Slide Steve Jobs Leadership Analysis 2007

Steve Jobs Leadership Analysis

1. Steve Jobs
Leadership Analysis

2. Introduction
0This presentation aims to analyze the leadership styles of
Steve Jobs.
0For analyzing the leadership style, we have also tried our
best to present and understand his personal
accomplishments, company achievements as well as his
personality traits.
0After having understood this, we have provided a detailed
analysis of Steve Jobs as a leader. We have also in depth
analyzed the elements of transformational leadership
of Steve Jobs.

3. Biography & Major Personal
Events
oBorn on February 24, 1955 and adopted by Paul & Clara Jobs.
oWorked with HP for summer internship after High School.
oDropped out of college after the very first semester.
o1976: Started the company Apple computers with Steve Wozniak. Apple I, II,
III all were successful.
o1984: Conceptualized and introduced the revolutionary Macintosh the market.
o1985: Was forced to resign by the board of directors of Apple computers.
o1986: Founded Next Computers
o1986: Co-founded Pixar Animation Studio and thereby revolutionized the
Movie Industry.
o1997: Next was sold to Apple & Jobs became the CEO of Apple Inc.
o2001: Introduced the ipod and thereby revolutionized the Music Industry
o2007: Introduced 3G iphone, first of its kind in the market and thereby
revolutionized the cell-phone market.

4. Personality Traits
0Impatient:
Right from the childhood, Jobs was very
impatient and believed in
experimentation. He always felt that he had a
short time to live and had to accomplish a
lot of things in that period.
0Visionary:
Right from his early days of building blue
boxes while in school, he wanted to create
a dent in the universe and impact the lives of
the whole world. He was indeed successful
in that later as he transformed the computer
industry, the movie industry, the music
industry and then the cell-phone industry.

5. Personality Traits
0Dreamer:
He had a dream to make computers a personalized
product which everyone in the world would use. And he
received an unparalleled response for the same from the
world as a market place.
0Artist:
He possessed a great urge for theatrics. Any new
product launch would always happen in a
magnificently scripted theatric way in which Jobs
would suddenly appear and do something that would
make the crowd go berserk.
0Innovator:
Right from the childhood days, Jobs was very much
creative, innovative and kept experimenting with
electronics. He made these experiments fun even for people
around him.

6. Personality Traits
0Passionate & Enthusiastic:
Steve Jobs always micro-managed
things never leaving control. His passion
and enthusiasm were direct motivators
for everyone around him.
0Powerful:
He had amazing ways with people.
He believed in and created a reality
distortion field around him. A lot of his
colleagues have confirmed that things
which were impossible otherwise were
possible with Jobs around. He made
everything seem so easy and simple.
Reality Distortion Field

7. Personality Traits
0Bi-Polarity:
For Jobs, there were only two kind of things and people, either the worst
or the best. No third dimension existed for him. He would reprimand people
claiming the product they presented as shit if there was even a minor scope of
improvement left in it.
0Focus & Determination:
He was focused in whatever he did. He would be working for days
together without even worrying about self-cleaning. He would be restless till he
achieved what he planned.
0A desire & yearning for the best:
Jobs always wanted nothing but the best. He was not someone who would
compromise even with one small carpet lying untidy in the office or home. He
would rather not buy furniture for his home than to compromise by getting
mediocre furniture. He also had a very good eye for detailing and designing.

8. Personality Traits
0Control:
Jobs was a control freak. He needed to have everything best around
him. He could not tolerate mediocre people and mediocre products. If he
organized a party, he would design each drink and the food menu also perfectly.
He would want a completely dirt-free production house and controlled in a
subtle way the working of everyone else around him.
0Loci of Control:
Jobs had an internal Loci of Control. He was self-motivated and self-
driven. He always believed that his personal actions would dictate the outcomes.
0Lack of Emotional aspect:
Jobs lacked empathy towards his employees and hence came across as
a rude person to a lot of people. He was emotional in his own life and hunted
down his real parents also in the later years but he never let this emotions
overpower his work and business.

9. The Big 5 Model of Personality
Dimensions
0Extroversion:
Jobs was an extrovert, he would say anything he wished to anyone at
any time. However, he was generally not much sociable.
0Agreeableness:
Jobs was never agreeable. He would not agree with your ways if they
don’t match with his. Rather he would just drive you to agree with his ideas by
his smart and charismatic ways.
0Conscientiousness:
Jobs was responsible and dependable at times. But then sometimes, he
was completely unreasonable and wanted to do something only because it
would thrill him.

10. The Big 5 Model of Personality
Dimensions
0Emotional Stability:
Jobs was never emotionally involved while at work and that
made him emotionally stable. He was always self-confident and
positive about things and approach.
0Openness to Experience:
Jobs was always curios and had an artist within him which led
him to change the whole arts and entertainment industry. His
openness to experience also took him to India for soul-searching
where he realized his dream. He would also experiment with
consciousness time to time and followed Zen Buddhism, had a ‘Guru’
in India and strictly followed Vegan Diet time to time.

11. Proactive Personality
0Jobs always identified opportunities in different industries which no one else
envisioned.
0After seeing these opportunities, he did not sit back but achieved what most
people claimed to be impossible back then. He is someone who takes action
and persevered to attain his dream.
0He created a positive environment around him and never waited to be told
what to do, rather he was the one who constantly told people what to do.
0He had an internal locus of control as described earlier. All these traits make
him more of a Proactive Personality than a Type A Personality. However, he
did possess the impatience that is a typical attribute of the Type A Personality.

12. Quotes reflecting personality &
leadership
0This quotation reflects
his needs for self-
actualization. He also
had a nonconformist
hippie side of himself
which complemented
very well with his
business acumen and
engineering interests.

13. Quotes reflecting personality &
leadership
0This was a statement he
made to John Sculley, the
then CEO of Pepsi who
refused Jobs’ offer to be
the CEO of Apple. Sculley
has confirmed that this
was one final statement
by Jobs which left him
pondering and led him to
join Apple as the CEO.

14. Quotes reflecting personality &
leadership
0Jobs would strictly not tolerate
anyone below par in his team. He
had a theory that he had to have
all A Players in his team because
A Players cannot work with B
Players and the B Players just ruin
the work culture. Non-confident
employees were scared of even
seeing him as they had an
impression that an elevator ride
with him might cost them their
job. He used to fire people out of
impulses in his yearning for
quality.

15. Quotes reflecting personality &
leadership
0Jobs would always put
product before profit.
He always made sure
that the product that
he offered to the
world would be not
like any other and
would be a work of
pure innovation. He
nurtured an
unprecedented
culture of innovation
at Apple.

16. Quotes reflecting personality &
leadership
0This quotation
personifies Jobs’
focus and
simplification of
things in life.
Making the correct
use of the focus that
you have and
rejecting the
thousand other
things for the one
you really want to
do is very
important.

17. Quotes reflecting personality &
leadership
0Steve Jobs was a
visionary leader and
always ahead of time.
Along with himself, he
drew the whole world
towards technological
advancement. He did
not anticipate what the
customers would want,
he rather built
something completely
new that the customers
could never expect and
then create a whole
market for the same.
“You can't just ask customers what they want
and then try to give that to them. By the time
you get it built, they'll want something new”
– Steve Jobs

18. Leadership Style Analysis
0Direct Leadership:
Steve Jobs was more of a direct leader who himself
had control and influence over all the employees. Even for
the outside world, Jobs was the only face of Apple.
0Autocratic:
His urge for control resulted in an autocratic way of
decision making most of the times. He had a flat and
centralized organizational structure whenever he was
involved in the game.

19. Leadership Style Analysis
0Internal Locus of Leadership:
The leader, the followers and the situation was all
driven by Steve Jobs and his inner drive for innovation and
technology.
0Intra-Individual Process:
The whole company Apple was guided by the processes
occurring within one charismatic individual who could
smartly drive everyone around him in his own ways.

20. Leadership Style Analysis
0Personalized Power Orientation:
The first thing Jobs would do anywhere or with anyone is to
assume to power and control of the situation or discussion.
0Technical & Conceptualizing Skills:
Jobs was brilliant in technical aspects where he accepted nothing
but the best and also had remarkable conceptualizing skills. It was
him who conceptualized to change the whole music scene of the
world where a computer could play and perform live music instead
of people. Musicians including his own girlfriend believed this was
not possible and this actually turned out to be true with the whole
electro music revolution.

21. Leadership Style Analysis
0Weak inter-personal skills:
He was not particularly good with people around him in office. He
would reprimand anyone impulsively without even thinking. He would claim
someone’s hard work as stuidity. But the people around him had come to know
the bi-polarity that exists for him according to which things are either the best
or the worst.
0Technical & Conceptualizing Skills:
Jobs was brilliant in technical aspects where he accepted nothing but the best and
also had remarkable conceptualizing skills. It was him who conceptualized to
change the whole music scene of the world where a computer could play and
perform live music instead of people. Musicians including his own girlfriend
believed this was not possible and this actually turned out to be true with the
whole electro music revolution.

22. Task Motivated Leader
0Relationships and people did not inspire Jobs much. He was
more of a task motivated leader who achieved self-esteem by
completing work.
0He always focused on task more than people and was generally
very harsh to failing or even slightly lower than the best
category of employees.
0He thoroughly enjoyed detailing in developing his products
and everything else and considered competence as the only
major trait in a person.

23. House’s Path Goal Theory
0Directive Leader:
The most important thing for Jobs was the work. That
would be his sole focus and point of consideration until
accomplished.
0Achievement Oriented:
He would always set challenging goals for himself and his
employees. He once asked his team when would be their new
computer ready, they replied ‘1 year’. Impulsively, using his
reality distortion field, he ended the discussion saying that they
would launch it within 6 months.

24. Charismatic Leadership
0Jobs’ personality and behavior made him a heroic leader
with extraordinary capabilities. Just by his charisma, he
could make people do whatever he wished to.
0He had a vision for each initiative he started and also
took a lot of risk. After his ouster from Apple, he risked
all his Apple-earned-money into establishing Next
Computers. He further invested a great deal in Pixar too.

25. Charismatic Leadership
0Jobs exhibited a behavior which was extra-ordinary,
beyond normalcy. He acted as per his impulses in a
totally unconventional way. This makes it difficult for us
lot of times to categorize him with a particular
leadership attribute.
0Jobs was always confident about his proposals and even
in crisis situations. He saw a lot of failures but never
gave up and rose to power again and again. He got all
that he wanted finally.

26. Transformational Leadership
0Along with being a charismatic leader, Jobs was also a
transformation leader. He facilitated a complete transformation
within the company, then within the industry and eventually
transformed the whole world.
0The vision and core values that he possessed were very clear and he
aligned the efforts of everyone towards that direction for a unified
purpose.
0He not only created but also successfully sustained the culture of
innovation that maximized the human potential and thereby the
organizational capabilities.

27. Transformational Leadership
0Jobs’ enthusiasm was contagious, people around him have
reported. His conviction about his own ideas was remarkable.
That brought along great deal of energy and enthusiasm within
himself and the people around him.
0He could very well guide the people around him to excellence.
He had this innate capability and always expected above par
performance from all his employees also. He showed confidence
in employees who were capable of this and supported them also
like he supported to fame the first director of Pixar who went to
win an Oscar for his first film with the help of Steve Jobs.

28. Transformational Leadership
0Individualized Consideration:
This was absent in Steve Jobs. Generally when at
work, his focus used to be the excellence in the same and
not to the needs and well-being of the employees. This
aspect was missing. But the people who were heroes in his
eyes did get their due respect time to time.
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s

29. Transformational Leadership
0Intellectual Stimulation:
All his employees were conditioned to be
innovative and creative. Jobs gave them bigger challenges
always and made sure they are all time stimulated with
some or the other innovative idea or execution. This
transformed the whole organization which has the roots of
innovation and excellence.
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s

30. Transformational Leadership
0Inspirational Motivation:
Jobs was perhaps the best motivator for almost
everyone who worked closely with him. He articulated his
vision down the hierarchy lane very strongly. He showed
dreams to people and made them achieve them too. This
could be very well exemplified by the quote to John Sculley
presented in the earlier slides.
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s

31. Transformational Leadership
0Idealized Influence:
A lot of people around him idealized Jobs and more
& more people have started adhering to his leadership
style & preaching specially after his death. His smartness,
tendency to make impulsive decisions and hard work
earned him great respect from his employees.
Analysis of the 4 ‘I’s

32. Leadership Limitations
0Contorl & Obsession:
Steve Jobs sometimes would become too obsessed with
control and at one point of time had more than 100 direct
reportees. The control aspect could be seen in his products as well.
The Macintosh system could only be opened by Mac Engineers
and there was no slot for adding anything random that might
affect the best performance of the system.
0Weak at Human Aspect:
Jobs never gave the field of HR its due respect. That was
never his focus while he designed the organizational strategies.

33. Leadership Limitations
0Outspoken:
Steve Jobs was so outspoken at times that he would start
publicly abusing the people he doesn’t like. His bold and passionate
oratory inspired people and at the same time instilled fear within
them too. He exhibited stormy behavior very often.

0Tantrums:
Jobs threw maniacal tantrums at times by firing an
employee who could not answer his one simple personal question or
by disrupting everyone else’s work so as to realize his own vision.
These cannot rightly be termed as limitations as somehow it is this shrewdness in
the character combined with the charisma that drove Jobs and Apple to such an
unprecedented success. New leadership theories and approaches are being
developed by the modern day world based on his approach towards leadership.

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35. Bibliography
0Butcher, Lee (1987). Accidental Millionaire: The rise and fall of
Steve Jobs at Apple. Paragon House. ISBN 978-0-913729-79-3.
0Caddes, Carolyn (1986). Portraits of Success: Impressions of Silicon
Valley Pioneers. Tioga Publishing Co. ISBN 0-935382-56-9.
0Cringely, Robert X. (1996). Accidental Empires.
HarperBusiness. ISBN 0-88730-855-4.
0Denning, Peter J.; Frenkel, Karen A. (1989). "A conversation with
Steve Jobs". Communications of the ACM 32 (4): 436–433. 
0Deutschman, Alan (2001). The Second Coming of Steve Jobs.
Broadway. ISBN 0-7679-0433-8.

36. THANK YOU
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