Organization Profile
Apple Inc. is one of the world’s leading and most successful technology companies due to the products they produce that have received massive reception in their target markets. The company was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak on 1st April 1976, in Los Altos, California, United States of America (Ceil, 2018). The organization majorly deals in designing, manufacturing, and marketing smartphones, tablets, personal computers, wearables, and accessories. Some of the major selling products from the company are the iPhone, the organization’s smartphone, and the MacBook, the company’s personal computer product. Other majorly sought-after accessories and products from the company include iPads, Apple TVs, AirPods, Apple Watch, and HomePods (Ceil, 2018). The organization has also invested significant financial resources to venture into financial service provision through its Apple Pay platform, which has recorded good performance within the market.
The success of the company can greatly be attributed to the main founder of the organization, Steve Jobs, who took the responsibility of ensuring that their vision was effectively implemented. Their main vision was to ensure that the consumers in the technological world changed how they viewed computers by developing more user-friendly products (Dylla, 2020). Mobilizing the required resources to achieve their plan was the most important step toward the company’s success. The company, under the leadership of Steve Jobs, was able to revolutionize its ideas and plans into a multibillion-dollar investment with markets globally.
Steve Jobs’s leadership style within Apple Inc. can be described to be autocratic, where most of his human resources were individuals who were like mind to him. He was an independent decision-maker who majorly wanted his subjects to follow his lead to enable him to develop a company that is enduring rather than just making a great product for their target markets (Ceil, 2018). Other individuals would describe him as a rough person who majorly wanted things to be done his way. Still, somehow,, the output turned out to be greater than was expected, which resulted in positive performance. With his controlling and rough nature within the company, he portrayed the most significant traits of a perfect executive leader, which include having a clear vision and discipline in resource allocation towards achieving their vision (Ceil, 2018). He also had a great passion for the company and its people, which enabled most workers to develop trust in him as their leader. Steve Jobs’ main role was to act as a leader who most of their employees looked up to. He can be described as a leader who knew what not to do and what was right to do for the company, which majorly saved the organization in the most difficult times.
Steve Jobs required some of the major values from their human resource, include passion, visionary individuals, and trustworthy personnel. Being an innovator, he motivated and encouraged their employees to be innovative and develop more products that would stimulate their growth in the global telecommunication sector (Ceil, 2018). Through his personality, while interacting with their employees, he portrayed to their human resources that they should base their perfectionism on extreme passion, consistency, and intensity to enhance their productivity within the organization. Steve Jobs also believed in focus as an important value for their employees, enabling them to enhance their performance in the market. He encouraged their workers to focus more on the greatness of their products and not the profits. He wanted Apple Inc. to be branded as the best in the market for producing the best products.
Employee motivation is among some of the major factors that steered the organization’s great performance in the market. Under the leadership of Steve Jobs, most employees were motivated to give their best through various approaches adopted by the leader (Dylla, 2020). Employee stock ownership within the company was one of the major ways of motivating their workers to be more productive in the organization. Another motivational factor introduced by the leader was the incentives compensation systems where workers were paid additional bonuses on accomplishing a given set goal within the specified time frame. With great success, Apple Inc. has also faced great challenges, mainly venturing into the international markets. Stiff competition from organizations producing similar products has proved to be a major challenge for the company in the international markets (Dylla, 2020). Another major challenge in the international market is the ever-changing global consumer and demand, which puts them at the risk of losing their domination in the telecommunication industry if they do not ensure consistency.
Leadership Traits and Behaviors
Effective leadership greatly depends on an individual’s traits and how they impact others. Various situations within an organization put the leader in a position to portray their traits and behaviors, which may be used to determine how they relate with their subjects (Ceil, 2018). Steve Jobs can be described as a leader who portrayed a wide range of diverse leadership traits and behaviors, which positively impacted his relationship with his employees.
Apple Inc.’s great performance can be attributed to Steve Jobs’s reliable leadership traits and behaviors because he prioritized the company’s interests. This was majorly done by leading and motivating the employees to follow his leads by working as an example to the rest of the team. Steve Jobs’s main leadership traits and behavior were majorly transformational and transactional approaches (Sashkin & Sashkin, 2003). Transformational and transactional leadership behaviors majorly advocate for win-win situations between the organization and its employees. Steve Jobs’ leadership style ensured that all their employees benefited from the organization as the organization grew to its greater levels (Bottomley & Willie Burgess, 2018). This approach helped the organization retain most of its visionary and productive human resources, which led to its success in the market.
Outstanding leadership exists only if a good relationship exists between the leader and those who agree to be led by a given individual. Steve Jobs has portrayed goodwill between himself and his subjects within the organization, which has enabled him to have good working relationships with his employees. Some of the major ways Steve Jobs served as an example to his employees was through personal credibility. Portraying personal credibility to Apple Inc. employees enabled him to win most employees’ trust, allowing him to model the way and set examples. Another significant factor was inspiring a shared vision, which made the employees aware of the organization’s goals and objectives (Kouzes & Posner, 2011, p. 41). Another important aspect that Steve Jobs ensured was challenging the process within their operations (Kouzes & Posner, 2011, p. 41). As a leader, he was responsible for ensuring that their employees challenged their organizational cultures for the company’s benefit (Kouzes & Posner, 2011, p. 41). Another major leadership trait portrayed by Steve Jobs as the Apple Inc. leader is encouraging the employees by recognizing their contributions and celebrating their values.
Uses of Power
Steve Jobs can be described as one of the most powerful executives within an organization because of his leadership style and approach while exercising power over his employees. As the Chief Executive Officer of Apple Inc., he enjoyed legitimate power and utilized the power for the benefit of the company (Dylla, 2020). For example, when he resumed his managerial position in 1997, when the company was producing a line-up of computers and peripherals, he canceled the production of the computers. He directed the employees to focus on producing only four great products. This decision caught the employees by surprise but turned out to be the best decision for the organization and the stakeholders.
Steve Jobs also possessed expertise and power, which he used to build the company to greater levels. He is known as an individual who could think out of the box, enabling the firm to evade various threatening situations. Expertise power equips an individual with skills that enable them to come up with new ideas that would positively impact an organization (Dylla, 2020). For example, Steve Jobs utilized his expertise to educate and motivate their employees to develop various products that greatly impacted the final product consumers.
Steve Jobs also utilized referent power to positively influence his employees. Referent power is also another significant form of power that Steve Jobs enjoyed while at Apple Inc (Dylla, 2020). This is the power that comes as a result of being loved by a great number of individuals, which he used to impact other individuals (Dylla, 2020) positively. For example, most Apple Inc. employees praised Jobs as a selfless individual who interacted with them with a lot of zeal, motivating them to develop suitable products.
Leading Change
As a leader of a multi-billion-dollar company, Steve Jobs had it in mind that change was a factor that was inevitable because of the ever-changing target market dynamics. To avoid the negative impacts of losses to the company, he was responsible for calling all the relevant shots that would steer the company into greater performance (Ceil, 2018). For example, when the organization was about to be declared bankrupt due to losses, Steve Jobs made a bold move to get into a deal with their greatest market competitor Microsoft Inc. in 1997. He also utilized his legitimate power to come up with massive restructuring within the organization, which enabled the company to start recording profits after nine years of recording losses.
Besides leading changes in the company, Steve Jobs has also brought about change outside the organization and in other sectors. For example, the music industry has enjoyed the distribution of music using their products such as iTunes and iPods; the financial sector has enjoyed safe transfer of money by using their platforms such as iPay. High levels of artificial intelligence from the organizations have enabled safer storage of valuable information by utilizing their iCloud storage products (Ceil, 2018). Steve Jobs’ leadership approach within Apple Inc. clearly indicates how leadership is changing in today’s organizations. This is where leaders are required to not only care about the performance of the organizations but also consider the development and well-being of their human resources.
Implications for other Leaders
Some of the major positive leadership skills and behaviors that other leaders can emulate from Steve Jobs’s leadership style include:
Embracing Diversity: Diversity within a working environment is one of the most significant aspects of an organization. Workforce diversity entails involving individuals from different backgrounds and motivating them to put their best foot forward to enhance their productivity.
Treating employees as partners: Implementing approaches and laws that make the employees to be perceived as partners within the organization is a major way of enhancing organizational productivity. This is because most workers will be motivated to be more productive (Dylla, 2020). Other major ways of enhancing employee productivity are proper remunerations and awarding bonuses.
Embrace focus as a significant factor: One of the major aspects portrayed by Steve Jobs’s leadership style towards the success of an organization is the focus. Leaders of any profit-making organization should only focus on producing products that elevate them to favorable financial performances after-sales.
Steve Jobs’ did a praiseworthy job in mobilizing and mentoring a promising group of visionary individuals as Apple Inc.’s employees. Most of the employees working under his leadership were satisfied with his style of leadership, which served as a motivational factor for their performance (Dylla, 2020). Walking away from Apple Inc would demoralize some of the employees, while other will keep up with the great working attitude inspired by their great leader and mentor, Steve Jobs
References
Bottomley, K., & Willie Burgess, S. (2018). Changing generations in today’s workforce: Leadership skills for Millennials. Employment Relations Today.
Ceil, C. (2018). Importance of Leadership for Apple. SSRN Electronic Journal.
Dylla, H. F. (2020). Lessons from Steve Jobs. Scientific Journeys, 37–40.
Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2011). The five practices of exemplary leadership (p. 41). Pfeiffer.
Sashkin, M., & Sashkin, M. G. (2003). Leadership that matters : the critical factors for making a difference in people’s lives and organizations’ success. Berrett-Koehler.