organization (Fritz, & Van Knippenberg, 2018).
From the above essay we can conclude that for being a successful weather it’s an
individual as employees or an organization, all can generate success if they are opting for the
correct style of leadership to tackle any issues raised within the company. As, this particular
aspect not only helps the leader to lead effectively and efficient in an organization. Along with
this, they through their skills get to know more about the employees and along with this, this
particular aspect inspire them, motivate them, helps them in working in flexible environment and
lastly, working so cooperatively which leads to the success of organization and employees in
financial teams as well as in organization reputation terms.

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References
Adler, N. J., & Osland, J. S. (2016). Women Leading Globally: What We Know, Thought We
Knew, and Need to Know about Leadership in the 21st Century☆. In Advances in Global
Leadership (pp. 15-56). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Antonakis, J., & House, R. J. (2013). The full-range leadership theory: The way forward.
In Transformational and Charismatic Leadership: The Road Ahead 10th Anniversary
Edition (pp. 3-33). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Fritz, C., & Van Knippenberg, D. (2018). Gender and leadership aspiration: The impact of work–
life initiatives. Human Resource Management, 57(4), 855-868.
García-Morales, V. J., Jiménez-Barrionuevo, M. M., & Gutiérrez-Gutiérrez, L. (2012).
Transformational leadership influence on organizational performance through
organizational learning and innovation. Journal of business research, 65(7), 1040-1050.
Herman, H. M., & Chiu, W. C. (2014). Transformational leadership and job performance: A
social identity perspective. Journal of business research, 67(1), 2827-2835.
Krishnan, V. R. (2012). Transformational leadership and personal outcomes: empowerment as
mediator. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 33(6), 550-563.
McCleskey, J. A. (2014). Situational, transformational, and transactional leadership and
leadership development. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 5(4), 117.
Northouse, P. G. (2018). Leadership: Theory and practice. Sage publications.
Rolfe, P. (2011). Transformational leadership theory: What every leader needs to know. Nurse
Leader, 9(2), 54-57.
Steinwart, M. C., & Ziegler, J. A. (2014). Remembering Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a"
Transformational Leader": Implications for Pedagogy. Journal of Leadership
Education, 13(2).

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