Steve Jobs, one of the biggest businessmen of all time, has made such huge discoveries in the

technological field that it changed the life of people in a drastic way. He was a person that had
great emotional strength and whatever the circumstances be, once he had set his mind to achieve
something, he would never give up on that no matter the consequences. He was also known for
his inhumane behavior towards people, lack of patience, stubborn, controlling and oppressing
nature. No matter his approach of getting things done, he still got successful and built Apple the
way he always wanted. After scrutinizing his character he has shown both the traces of
“transformational leader” as well as “toxic leader”. In this essay we will be actively discussing
about Steve Job’s character, leadership style, and the power and politics that he used within the
company. Firstly transformational and toxic leadership styles will be discussed along with
critical analysis of his character and then finally the power and politics that he used will be
briefly discussed. This essay also mainly focuses on the leadership approach and power/politics
used in his organization.

Among various characters shown by Steve Jobs, he also carried transformational leadership style
up to some extent. Transformational leadership is a great form leadership style which basically
encourages people to work the most unforeseen task for the sole purpose to increase their
motivation and work performance. Even though he treated his employees harshly they would
constantly try to come up with ideas to better themselves in order to be recognized which helped
them to spot their mistakes and incompetence and guided them to grow. This leadership style
immensely motivates its employees to put in the extra effort in order to improve their work past
the call of duty which furthermore helped to increase work productivity as well as creativity
(Nguyen et al., 2017). He was able to create such an influence in the workers that the vision and
goals that he had a strong belief on was carried out by his workers as well. Transformational
leaders always inspire their followers by providing a convincing vision by which the company
will prosper in the future (Longshore and Bass, 1987). He convinced everyone that they were
working very hard in order to change the world for the better which gave them the utmost
responsibility and willpower and thought of him as a charismatic person. One of the
fundamental characters of a transformational leader is to have charisma which describes the
leader’s capability to produce significant competence and power within the company (Barbuto,
2005). The employees at Apple would be very surprised after completing the hard task handed
over by Steve Jobs who expected nothing less than perfection. Transformational leaders have the
ability to motivate their employees in such a way that they would be able to achieve certain
things that they never thought possible (Barbuto, 2005). He was also an outstanding public
speaker. Therefore, by motivating and handing over humongous responsibilities to the staff, and
also by providing great vision, Steve Jobs in a way, exhibited characteristics of a
transformational leader.

Steve Jobs also performed toxic leadership style due to which he was not accepted by a lot of
people. Toxic leadership is a kind of leadership style where the leader will be self centered and
self possessed and would not care about others until they are beneficial to him. Steve Jobs once
confronted that he was working with the best team and others were not much beneficial for him
which created chaos and demotivation in staffs. Due to the toxic leadership the suffering
employees have to face a huge tension around the workplace which can eventually lead to
hopelessness, unnecessary stress, decrease in creativity and will also clarify the actual intention
of the leader towards them (Padilla, Hogan and Kaiser, 2007) . Steve Jobs never even thought the
necessity of seeking and accepting advices given by others as he was a bit paranoid and thought
no one knew better than him. Toxic leaders do not necessarily look for creativity rather they just
hunt down robot like employees who would without questioning execute their ideas, missions
and visions and would be easy to put in command which increased the frustration and decreased
effectiveness of the employees (Schmidt, 2008). He wanted to rule over everyone and
everything that he could witness even the smallest thing such as the food served within the
company. One of the most important character of toxic leader is being uncaring, controlling,
completely disregarding other people’s needs and demands, lacking self control and acting out in
a offensive, corrupt and condemning manner (Armitage, 2015). Steve somewhat had
narcissistic characters as he lacked empathy, fired people unnecessarily and was a self centered
person. Need of frequent attention and praises, possessing arrogance, shifting focus on
themselves, being a bad listener and lacking empathy are a good amount of characters of a
narcissistic personality which is huge part of toxic leadership (Doty et al., 2013). Feeling of
superiority compared to others is the main reason of their dominance towards others. No sense
of guilt is witnessed in these people. Steve Jobs made very unpredictable decisions and
possessed unpredictable behavior due to which things could go very wrong so he’s kind of a bad
influence within the organization. Toxic people are exceptionally motivated from inside, possess
destructive behavior, don’t follow the rules and set a bad example in the organization (Aubrey,
2012). Finally, due to his inhumane behavior towards other employees, controlling behavior,
lack of seeking of advices, and unpredictable behavior he had portrayed the traits of the toxic
leader.

The power and politics that is being used across the organization also determines the success and
stability within the organization. Steve Jobs had a huge portion of power to him and exercised it
as he found it necessary. Among the different types of power, he has used the legitimate power
which is solely based on his beliefs, ideas and views. Moreover, he was extraordinary in his field
of knowledge and no one could beat that. To some extent he was able to influence others solely
based on his skills and knowledge so, he kind of had the expert power around his hands as well.
In his lifetime, the one power that he had misused a lot is the Coercive Power which gives the
authority the freedom to penalize the employees for their mistakes and shortcomings. It had been
reported that he constantly used this power to fire the employees whom he thought weren’t
beneficial for the organization and also for controlling and criticizing the employees. Steve jobs
followed unitarist approach as he single handedly created a common vision which was then
followed by his employees. Unitarist approach doesn’t allow any opposition to the decisions
made by the leader (Smircich and Morgan, 1982) which is the same tactic used by Steve Jobs.
Steve Jobs’ approach to the leadership style and the way he managed his organization can be
called “toxic” because the views and ideologies that he strongly believed didn’t consider or
include the sentiments of the people. I think that an organization cannot be run alone. We need
the help of each and every individual for its proper functioning and not valuing the important
human assets not basically making them work as a robotic slave is what made him toxic. He
cannot be seen as an aspiring leader in terms of managing people and caring about their
sentiments because he failed to do so.

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