MBA 550 Module 1 Discussion: Exploring Steve Jobs' Leadership

This discussion post examines the leadership qualities of Steve Jobs, focusing on his ability to empower and motivate employees within Apple Inc. The author explores Jobs' emphasis on teamwork, product design, and customer focus, highlighting his impact on organizational culture and productivity. The post references key leadership aspects such as employee empowerment and motivation, drawing on Jobs' statements and actions to illustrate his approach. It also discusses how Jobs' leadership style evolved over time. The discussion is based on the MBA 550 course requirements, requiring an initial post and two response posts. The author concludes that Jobs' leadership provides valuable lessons for aspiring leaders, emphasizing the importance of continuous development and adaptation.

Running Head: AN EMPOWERING LEADER: STEVE JOBS
AN EMPOWERING LEADER: STEVE JOBS
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1AN EMPOWERING LEADER: STEVE JOBS
Introduction:
Leadership is a social process of bringing change by influencing the roles underneath.
A leader is someone who maximizes efforts in order to achieve a goal with the respective
team members of the organization. In all great leaders, the aspects related to leadership skills
are inherited with making social influences, therefore a leader is not built but born with the
qualities.
Discussion:
This brief discussion will be followed by the aspects of leadership skills found in
Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, the long legendary feet of Apple Inc. is considered as a niche player
of leadership skills, while making one of the largest technological giant corporation Apple
Inc. Every leader out there in the world aspires to be like him following his legendary path in
making progress in the marketing path of their organization (Heracleous & Klaering, 2017).
He as a person always focused on developing the aspects related to employee empowerment
and motivation. Considering the fact, he always expressed his views in words like “The
people I work with all are smart, and any of them can get a top job at another place if they
feel they are brutalized, but they don’t”. There is always a confidence in his words as he
knew, what are his capabilities and how can he implement them in his own sort of ways
(Yoffie & Cusumano, 2015). Therefore, the lessons can be learned by looking at what he had
accomplished in his ways to making a corporate leadership happen.
One of the main leadership aspects of Steve Jobs was that he always believed in team
work processes. In his early days with the Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, they together
performed to make things beyond possible. He always paid more attention to the product or
design details as to make things simple, functional and appealing to the customers in terms of
cost efficiency and profit generation (Hammershøj, 2018). Steve always had a point in

2AN EMPOWERING LEADER: STEVE JOBS
making productivity as the main thing related to the market. He said, “Customers don’t know
what they want until we’ve shown them.” He as a leader always made more sense with his
words as well his actions in terms of employee motivation and develop the productivity of his
organizational structure. He always tried to maintain a positive organizational culture with his
behaviour to shape a better leadership statement among the employees (Allio, 2015). A leader
like Steve Jobs did not become him in just few days, in his earlier days, for some obvious
reasons he had limitation like all people have. It took him years to develop himself and
broaden his limitations to reach a position he stood in his remarkable career. Therefore, a
leader like him cannot be imitated or made again, one can only try be like him following his
leadership skills to make a better leader inside them.
Conclusion:
A leader like Steve Jobs, always focused on maximizing the efforts in order to
achieve a goal with the respective team members of the organization. Being one of the great
leaders in organizational culture he made to influence employees with the aspects related to
empowerment, motivation and productivity to shape a well maintained organization.

3AN EMPOWERING LEADER: STEVE JOBS
References:
Allio, R. J. (2015). Good strategy makes good leaders. Strategy & Leadership, 43(5), 3-9.
Hammershøj, L. G. (2018). Conceptualizing creativity and innovation as affective processes:
Steve Jobs, Lars von Trier, and responsible innovation. Philosophy of Management,
17(1), 115-131.
Heracleous, L., & Klaering, L. A. (2017). The circle of life: Rhetoric of identification in
Steve Jobs' Stanford speech. Journal of Business Research, 79, 31-40.
Yoffie, D. B., & Cusumano, M. A. (2015). Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill
Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs. Harper Business.