Steve Jobs Traits, Leadership Style and Motivation 979 Words Traits Characteristics

Steve Jobs is capable in influencing his people for strong desire in work. He was a micro manager and possesses a high degree of passion for his mission, innovation, work and even the smallest of items. He shares his passion with his staff, provides the vision, guides the development and makes many key decisions. Most of the collaborators had been yelled by him but they appreciate his passion of his, especially when they see the effect of his work. (Simon and Young 2005), remarked Steve captured the spirit of his groups and dictates that though working long hours at work, they shared one common attribute, that is, to build an amazing computers that shocked the world. The effort that they put in is more than the amount they earn and pursuing their career path. (Simon & Young (2005) Steve Jobs is a task-oriented person who tends to focus more on his task and organization performance. He creates for himself a reputation of a terror inspiring taskmaster who screams at workers and randomly fired those unlucky ones. He is an autocrat who had remade from a big, dysfunctional corporation into tight, disciplined ship that execute on his demanding product schedules. (Leander Kahney, 2008) He also possesses strong confidence of his capability and has strong belief in his way of controlling (Andrew DuBrin, Peter Miller, Carol Dalglish, 2006). He is lacked of emotional intelligence and does not listen to peoples feelings, what he only listen is their ideas. Their ideas must be challenging as Steve will force the people to stick up with the ideas and often raised their blood pressure to test if they know the facts and have strong arguments. (Leander Kahney, 2008)

Transformational Leadership Style

Transformational leaders devote significant energy to leading and respect the gifts and abilities of their workers by employing a visionary and creative style that inspire employees to broaden their interest in their work and to be innovative and creative. He used a transformational leadership style to create a vision for the Macintosh and challenged his employees to reach nearly impossible goals. (Scott, 2003) Steve needed vindication and he openly ached to show his vision of the future of computing was correct that Apples board was wrong for pushing him aside, that he could change the world again. (Alan Deutschman, 2000) He wants to prove Apples board that his vision of the future computing was correct. (Alan Deutschman, 2000) He visualised that the people have to think beyond now and the future, so they will be able to see for themselves the prospect and possible potential of the particular vision. In this case, then they will be more willing to accept responsibility for what they have been trying to cook up (John Baldoni, 2006). He required his people to focus on what they are good at. In order to save the company, he deemed them to focus keenly on their best potential products. (Leander Kahney, 2008) Jobs convince the Mac Team that they were in a unique position to change the face of computing, and privilege to be designing such a groundbreaking product steve brain Jobs gave freedom for the people to be creative and shield them from bureaucracy at Apple. There are people who tried to shutdown the Mac project as they deemed is unimportant distraction. Those who are doing the work are the moving force for Macintosh. Hence, in order for Jobs to protect the project, he hired those insanely great employees and fired the bozos. inside steve brain

Motivation & Teamwork

According to (Simon & Young (2005), the Macintosh team of nearly a hundred strong showed up for the second retreat in late September was a sharing of information, to bring everyone up to date on how each aspect of the development was proceeding and was also design to keep the ardor at a fever pitch. The slogan Steve wrote on the blackboard this time accurately captured the sprit of the group: lets be pirates. It brought a roar of approval. The he wrote another line that goaded the group, yet fired up their dedication: Working 90 hours a week and Loving it! he could probably have made the slaves building the pyramids or the rowers in a Roma gallery thrilled to be whipped, as a reminder that they were taking part in a noble effort. >> We believed that Jobs uses the McGregor X and Y theory, not only to manage his staff but also to motivate the staff and the team as a whole as well. Theory X, which is a more traditional approach, assumes that workers are lazy, lack of ambition, do not like responsibilities, self-centred, indifferent to organisational objectives, resistant to changes and are gullible (McGregor 2000, p. 7). These workers have to be driven and require management to intervene with carrot and stick management. Jobs used carrot and stick, and managed to retain and motivate lots of top-shelf talents. Jobs kept his A team selected designers, programmers and executives. Those who can work with him tend to be loyal (Leander Kahney, 2008) >>> add in a scenario When people tried to shut down the Macintosh project, he fired those that go against the project and hired great employees. (Leander Kahney, 2008) On the contrary, Theory Y assumes that workers have a psychological need to work and will exercise self-control and initiatives when they are committed to a set of objectives. They also want achievement and seek responsibility. (McGregor 2000, p. 7) Ratzlaff, a soft-spoken creative director in Apple, had come out with an exciting design for iMac. No one seems to support his new design until Steve Jobs looked at his design and feel impressed. Jobs complimented Ratzlaff and he felt happy as Jobs is a person who has very high expectation which only few people can manage to give him what he required (Leander Kahney, 2008)

References
Alan Deutschman (2000), The Second Coming of Steve Jobs ,Broadway Books, New York Andrew DuBrin, Peter Miller, Carol Dalglish, 2006, "Leadership,2nd asia-pacific edition", 2nd ed., John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, Australia John Baldoni, 2006,"How great leaders get great results", McGraw-Hill,NY Leander Kahney, 2008, "Inside Steve's Brain", Penguin Group, USA McGregor, D 2000, 'The Human Side of Enterprise', Reflections, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 6-15, viewed 1 September 2008, EBSCOhost Business Source Premier. Scott E Bryant, 2003, The role of transformational and transactional leadership in creating, sharing and exploring organizational knowledge, The Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 2003, Vol. 9, No. 4, PP 32-44 Simon, William L. & Young, Jeffrey S. (2005). iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business. John Wiley & Sons