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The Tweaker

By Malcolm Gladwell

Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in “Steve Jobs,” Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. “We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’ ”

It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. European washing machines, Jobs discovered, used less detergent and less water than their American counterparts, and were easier on the clothes. But they took twice as long to complete a washing cycle. What should the family do? As Jobs explained, “We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table.”

Steve Jobs, Isaacson’s biography makes clear, was a complicated and exhausting man. “There are parts of his life and personality that are extremely messy, and that’s the truth,” Powell tells Isaacson. “You shouldn’t whitewash it.” Isaacson, to his credit, does not. He talks to everyone in Jobs’s career, meticulously recording conversations and encounters dating back twenty and thirty years. Jobs, we learn, was a bully. “He had the uncanny capacity to know exactly what your weak point is, know what will make you feel small, to make you cringe,” a friend of his tells Isaacson. Jobs gets his girlfriend pregnant, and then denies that the child is his. He parks in handicapped spaces. He screams at subordinates. He cries like a small child when he does not get his way. He gets stopped for driving a hundred miles an hour, honks angrily at the officer for taking too long to write up the ticket, and then resumes his journey at a hundred miles an hour. He sits in a restaurant and sends his food back three times. He arrives at his hotel suite in New York for press interviews and decides, at 10 P.M. , that the piano needs to be repositioned, the strawberries are inadequate, and the flowers are all wrong: he wanted calla lilies. (When his public-relations assistant returns, at midnight, with the right flowers, he tells her that her suit is “disgusting.”) “Machines and robots were painted and repainted as he compulsively revised his color scheme,” Isaacson writes, of the factory Jobs built, after founding NeXT, in the late nineteen-eighties. “The walls were museum white, as they had been at the Macintosh factory, and there were $20,000 black leather chairs and a custom-made staircase. . . . He insisted that the machinery on the 165-foot assembly line be configured to move the circuit boards from right to left as they got built, so that the process would look better to visitors who watched from the viewing gallery.”

Isaacson begins with Jobs’s humble origins in Silicon Valley, the early triumph at Apple, and the humiliating ouster from the firm he created. He then charts the even greater triumphs at Pixar and at a resurgent Apple, when Jobs returns, in the late nineteen-nineties, and our natural expectation is that Jobs will emerge wiser and gentler from his tumultuous journey. He never does. In the hospital at the end of his life, he runs through sixty-seven nurses before he finds three he likes. “At one point, the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated,” Isaacson writes:

Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. . . . He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex.

One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England. Why not France, or Germany? Many reasons have been offered. Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, for instance. It had a good patent system in place. It had relatively high labor costs, which encouraged the search for labor-saving innovations. In an article published earlier this year, however, the economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr focus on a different explanation: the role of Britain’s human-capital advantage—in particular, on a group they call “tweakers.” They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work.

In 1779, Samuel Crompton, a retiring genius from Lancashire, invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanization of cotton manufacture. Yet England’s real advantage was that it had Henry Stones, of Horwich, who added metal rollers to the mule; and James Hargreaves, of Tottington, who figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; and William Kelly, of Glasgow, who worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; and John Kennedy, of Manchester, who adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; and, finally, Richard Roberts, also of Manchester, a master of precision machine tooling—and the tweaker’s tweaker. He created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation. Such men, the economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”

Was Steve Jobs a Samuel Crompton or was he a Richard Roberts? In the eulogies that followed Jobs’s death, last month, he was repeatedly referred to as a large-scale visionary and inventor. But Isaacson’s biography suggests that he was much more of a tweaker. He borrowed the characteristic features of the Macintosh—the mouse and the icons on the screen—from the engineers at Xerox PARC , after his famous visit there, in 1979. The first portable digital music players came out in 1996. Apple introduced the iPod, in 2001, because Jobs looked at the existing music players on the market and concluded that they “truly sucked.” Smart phones started coming out in the nineteen-nineties. Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, more than a decade later, because, Isaacson writes, “he had noticed something odd about the cell phones on the market: They all stank, just like portable music players used to.” The idea for the iPad came from an engineer at Microsoft, who was married to a friend of the Jobs family, and who invited Jobs to his fiftieth-birthday party. As Jobs tells Isaacson:

This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, “Fuck this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be.”

Even within Apple, Jobs was known for taking credit for others’ ideas. Jonathan Ive, the designer behind the iMac, the iPod, and the iPhone, tells Isaacson, “He will go through a process of looking at my ideas and say, ‘That’s no good. That’s not very good. I like that one.’ And later I will be sitting in the audience and he will be talking about it as if it was his idea.”

Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it. After looking at the first commercials for the iPad, he tracked down the copywriter, James Vincent, and told him, “Your commercials suck.”

“Well, what do you want?” Vincent shot back. “You’ve not been able to tell me what you want.” “I don’t know,” Jobs said. “You have to bring me something new. Nothing you’ve shown me is even close.” Vincent argued back and suddenly Jobs went ballistic. “He just started screaming at me,” Vincent recalled. Vincent could be volatile himself, and the volleys escalated. When Vincent shouted, “You’ve got to tell me what you want,” Jobs shot back, “You’ve got to show me some stuff, and I’ll know it when I see it.”

I’ll know it when I see it. That was Jobs’s credo, and until he saw it his perfectionism kept him on edge. He looked at the title bars—the headers that run across the top of windows and documents—that his team of software developers had designed for the original Macintosh and decided he didn’t like them. He forced the developers to do another version, and then another, about twenty iterations in all, insisting on one tiny tweak after another, and when the developers protested that they had better things to do he shouted, “Can you imagine looking at that every day? It’s not just a little thing. It’s something we have to do right.”

The famous Apple “Think Different” campaign came from Jobs’s advertising team at TBWAChiatDay. But it was Jobs who agonized over the slogan until it was right:

They debated the grammatical issue: If “different” was supposed to modify the verb “think,” it should be an adverb, as in “think differently.” But Jobs insisted that he wanted “different” to be used as a noun, as in “think victory” or “think beauty.” Also, it echoed colloquial use, as in “think big.” Jobs later explained, “We discussed whether it was correct before we ran it. It’s grammatical, if you think about what we’re trying to say. It’s not think the same , it’s think different . Think a little different, think a lot different, think different. ‘Think differently’ wouldn’t hit the meaning for me.”

The point of Meisenzahl and Mokyr’s argument is that this sort of tweaking is essential to progress. James Watt invented the modern steam engine, doubling the efficiency of the engines that had come before. But when the tweakers took over the efficiency of the steam engine swiftly quadrupled . Samuel Crompton was responsible for what Meisenzahl and Mokyr call “arguably the most productive invention” of the industrial revolution. But the key moment, in the history of the mule, came a few years later, when there was a strike of cotton workers. The mill owners were looking for a way to replace the workers with unskilled labor, and needed an automatic mule, which did not need to be controlled by the spinner. Who solved the problem? Not Crompton, an unambitious man who regretted only that public interest would not leave him to his seclusion, so that he might “earn undisturbed the fruits of his ingenuity and perseverance.” It was the tweaker’s tweaker, Richard Roberts, who saved the day, producing a prototype, in 1825, and then an even better solution in 1830. Before long, the number of spindles on a typical mule jumped from four hundred to a thousand. The visionary starts with a clean sheet of paper, and re-imagines the world. The tweaker inherits things as they are, and has to push and pull them toward some more nearly perfect solution. That is not a lesser task.

Jobs’s friend Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, had a private jet, and he designed its interior with a great deal of care. One day, Jobs decided that he wanted a private jet, too. He studied what Ellison had done. Then he set about to reproduce his friend’s design in its entirety—the same jet, the same reconfiguration, the same doors between the cabins. Actually, not in its entirety . Ellison’s jet “had a door between cabins with an open button and a close button,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs insisted that his have a single button that toggled. He didn’t like the polished stainless steel of the buttons, so he had them replaced with brushed metal ones.” Having hired Ellison’s designer, “pretty soon he was driving her crazy.” Of course he was. The great accomplishment of Jobs’s life is how effectively he put his idiosyncrasies—his petulance, his narcissism, and his rudeness—in the service of perfection. “I look at his airplane and mine,” Ellison says, “and everything he changed was better.”

The angriest Isaacson ever saw Steve Jobs was when the wave of Android phones appeared, running the operating system developed by Google. Jobs saw the Android handsets, with their touchscreens and their icons, as a copy of the iPhone. He decided to sue. As he tells Isaacson:

Our lawsuit is saying, “Google, you fucking ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.” Grand theft. I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go to thermonuclear war on this. They are scared to death, because they know they are guilty. Outside of Search, Google’s products—Android, Google Docs—are shit.

In the nineteen-eighties, Jobs reacted the same way when Microsoft came out with Windows. It used the same graphical user interface—icons and mouse—as the Macintosh. Jobs was outraged and summoned Gates from Seattle to Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “They met in Jobs’s conference room, where Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him,” Isaacson writes. “Jobs didn’t disappoint his troops. ‘You’re ripping us off!’ he shouted. ‘I trusted you, and now you’re stealing from us!’ ”

Gates looked back at Jobs calmly. Everyone knew where the windows and the icons came from. “Well, Steve,” Gates responded. “I think there’s more than one way of looking at it. I think it’s more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it.”

Jobs was someone who took other people’s ideas and changed them. But he did not like it when the same thing was done to him. In his mind, what he did was special. Jobs persuaded the head of Pepsi-Cola, John Sculley, to join Apple as C.E.O., in 1983, by asking him, “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water, or do you want a chance to change the world?” When Jobs approached Isaacson to write his biography, Isaacson first thought (“half jokingly”) that Jobs had noticed that his two previous books were on Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein, and that he “saw himself as the natural successor in that sequence.” The architecture of Apple software was always closed. Jobs did not want the iPhone and the iPod and the iPad to be opened up and fiddled with, because in his eyes they were perfect. The greatest tweaker of his generation did not care to be tweaked.

Perhaps this is why Bill Gates—of all Jobs’s contemporaries—gave him fits. Gates resisted the romance of perfectionism. Time and again, Isaacson repeatedly asks Jobs about Gates and Jobs cannot resist the gratuitous dig. “Bill is basically unimaginative,” Jobs tells Isaacson, “and has never invented anything, which I think is why he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”

After close to six hundred pages, the reader will recognize this as vintage Jobs: equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional. It’s true that Gates is now more interested in trying to eradicate malaria than in overseeing the next iteration of Word. But this is not evidence of a lack of imagination. Philanthropy on the scale that Gates practices it represents imagination at its grandest. In contrast, Jobs’s vision, brilliant and perfect as it was, was narrow. He was a tweaker to the last, endlessly refining the same territory he had claimed as a young man.

As his life wound down, and cancer claimed his body, his great passion was designing Apple’s new, three-million-square-foot headquarters, in Cupertino. Jobs threw himself into the details. “Over and over he would come up with new concepts, sometimes entirely new shapes, and make them restart and provide more alternatives,” Isaacson writes. He was obsessed with glass, expanding on what he learned from the big panes in the Apple retail stores. “There would not be a straight piece of glass in the building,” Isaacson writes. “All would be curved and seamlessly joined. . . . The planned center courtyard was eight hundred feet across (more than three typical city blocks, or almost the length of three football fields), and he showed it to me with overlays indicating how it could surround St. Peter’s Square in Rome.” The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He “had never liked the idea of people being able to open things. ‘That would just allow people to screw things up.’ ” ♦

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By Jill Lepore

By Malcolm Ross

By Adam Iscoe

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Biography Online

Steve Jobs Biography

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, 1955, to two university students Joanne Schieble and Syrian-born John Jandali. They were both unmarried at the time, and Steven was given up for adoption.

Steven was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, whom he always considered to be his real parents. Steven’s father, Paul, encouraged him to experiment with electronics in their garage. This led to a lifelong interest in electronics and design.

Jobs attended a local school in California and later enrolled at Reed College, Portland, Oregon. His education was characterised by excellent test results and potential. But, he struggled with formal education and his teachers reported he was a handful to teach.

At Reed College, he attended a calligraphy course which fascinated him. He later said this course was instrumental in Apple’s multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts.

Steve Jobs in India

In 1974, Jobs travelled with Daniel Kottke to India in search of spiritual enlightenment. They travelled to the Ashram of Neem Karoli Baba in Kainchi. During his several months in India, he became aware of Buddhist and Eastern spiritual philosophy. At this time, he also experimented with psychedelic drugs; he later commented that these counter-culture experiences were instrumental in giving him a wider perspective on life and business.

“Bill Gates‘d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.” – Steve Jobs, The New York Times, Creating Jobs, 1997

Job’s first real computer job came working for Atari computers. During his time at Atari, Jobs came to know Steve Wozniak well. Jobs greatly admired this computer technician, whom he had first met in 1971.

Steve Jobs and Apple

In 1976, Wozniak invented the first Apple I computer. Jobs, Wozniak and Ronald Wayne then set up Apple computers. In the very beginning, Apple computers were sold from Jobs parents’ garage.

Over the next few years, Apple computers expanded rapidly as the market for home computers began to become increasingly significant.

In 1984, Jobs designed the first Macintosh. It was the first commercially successful home computer to use a graphical user interface (based on Xerox Parc’s mouse driver interface.) This was an important milestone in home computing and the principle has become key in later home computers.

Despite the many innovative successes of Jobs at Apple, there was increased friction between Jobs and other workers at Apple. In 1985, removed from his managerial duties, Jobs resigned and left Apple. He later looked back on this incident and said that getting fired from Apple was one of the best things that happened to him – it helped him regain a sense of innovation and freedom, he couldn’t find work in a large company.

Life After Apple

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Photo Joi Ito

On leaving Apple, Jobs founded NeXT computers. This was never particularly successful, failing to gain mass sales. However, in the 1990s, NeXT software was used as a framework in WebObjects used in Apple Store and iTunes store. In 1996, Apple bought NeXT for $429 million.

Much more successful was Job’s foray into Pixar – a computer graphic film production company. Disney contracted Pixar to create films such as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo. These animation movies were highly successful and profitable – giving Jobs respect and success.

In 1996, the purchase of NeXT brought Jobs back to Apple. He was given the post of chief executive. At the time, Apple had fallen way behind rivals such as Microsoft, and Apple was struggling to even make a profit.

Return to Apple

Photo: Matt Buchanan

Jobs launched Apple in a new direction. With a certain degree of ruthlessness, some projects were summarily ended. Instead, Jobs promoted the development of a new wave of products which focused on accessibility, appealing design and innovate features.

The iPod was a revolutionary product in that it built on existing portable music devices and set the standard for portable digital music. In 2008, iTunes became the second biggest music retailer in the US, with over six billion song downloads and over 200 million iPods sold.

In 2007, Apple successfully entered the mobile phone market, with the iPhone. This used features of the iPod to offer a multi-functional and touchscreen device to become one of the best-selling electronic products. In 2010, he introduced the iPad – a revolutionary new style of tablet computers.

The design philosophy of Steve Jobs was to start with a fresh slate and imagine a new product that people would want to use. This contrasted with the alternative approach of trying to adapt current models to consumer feedback and focus groups. Job’s explains his philosophy of innovative design.

“But in the end, for something this complicated, it’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”

– Steve Jobs, BusinessWeek (25 May 1998)

Apple has been rated No.1 in America’s most admired companies. Jobs management has been described as inspirational, although c-workers also state, Jobs could be a hard taskmaster and was temperamental. NeXT Cofounder Dan’l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, “The highs were unbelievable … But the lows were unimaginable.”

“My job is not to be easy on people. My jobs is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.” – All About Steve Jobs [link]

Under Jobs, Apple managed to overtake Microsoft regarding share capitalization. Apple also gained a pre-eminent reputation for the development and introduction of groundbreaking technology. Interview in 2007, Jobs said:

“There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.”

Despite, growing ill-health, Jobs continued working at Apple until August 2011, when he resigned.

“I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money.”

– Steve Jobs

Jobs earned only $1million as CEO of Apple. But, share options from Apple and Disney gave him an estimated fortune of $8.3billion.

Personal life

In 1991, he married Laurene Powell, together they had three children and lived in Palo Alto, California.

In 2003, he was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. Over the next few years, Jobs struggled with health issues and was often forced to delegate the running of Apple to Tim Cook. In 2009, he underwent a liver transplant, but two years later serious health problems returned. He worked intermittently at Apple until August 2011, where he finally retired to concentrate on his deteriorating health. He died as a result of complications from his pancreatic cancer, suffering cardiac arrest on 5 October 2011 in Palo Alto, California.

In addition to his earlier interest in Eastern religions, Jobs expressed sentiments of agnosticism.

“ Sometimes I believe in God, sometimes I don’t. I think it’s 50-50 maybe. But ever since I’ve had cancer, I’ve been thinking about it more. And I find myself believing a bit more. I kind of – maybe it’s ’cause I want to believe in an afterlife. That when you die, it doesn’t just all disappear.”

Quote in Biography by Walter Isaacson.

Steve Jobs is buried in an unmarked grave at Alta Mesa Memorial Park, a nonsectarian cemetery in Palo Alto.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of Steve Jobs”, Oxford, UK. www.biographyonline.net. Published 25th Feb. 2012. Last updated 11th March 2019.

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography

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This is beautiful. He’s one of my role models. RIP Jobs

• January 20, 2019 7:27 AM

This is very inspirational to all of us in the world today. He made the impossible the possible, he will always be remembered for his great work done. Congrats Steve you are an inspiration!

• January 16, 2019 5:29 PM

He made life easier for us all, nothing would be the way it is today without him.

• December 19, 2018 2:19 PM

Steve job amazing man

• October 27, 2018 7:01 AM
• By Rambharat

I agree 100%.

• December 05, 2018 9:13 PM
• By Roman Lopez

Very nice biography

• September 04, 2018 12:47 PM

Steve jobs! His lesson reminds alot,but Steve went to school ,through colleges he attained ajob that has resulted him into many champions in business and other s.now how can someone has no such gualification also leave such great impact.

• December 05, 2017 1:35 AM
• By Natanyakhu moses

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Author Interviews

Jobs' biography: thoughts on life, death and apple.

Walter Isaacson's biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs was published Monday, less than three weeks after Job's death on Oct. 5.

When Steve Jobs was 6 years old, his young next door neighbor found out he was adopted. "That means your parents abandoned you and didn't want you," she told him.

Jobs ran into his home, where his adoptive parents reassured him that he was theirs and that they wanted him.

"[They said] 'You were special, we chose you out, you were chosen," says biographer Walter Isaacson. "And that helped give [Jobs] a sense of being special. ... For Steve Jobs, he felt throughout his life that he was on a journey — and he often said, 'The journey was the reward.' But that journey involved resolving conflicts about ... his role in this world: why he was here and what it was all about."

When Jobs died on Oct. 5 from complications of pancreatic cancer, many people felt a sense of personal loss for the Apple co-founder and former CEO. Jobs played a key role in the creation of the Macintosh, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, the iPad — innovative devices and technologies that people have integrated into their daily lives.

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Jobs detailed how he created those products — and how he rose through the world of Silicon Valley, competed with Google and Microsoft, and helped transform popular culture — in a series of extended interviews with Isaacson, the president of The Aspen Institute and the author of biographies of Albert Einstein and Benjamin Franklin. The two men met more than 40 times throughout 2009 and 2010, often in Jobs' living room. Isaacson also conducted more than 100 interviews with Jobs' colleagues, relatives, friends and adversaries.

His biography tells the story of how Jobs revolutionized the personal computer. It also tells Jobs' personal story — from his childhood growing up in Mountain View, Calif., to his lifelong interest in Zen Buddhism to his relationship with family and friends.

In his last meetings with Isaacson, Jobs shifted the conversation to his thoughts regarding religion and death.

"I remember sitting in the back garden on a sunny day [on a day when] he was feeling bad, and he talked about whether or not he believed in an afterlife," Isaacson tells Fresh Air 's Terry Gross. "He said, 'Sometimes I'm 50-50 on whether there's a God. It's the great mystery we never quite know. But I like to believe there's an afterlife. I like to believe the accumulated wisdom doesn't just disappear when you die, but somehow it endures."

Jobs paused for a second, remembers Isaacson.

"And then he says, 'But maybe it's just like an on/off switch and click — and you're gone.' And then he paused for another second and he smiled and said, 'Maybe that's why I didn't like putting on/off switches on Apple devices.' "

'The Depth Of The Simplicity'

Jobs' attention to detail on his creations was unrivaled, says Isaacson. Though he was a technologist and a businessman, he was also an artist and designer.

"[He] connected art with technology," explains Isaacson. "[In his products,] he obsessed over the color of the screws, over the finish of the screws — even the screws you couldn't see." Even with the original Macintosh, he made sure that the circuit board's chips were lined up properly and looked good. He made them go back and redo the circuit board. He made them find the right color, find the right curves on the screw. Even the curves on the machine — he wanted it to feel friendly.

That obsessiveness occasionally drove his Apple co-workers crazy — but it also made them fiercely loyal, says Isaacson.

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"It's one of the dichotomies about Jobs: He could be demanding and tough and irate. On the other hand, he got all A-players and they became fanatically loyal to him," says Isaacson. "Why? They realized they were producing, with other A-players, truly great products for an artist who was a perfectionist — and wasn't always the kindest person when they failed — but he was rallying them to do great stuff."

He relays one story about Jobs that shows, he says, how much he was able to connect great ideas and innovations together. In the early 1980s, Jobs visited Xerox PARC, a research company in Palo Alto that had invented the laser printer, object-oriented programming and the Ethernet. Jobs noticed that the computers running at PARC all featured graphics on their desktops that allowed users to click icons and folders. This was new at the time: Most computers used text prompts and a text interface.

"Steve Jobs made an arrangement with Xerox and he took that concept [of the graphical user interface] and he improved it a hundred-fold," says Isaacson. "He made it so you could drag and drop some of the folders; he invented the pull-down menus. ... So what he was able to do was to take a conception and turn it into a reality."

That's where Jobs' genius was, Isaacson says. Jobs insisted that the software and hardware on Apple products needed to be fully integrated for the best user experience. It was not a great business model at first.

"Microsoft, which licensed itself promiscuously to all sorts of manufacturers, ends up with 90 to 95 percent all the operating system market by the beginning of 2000," says Isaacson. "But in the long run, the end-to-end integration system works very well for Apple and for Steve Jobs. Because it allows him to create devices [like the iPod and iPad] that just work beautifully with the machines."

Isaacson says working with Jobs gave him an additional insight into the design of Jobs' products.

"I see the depth of the simplicity," he says. "[I appreciate] the intuitive nature of the design, and how he would repeatedly sit there with his design engineers and his user-interface software people, and say, 'No, no no, I want to make it simpler.' I also appreciate the beauty of the parts unseen. His father taught him that the back of a fence or the back of a chest of drawers should be as beautiful as the front because [he] would know the craftsmanship that went into it. So somehow, it comes through — the depth of the beauty of the design."

Jobs was a perfectionist with a famously mercurial temperament. He was an artist and a visionary who "could be demanding and tough and irate," says Isaacson.

Interview Highlights

On what Jobs thought of the Microsoft operating system

Isaacson: "When it first came out — I can't use the words on the air — but [Jobs thought it was] clunky and not beautiful and not aesthetic. But as always is the case with Microsoft, it improves. And eventually Microsoft made a graphical operating system — Windows — and each new version got better until it was a dominating operating system."

On the rivalry between Jobs and Bill Gates

Hear Steve Jobs On Fresh Air

Listen to steve jobs' 1996 conversation with terry gross.

Isaacson: "There are all sorts of lawsuits where Apple is trying to sue Microsoft for Windows, for trying to steal the look and feel. Apple loses most of the suits but they drag on and there's even a government investigation. By the time Steve Jobs comes back to Apple in 1997, the relationship is horrible. And when we say that Jobs and Gates had a rivalry, we also have to realize they had a collaboration and a partnership. It was typical of the digital age — both rivalry and partnership."

On the relationship between Jobs and Google

Isaacson: "I think there was an unnerving historic resonance for what had happened a couple of decades earlier [with Microsoft]. Suddenly you have Google taking the operating system of the iPhone and mobile devices and all of the touch-screen technologies and building upon it, and making it an open technology that various device makers could use. ... Steve Jobs felt very possessive about all of the look, the feel, the swipes, the multitouch gestures that you use — and was driven to absolute distraction when Android's operating system, developed by Google and used by hardware manufacturers, started doing the exact same thing. ... He was furious but that probably understates his feeling. He was really furious and he let Eric Schmidt, who was then the CEO of Google, know it."

Walter Isaacson is president and CEO of The Aspen Institute. His other books include Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin : An American Life , and Kissinger: A Biography .

More With Walter Isaacson

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On Jobs' adoptive parents

Isaacson: "When Steve got placed with [parents who were not college graduates], his biological mother initially balked at first but ... the Jobs family made a pledge that they would start a college fund and make sure that Steve went to college."

On approaching Isaacson to write his biography

Isaacson: "It was 2004 and he had broached the subject of doing a biography of him and I thought, 'Well, this guy's in the midst of an up-and-down career and he has maybe 20 years to go, so I said to him, 'I'd love to do a biography of you but let's wait 20 or so years until you retire.' Then off and on after 2004, we would be in touch. ...

"I finally talked to his wife, who was very good at understanding his legacy, and she said, 'If you're going to do a book on Steve, you can't just keep saying, 'I'll do it in 20 years or so.' You really ought to do it now.' This was 2009. Steve Jobs, that year, had had a liver transplant and I realized how sick he was. ... And so, that was when I realized that this was a very fascinating tale and this guy may or may not make it. I thought he was going to live much longer. But at the very least, he was facing the prospect of his mortality so it was time for him to be reflective and do a book."

On his final meeting with Jobs

Isaacson: "He was pretty sick. He was confined to the house. And he said to me, at the end of our long conversation, 'There will be things in this book I don't like, right?' And I said, 'Yes.' Partly because you can interview people right after a meeting they've had with Steve Jobs [and] you interview five people and get five different stories about what happened. ... People have different perceptions of who he is. ...

"He said, 'I'll make you this promise. I'm not going to read the book until next year, until after it comes out.' And it made me feel a grand emotion, of 'Oh! That's great. Steve is going to be alive for another year.' Because when you're around him, the power of his thinking really grabs you. I remember leaving his house and thinking, 'Oh, I'm so relieved. He'll be alive in a year. He just told me so.' Logically, I should have said, 'He doesn't know what ups and downs he's going to have with his health.' But I think that he always felt some miracle would come along because all of his life, miracles had come along."

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Steve Jobs, Essay Example

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Among all business leaders in recent times, Steve Jobs is arguably the best example of the fact that perseverance commands success. Steve Jobs was considered a difficult boss at Apple before he was ousted but when he returned, there was little change in his leadership style. This demonstrates that Jobs always remained true to himself whether others approved of his leadership style or not. Jobs might not have been a likeable person on a personal level but he was authentic.

Even though we often hear about the virtues of democratic leadership style as it motivates employees and improves communication between leaders and subordinates, Jobs ruled in an autocratic manner. No wonder, Fortune magazine called him one of the leading egomaniacs in the Silicon Valley (Williams, 2012). When Jobs started his second term at Apple, he was not happy with one of the shipping company. He asked them to be faster with delivery but they refused since their service was already in accordance with the agreed upon terms. He directed his manager to break the contract despite manager’s objection that it would lead to costly lawsuit which did happen eventually (Austen, 2012). Author Andrew Keen wrote in his book The Cult of the Amateur that there is not an ounce of democracy at Apple and without Jobs’ authoritarian leadership, Apple would be just another Silicon Valley outfit (Chaudhuri, 2012). Jobs would be involved in all the details and hired like-minded people (Branson, 2011). But he still drew admiration because he personally demonstrated what he said. He didn’t only preach innovation but practiced it himself.

Steve Jobs also subscribed to Herzberg’s ‘Theory X’ according to which workers are lazy and need guidance. This should not imply that Apple’s employees were lazy and incapable but only that Jobs’ approach reflected his pursuit for perfection. Jobs often reiterated that Apple’s mission was to build the best products in the industries it competes in. This is he micromanaged his employees and no product left the company’s door without his approval.

Steve Jobs was also a transformational leader. When he re-joined the company, Apple was waiting to join the list of extinct companies (Chakrabortty, 2011). Jobs didn’t only save the company but also made it into one of the most admired companies, with a loyal customer base that most other companies only dream of. Jobs’ subordinates believed in him because they knew he was passionate about the company and the products it delivered to the market. They also witnessed Jobs’ obsession with quality and, thus, became motivated themselves to deliver the best products to consumers.

Steve Jobs was not afraid to think outside the box and he encouraged his subordinates to do the same. In fact, the company’s original motto was “Think Different”. Steve Jobs was not only transformational but also visionary. Effective leaders scan the external environment to look for emerging trends but Jobs told the consumers what the trends should be (Verganti, 2011). He singlehandedly redefined several industries including smart phones, portable music players, and tablet computing.

Steve Jobs might not have been great at human relationships but he did believe in his people and pushed them to do their best. An effective leader understands that people are one of the company’s best assets and he invests in them. Despite Jobs’ cold treatment of his subordinates, one would rarely read about Apple’s best employees leaving the company which is a proof of the fact that Jobs’ subordinates also believed in their leader and admired his pursuit of perfection.

Jobs was also a successful leader because he understood the strengths of his company and focused on few things Apple could do really well instead of trying to be everything. Jobs knew that the reputation of the company is built on ‘innovation’ and ‘quality’ and Apple can only defend its reputation by doing few things doing them really well. On annual retreats, Jobs would ask his subordinates to recommend ten products and would eventually shortlist them to only three. When Google’s new CEO Larry Page visited Jobs, Jobs advised him to focus on only five products Google could do really well and get rid of the rest (Isaacson, 2012). This also teaches us that Jobs didn’t overestimate his own or Apple’s capabilities and focused on utilizing limited resources efficiently.

One of the most important qualities of an effective leader is to provide direction to their employees and ensure everyone is working towards the same objectives. Every employee at Apple knew where Jobs was taking the company and they also knew what Jobs expected from them. Apple’s employees were also willing to trust Jobs’ judgments and vision because he had proven himself right time and time again. Jobs didn’t only held legitimate power that came from being the company’s CEO but also expert power over his subordinates.

Steve Jobs might not have the most friendly communication style but his direct communication style did prevent miscommunication. Jobs was known to be blunt and straight forward and he himself admitted, “If something sucks, I tell people to their face, It’s my job to be honest.” (Pullen, 2012). Jobs got away with his abrasive communication style because he commanded respect and admiration from his followers but he did demonstrate the importance of clear communication so that there are no misunderstandings and subordinates know exactly what their leaders expect from them.

Another reason why Jobs was a successful leader is that employees at Apple were given roles that made the best use of their specific strengths and abilities. Thus, there was a good fit between their responsibilities and capabilities. In addition, Apple hired people who were a good fit to the organizational culture. As a result, the employee turnover was low because the new recruits also believed in the company’s mission (McInerney, 2011).

Steve Jobs has cemented his place as one of the most inspirational leaders of all times but that doesn’t mean his leadership style can be successfully adopted by anyone.  This is because Job’s leadership style was situational. When he returned to the company, it had no vision and proper strategy in place and everyone had given up on the company. Jobs not only provided everyone with a vision but also won their loyalty and admiration through passion for the company and its products as well as by delivering results. This is why his ordinates even kept up with his cold temper because they shared his vision and they trusted him (Henson, 2011).

Steve Jobs had unconventional leadership style but he still enjoyed high levels of loyalty because of his commitment to the company and his impressive track. Jobs also gave his subordinates a clear vision and made sure that everyone in the company was compatible with the company’s culture. He also understood his company well and demonstrated through commitment to few products that quality and innovation were central to the company’s mission. He pushed his employees to do their best and gave them responsibilities that suited their strengths and abilities. In addition, he was also straight forward with his employees so they also knew what their leader wanted from them and what he liked or disliked.

Austen, B. (2012, July 23). The Story of Steve Jobs: An Inspiration or a Cautionary Tale? Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/ff_stevejobs/all/

Branson, R. (2011, October 7). True business leaders think differently . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/true-business-leaders-think-differently

Chakrabortty, A. (2011, January 24). CEOs like Steve Jobs style themselves as messiahs, not mere managers. But that’s just an excuse to rake it in . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jan/25/chief-executives-coin-it-as-messiahs

Chaudhuri, A. (2012, April 26). Authoritarian leadership, the secret behind Steve Jobs success! Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://www.thesundayindian.com/en/story/authoritarian-leadership-the-secret-behind-steve-jobs-success/33963/

Henson, R. (2011, November 1). Faculty Insight: The Leadership of Steve Jobs . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://business.rutgers.edu/news/faculty-insight-leadership-steve-jobs

Isaacson, W. (2012, April). The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/1

McInerney, S. (2011, October 7). Steve Jobs: an unconventional leader . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/steve-jobs-an-unconventional-leader-20111007-1lcmo.html

Pullen, J. P. (2012, May 18). Jobs or Zuckerberg: Who’d Make the Better Boss? Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223570#

Verganti, R. (2011, October 7). Steve Jobs and Management by Meaning . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/steve_jobs_and_management_by_m.html

Williams, R. (2012, April 12). Why Steve Jobs is not a leader to emulate . Retrieved October 18, 2012, from http://business.financialpost.com/2012/04/12/steve-jobs-is-not-a-leader-to-emulate/

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Steve Jobs’ Leadership Style

Steve Jobs left behind an incredible legacy: From computers and technology, to music and movies, his influence and innovations revolutionized industries. They continue to shape how we consume information and entertainment, achieve productivity , and communicate with each other in modern times.

With his success in leading Apple, NeXT, and Pixar, there is much we can learn from Steve Jobs as a leader and trailblazer.

In the following sections below, we will look at the 10 most important leadership lessons and traits that can be gleaned from the experiences and enormous successes of Steve Jobs. We will delve into the choices he made as a business mogul in order to better understand how his passion and dedication to his craft can be emulated by anyone looking to enhance their own leadership skills.

NOTE: This post was originally planned to be released as a book, but we decided to release it for FREE here on Leadership Geeks. It’s pretty long — more than 10,000 words actually! So if you’d rather download a nice PDF of it that you can read later offline, you can Buy the PDF here for just $3 . It also helps support our site! 🙂

(Updated April 2019)

The Leadership Style of Steve Jobs: The Top 10 Leadership Traits of the Man Behind Apple, NeXT, and Pixar

Table of Contents

1. Don’t Do It for The Money

Our materialistic society places a premium on financial success. The bigger your salary, the nicer things you can afford, and the more successful you will be considered in your chosen field. While it is not wrong to aim for material success (Steve Jobs, after all, was himself a very wealthy man), doing everything primarily for monetary gain often creates a lifestyle characterized by greed, loss of ideals, and a lack of real fulfillment.

If there is anyone who knows exactly what material success feels like, it is Jobs. He was already a millionaire at the age of twenty-three. His net worth was about ten million dollars at age twenty-four, and this had grown exponentially to a hundred million dollars by the following year. Jobs was one of the youngest ever to make it to Forbes’ list of the richest people. Even more impressive is the fact that he did this without any inherited wealth. By the time he passed away in 2011, his net worth was around $10.2 billion.

Yet, in a 1995 interview, Jobs had this to say:

“You know, (being a millionaire) wasn’t that important, because I never did it for the money. I think money is a wonderful thing, because it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback. At that time in my life, it was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the company, the people, the products we were making. And what we were going to enable people to do with these products. So I didn’t think about the money a great deal. I never sold any stock. I just believed that the company would do very well over the long term.”

Money is a Tool

Jobs understood that money is neutral. It can enable you to achieve more and make a difference in your spheres of influence. However, money is not the most important thing. Jobs realized early on that it is the people he was working with along with their collective efforts towards groundbreaking consumer products that would eventually give them more satisfaction and a sense of achievement. He was focused more on the pursuit of excellence and the unique experiences of daily life, rather than the fleeting enjoyment that money may bring.

So many people give up their passion or real interests in exchange for a chance to land a more lucrative job or an established career, too often doing work that hardly gives any real fulfillment. The paycheque may be fat, the bank account may be full, but the soul becomes dry, and the spirit soon becomes exhausted from the tedium of it all. On the outside, it may seem like the idealized success story, but a closer look reveals a life that lacks real substance.

Passion Trumps Money

Steve Jobs had a passion for the wonders of technology and how it can change the world positively. He found a way to channel this passion into a moneymaking venture. Soon, his ideas became reality. Money was pouring in, but he never lost the passion or excitement he had from the very beginning. In fact, it is reported that even when he was very ill and lying in a hospital bed, he was thinking up devices to hold up an iPad in a hospital bed, and proposing ways the oxygen monitors could be better designed.

This leadership trait focuses on the invaluable importance of passion, talent, and creativity over the prospect of a quick buck. Are you making decisions based only on financial returns without regards to the potential impact it may have on the people you work with? Or based on how they may view their role in your organization or enterprise? Are you weighing the advantages of accepting a job offer based on the increase in salary, without any thought to drawbacks such as spending less time with your family.

Finding Meaningful Work

People and relationships are ultimately more important than any other material returns. However, too often we get so enamoured by the promise of wealth and social status that we become willing to give up the more important things in life. As a leader, your mindset must be one that places a premium on the person rather than production.

When money becomes the driving force for all priorities, we lose sight of how much more real and meaningful life can be beyond any material gain. Let your passion and natural inclinations lead you to a career path that is truly suited to who you are as a person instead of mapping out a path with only financial rewards as motivation. In the end, the happiness of seeing your achievements come to life will bring you more satisfaction, beyond anything money can purchase.

Steve Jobs believed it was important for an individual to find what he or she loves, both personally and professionally. Work takes up a major chunk of an individual’s life, and the only way he can be satisfied is to believe the work he is doing is great work. The only way to be able to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found what you love, then keep looking for it. You shouldn’t have to settle; you will eventually find it. Steve Jobs once said that “your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”. Have the courage to do what you love and listen to your intuition.

After a hiatus of nearly 12 years, Jobs returned to Apple in 1997. At that time, Apple was close to bankruptcy. Jobs held a staff meeting, where he explained how important passion was in restoring Apple to its former glory. He said “people with passion can change the world”, and this simple idea is the key to success. In a speech given by Jobs at Stanford University in 2005, he said, “You’ve got to find what you love” and the only way in which you will be able to do great work is to love what you do.

If you aren’t passionate about your own ideas, no one else will be. All successful entrepreneurs are passionate, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be about the product. They can be passionate about their mission , about the influence their products or services have on other’s lives, or they might even be passionate about changing the world. For instance, Steve Jobs was never passionate about computer hardware. Instead, he was interested in developing tools to help people unleash their true creativity. He wanted to enrich the lives of those around him through technology.

Jobs was truly obsessed with design, to the extent that he took a calligraphy course to learn it. He believed that a person should follow their heart and have faith that everything will make sense in the future. Even after he was diagnosed with cancer, Jobs returned to Apple to complete projects that were dear to him. His passion and commitment is the primary reason he proved to be such a great leader and inspiration to many.

2. Set Impossibly High Standards

Whether it is the people he worked with, the products he designed, or his goals for his various ventures, Steve Jobs always raised the bar so high that it often seemed impossible to achieve. While modern culture celebrated mediocrity by accepting the status quo, Jobs strove for something more and the market loved him for it. They knew they were getting more than what the competition could give. The high standards Jobs set for himself became the benchmark for every company he led – Apple, NeXT, Pixar – and the results were obvious.

Jobs, the Perfectionist

It is said that the design team at Apple, the Human Interaction team, had to meet with Jobs every other weekend to present their ideas. Jobs, ever the perfectionist, would usually critique their proposals, ask for a do-over, and have them evaluated again in the same meeting two weeks later. It was constant pressure on the employees, so much so that Steve Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Jobs, commented that many former employees have said they would never want to work with Jobs again.

However, this constant stress to improve undoubtedly pushed many of these Apple employees to raise their own standards. As a result, Apple products were regarded as among the best in the industry. Jobs’ perfectionism may have turned off many employees who could not stand the pressure, but those who stayed and endured eventually became a part of the Apple technology revolution.

Ken Segall, a former creative director at Apple, who also worked with an ad agency for NeXT, described Jobs as “a client with absurdly high standards”. Segall is the man who coined the ‘i’ in iMac, which is now in many other Apple products such as the iPod and iPhone. He was also behind the famous Super Bowl commercial in 1999 about Apple and the Y2K bug. He goes on to say about Jobs:

“When it came to products, he believed in putting customer experience above all other things. When we had to run multi-page ads, we would have to choose the paper that the ads were printed on. Steve believed because people were going to love the experience of the ad, they would buy more Apple products as it gave them such a high quality. So, Steve showed you that you can have values and run a profitable business.”

Walking the Talk

Instead of just giving directives, exceptional leaders promote a high standard of excellence by ‘walking the talk.’ The reason why Jobs’ insistence on excellence became part of the culture in his companies is because he also endeavoured to live up to these ideals. People working with him knew he wasn’t exempt from his own high expectations.

In his biography of Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson also wrote about the very high personal standards Jobs set:

“From his father Steve Jobs learned that a hallmark of passionate craftsmanship is making sure that even the aspects that will remain hidden are done beautifully… ‘I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though no one’s going to see it…you’ll know it’s there…for you to sleep well at night…the quality has to be carried all the way through.’”

Living Up To Your Own Standards

For many of us, excellence may be something we aim for in the workplace or with colleagues, but these standards are set aside when we’re left alone. How often have you cut corners when no one was looking, or let something slide that otherwise you would not have done had someone been there to scrutinize your work? Jobs’ standard for himself was such that even when no one was around, he insisted on excellence down to the smallest detail.

How you set your personal and professional standards does not need to be an exact replica of Jobs. The standards we set for ourselves are shaped by our backgrounds, influences, and environment. The people we work and interact with constantly will either push us to aim higher or lower. Do those with whom you surround yourself challenge you, or are you finding yourself settling for less because your environment overlooks mediocrity or prioritizes quantity over quality?

Leaders sometimes confuse high standards with rigid, unrealistic codes of conduct or expectations, which is not always correct. What may constitute as “very high” standards for one group may be considered as inferior or insufficient to another. In addition, just because you may think you are strict doesn’t necessarily mean the rules themselves set any reasonably high standards for your organization.

A true leader recognizes that without clearly set standards for performance and excellence in areas of importance, a team will not achieve its full potential. High standards challenge stakeholders to bring their ‘A’ game and come fully prepared. In this area, Jobs clearly embodied a leader who not only set the bar for excellence, but also passed it along to those around him, causing a trend that eventually became the dominant culture in his companies.

3. Hire The Best

In the business world, securing the top talent for your team is a factor that can determine whether or not the venture will succeed. Steve Jobs recognized the necessity of working with staff who are the best at what they do. These are employees who can contribute not just skills and experience, but ideas that will push the organization forward and keep them ahead of the competition.

Jobs once famously quipped, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do”. He understood that in order to get the most out of his employees’ potential, he needed them to not just perform a role, but also to actively share their opinions, feedback, and vision for improving the company.

Jobs emphasized hiring the very best of the best. He was directly involved in the hiring process and was said to have personally interviewed around 5,000 applicants. This means he was acutely aware of what hiring entailed and how to determine which potential recruits were the best candidates to join his team.

This also underscores how much of a perfectionist Jobs really was. He took time to really build a team that could challenge him and have the same passion he had for innovation. In his autobiography, Jobs says:

“I’ve learned over the years that, when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don’t like it if you tolerate B-grade work.”

The Ideal Team

While much can be said about the incredible vision, intellect, and innovative spirit of Steve Jobs, he has constantly credited much of his success to the collaborative efforts of his team. He once said, “the secret of my success is that we have gone to exceptional lengths to hire the best people in the world.”

A true leader recognizes the invaluable contributions the people around him can give towards the success of the company or organization. He will work to make the hiring process one that is laser-focused on securing talented, driven, and committed individuals who display top-notch skills and the hunger to learn more.

The ideal team consists of members who each have their own strengths and unique skills to contribute. An effective leader recognizes how to harness these varied skills toward a common goal. He also encourages questions and arguments that push each team member to deliver their best at all times, knowing that the others in the group will expect nothing less.

Why is it important to hire the best? You will be spending a lot of time with your team: conversations, planning sessions, proposal meetings, and product launches. Circumstances will either bring out the best in each of you, or hinder you from moving forward as a team towards bigger goals.

Jobs described it best:

“My model for business is The Beatles. They were four guys who kept each other’s kind of negative tendencies in check. They balanced each other, and the total was greater than the sum of the parts. That’s how I see business: Great things in business are never done by one person, they’re done by a team of people.”

Hiring The Best For Your Company

For most managers, hiring people isn’t something they are required to do, so they aren’t interested in investing their time in refining a management skill they don’t use. Steve Jobs thought otherwise. Hiring the best of employees is integral for improving the overall productivity of the company. Accurate hiring also helps in employee retention and engagement.

In the end, it pays to surround yourself with people who have positive attitudes, and are anxious to grab the next opportunity or discover the next big thing. Their energy will rub off on everyone in the team, and that excitement can be translated positively into effective action that keeps your group a step ahead of the pack.

Leaders should not be scared or intimidated by people who seem too confident, or have the potential to overshadow their own abilities. Rather, a wise leader, such as Steve Jobs, knows that the more he is able to work with the best, the higher his chances will be in improvement, innovation, and becoming the industry leader.

4. Practice Innovation

History is full of stories of trailblazers who dared to dream bigger than their peers and did not stop until they fulfilled their ambition for change. In the areas of science and technology alone, the names of Thomas Edison, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Alexander Graham Bell, Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, James Watt, Johannes Gutenberg, Charles Babbage, and Henry Ford are among the most revered worldwide for their revolutionary contributions to society.

When it comes to innovation in modern times, Steve Jobs is credited with shaking up the way we now communicate, consume information, and spend our leisure time. His groundbreaking ideas about smart phones, animated films, and the musical listening experience have dominated the last couple of decades. His vision made Apple and Pixar household names and entrenched the iPod and iPhone as benchmarks for mobile technology.

Finding Inspiration

Where did Steve Jobs get the inspiration for his products? Walter Isaacson, the biographer of Jobs, notes that he drew from a wide range of influences in the humanities harking back to his college years. Early on, Jobs had an intense fascination with Eastern religion, philosophy, design, art, culture and literature. These interests had an impact on the way Jobs viewed technology and how it relates to the human experience.

One of the reasons why Steve Jobs found immense success with the products he released was he somehow found a formula that made these products click with all kinds of people, regardless of age, background, cultural nuances, and geographic location. Jobs was focused on innovations that would enrich people’s lives beyond just selling mere products and services. He knew that no matter how functional a device may be, if it did not speak to the human experience, it would not be a success.

This philosophy became his passion for innovation and creativity. When Jobs came back to Apple in 1996, the company was already producing computers that, while functional, were not seeing much mass-market success. Apple was already on the verge of bankruptcy. However, Jobs somehow found a way to turn things around, and he did this by just going with his gut feel about what would work.

“ Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice,” Jobs said. “And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

Introduction of the iPod

In 1996, the world already had computers, cellular phones, CD players, and portable media players. However, Steve Jobs had something else in mind: what if these devices could do more? Apple’s Macbook computers soon became known for their sleek designs and powerful capabilities, as Jobs continued to push his team to discover user-friendly features and pack on more processing power than the average user needed at the time. Then the iPod came along and this totally changed the way people consumed music. Instead of lugging their CD collections everywhere, the iPod allowed users to carry hundreds of hours of music on a pocket-sized device. It was an instant hit.

Timing is Everything

The genius of Jobs’ innovations is that they were almost always timed right at the cusp of some major force already about to upend technology or entertainment as a whole. When the iPod came out in 2001, the digital music revolution was already in full swing but in danger of being cut short as the music industry threatened to clamp down on piracy. With the iPod and iTunes, Jobs introduced a compromise that made both music producers and consumers happy: users still paid for the music, but could now choose only the songs they liked and in the mp3 format which they now preferred.

His innovation did not stop there. As cellular phones became more of a fixture in daily life, Apple introduced the iPhone, a high-powered touchscreen smartphone which also housed users’ apps, music, video, and Internet browsing. Once again, it was a resounding success and a game-changer in the crowded mobile phone market. To this day, iPhones are the leader in the smartphone market.

Despite the myriad of features and functions present in Apple devices, Jobs borrowed heavily from the Eastern philosophy of simplicity. This was one reason why so many users were drawn to the user-friendly designs of iPods and iPhones. Jobs once said, “That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.”

Forget about the ‘Misses’

While Jobs certainly had many hits, some of his attempts at innovation also produced misses. He was always ready to admit those failures and move past them. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations,” Jobs said.

Few people today would remember the Apple Lisa, the Powermac G4 Cube, the Apple III or the Macintosh TV, much less know what was wrong with them in the first place. Nevertheless, these are among the product failures of Jobs’ career. What he did was to learn from those failures, and capitalize on other products that were successful. As a result, he is remembered more for the products that did make it big.

Innovation in leadership requires risk-taking and a willingness to buck the trend, banking on intensive research and careful study, while having the patience to test various methods and learn from them. Innovative leaders are comfortable with being considered different or crazy because their ideas don’t seem realistic to the casual observer. In the very words of Steve Jobs:

“ Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… The ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones, who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

5. Build a Brand

Today’s consumers are bombarded by marketing messages of all kinds. With all the different media platforms available today – Internet, TV, print, radio, mobile, outdoor – the average person is exposed to all sorts of marketing tactics and strategies. At times be difficult to tell one product, service, or company from the other. This is where branding comes into play.

Beyond just advertising messages, branding seeks to firmly establish a presence by cleverly packaging a lifestyle or experience around a person, company, product, or service. In a bid to set itself apart from the rest of the fold, branding aims to build a unique relationship with the consumer and become instantly recognizable.

Steve Jobs wasn’t just full of energy, innovation, and big ideas. He was also brilliant at marketing and in thinking of strategies that would make his products – Apple, in particular – part of a brand that would be globally recognizable. Jobs was a master of promotion and knew how to build up hype around his product launches. But more than that, he built a brand based on quality, market-leading features, and forward-thinking ideas that challenged the norms of the day.

Jobs was a stickler for quality in everything – from the hiring process, to research and development, to production facilities and the manufacturing process, and the distribution and marketing of his products. It was his belief that customers appreciate quality, and good quality builds a brand in a much more effective way than any sleek marketing campaign can achieve.

“Be a Yardstick of Quality”

“ Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected,” according to Jobs. He knew that if he delivered products with superior quality, anticipated consumer needs, and backed it up with exceptional customer service, users would become loyal followers. These loyal followers would then become his customer base for the next few years, essentially building a brand through positive word-of-mouth and a remarkable track record.

Steve Jobs tapped into people’s dreams, life goals, and ambitions. He designed and packaged his products in such a way that these products would help people fulfill these goals. The brand he created was focused on a certain lifestyle, a feeling of individuality, achievement and self-worth. The products became the tools to reach this lifestyle instead of just the focus of his marketing strategies. Apple commercials – notably, the famous ‘1984’ Super Bowl commercial – resonated with an audience that longed for a respite from the mundane. These ads played right into the ‘hip’ lifestyle with which Apple products became synonymous.

Jobs wanted his products to be accessible even for those who were not as tech-savvy as others. At the same time, he did not want to appear to be dumbing things down or alienating his more sophisticated target audience. He achieved this balance by simplifying everything, from the designs of his laptops, phones, and mobile devices, to easy-to-use graphic user interfaces and interconnected apps across Apple devices. Even the iconic minimalism of Apple stores were part of his branding strategy to showcase quality, high-tech products in a way which was not intimidating to potential customers.

Apple’s products were not entirely new or without inspiration taken from elsewhere. Computers and cellular phones already existed, but Jobs made products that improved on everything these devices could do, and made them more relatable to the common user’s daily goals and dreams. He then marketed them in such a way that they seemed completely new and unique.

Analyze Your Audience

As a leader, learning from Steve Jobs on branding would involve analyzing your audience and knowing their needs, preferences, and goals. What is it they are striving for? How are they working towards their personal dreams and ambitions? More importantly, how can you relate to their life goals and position yourself and your organization to help people achieve what they want in life?

Branding is effective when it is able to successfully enter the audience’s stream of consciousness. It is offering a better way of doing things; a departure from what has always seemed the best way. If what you are providing can make people’s lives better, your message should revolve around these enhancements to your market’s lifestyles rather than just selling products for what they are. In other words: don’t sell features, sell benefits .

Top Quality Can Command Top Prices

Why are many consumers today willing to pay top dollar for Macbooks, iPhones, and iPads? These devices are often more expensive than their non-Apple counterparts, and yet they continue to sell out because they have become symbols of top quality, superior design, and durability. When a Windows computer sometimes freezes or gets bogged down, you can count on your Mac to just keep working. iPhones and iPads work seamlessly even when you have multiple apps running, allowing for multi-tasking and productivity on the go. Customers already know what to expect from the brand.

Steve Jobs believed in giving his market more than just a tech gadget for work or play. He tied everything to a superior lifestyle that was fast-paced but enjoyable, productive but relational, effective but with room for new experiences. The result was brand recognition that remains unequaled to this day, resonating in every variation of Apple products that roll out. Why? Because Jobs believed in the power of doing more:

“You don’t have to be in business for long to know that this one is true. Go the extra mile in everything, and the value of your brand will make itself evident to your clients and partners.”

6. Stay Persistent

Steve Jobs faced various setbacks throughout his life, from dropping out of college and lacking a clear sense of direction in his younger years, to being kicked out of Apple in 1985 by the CEO Jobs himself hired. Throughout the many failures Jobs went through in his storied career, the one leadership trait that stands out is his persistence and determination to keep going no matter what.

To be a strong leader, you have to be unwavering in achieving the end goal you have set for yourself and the organization you are leading. People will look to you for direction, especially when the going gets tough, and it seems easier to just throw in the towel and abandon everything. Jobs taught us to practice perseverance in the midst of insurmountable difficulties, building character and finding ways around the problem in order to reach a workable solution.

What Separates Successful Entrepreneurs

Jobs was quoted as saying, “I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up. So you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about; otherwise, you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through.”

There is much to learn from this nugget of wisdom from Jobs. He mentions passion as a key to perseverance, and rightfully so. It is hard for anyone to find the motivation to stick it out with a goal or venture he himself doesn’t have the desire for in the first place. Passion fuels determination and wills the body to keep pushing even when the mind has doubts or fears.

Passion is what keeps a competitive athlete waking up early each morning, training hard and following a strict meal plan in preparation for a major competition. Because the athlete already has that goal of Olympic glory in his mindset, any of the distractions or fatigue that can hinder his dedication are set aside. This passion also moves the doctor who works round-the-clock to find a cure for a yet-incurable disease, or the lawyer who must exhaust all possible legal means to save the life of his wrongfully-accused client facing death row.

Much like adrenaline, when passion courses through a person’s veins, all else seems insignificant when compared to the potential achievement ahead. Jobs had a vision of using technology to make people’s lives better and to connect the world in ways never seen before. Because he had this passion, he viewed any setbacks as temporary, and instead looked for ways to get around roadblocks and reach his destination by whatever means necessary.

This passion doesn’t come overnight. In many instances, it is instilled or enhanced during a person’s formative years. When Jobs was once asked what advice he would share with those who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs, he said, “I’d get a job as a busboy or something until I figured out what I was really passionate about.” Once you know what you are destined to do, you can then set out to take your place in the universe and become that person.

Jobs recognized the revolutionary, life-changing power of passion. “People with passion can change the world for the better,” he said. The most persistent individuals you will find in any industry are the ones who are, slowly but surely, causing ripples of change in their respective homes, communities, workplaces, and social circles. They have tapped into their passion and are using that to drive their determination towards making a positive impact in the world.

Pushing Through During Setbacks

Without Jobs’ persistence, the smartphone industry as we know it now would look totally different. Before the launch of the iPhone, Jobs’ design team at Apple faced many challenges. Calls were dropping, WiFi connectivity problems kept popping up, and other design issues were being discovered right up to the day of the launch. However, Jobs willed his team to keep on with the project, and the iPhone’s success completely changed smartphones and their role in our society.

Jobs kept pushing and striving for his goal even when he was removed from his own company, turning his efforts to NeXT Computers and Pixar. So when the tables turned and he found himself once again at the helm of Apple in 1996, he knew the industry and didn’t need time to catch up. He knew just what consumers wanted, and how to tap into those expectations with just the right products and customer experience.

Setbacks can either make or break you. A weaker individual who found himself suddenly kicked out by his own board of directors, orchestrated by the CEO he himself recruited, would have given up. Not Jobs. When he found himself in this position, he looked at it as an opportunity to grow and learn more. He came back stronger, more mature, and with a renewed passion to “put a ding in the universe”.

How do you react to sudden upheavals or hardships? A mature leader looks at obstacles as building blocks to greater success, rather than hindrances that should just be accepted with resignation. Just like what Jobs did, true leaders recognize that not everything goes according to plan all the time. It is in the difficult situations that test your character as a leader.

Seeing your goals through to the very end is a habit that is consistent with everyone who has ever been successful. It is this level of persistence that lifts someone from a life of mediocrity to extraordinary success. Steve Jobs was one such individual who refused to give up and never took “no” for an answer. Most people thought Job’s dreams were impossible to achieve, but he stuck by his vision.

Persistence is rewarded with results. The leader who perseveres, despite the odds, will inspire those he works with to push their own limits.

7. Manage Controversy

If your goal is to be an effective leader, you must be prepared for the inevitable controversies and negative publicity that sometimes comes with the territory. Regardless of your chosen industry or field of expertise, controversial decisions, rivalries, intense competition, and other not-so-positive scenarios will come up. It is up to you to use these situations to your advantage. In fact, you can even use controversy to strengthen your brand and relate to your target market.

Steve Jobs recognized this early on. As a radical visionary, he knew that many of his ideas would be viewed as extreme by his contemporaries. However, he was ready to take the flak and let the chips fall where they may. He also brilliantly used controversial statements along with marketing strategies against his biggest competitors to create an ‘us-versus-them’ image that related to his audience, and it largely worked for him.

The Conflict with Bill Gates and Microsoft

Jobs’ conflict with Microsoft is now legendary. Jobs started in the tech industry at roughly the same time that Bill Gates co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen and was making inroads in the computer business. During the early ’80’s, Microsoft and Apple actually worked closely together, and Jobs and Gates were friends outside of professional commitments. However, as they had differing visions for their own ventures, a clash was inevitable.

Jobs had a dream of dominating the computer business, and so did Gates. Jobs had expected to achieve dominance through its Macintosh OS, but Gates also had the foresight to recognize that a graphic user interface would soon become the staple in computers, especially for the consumer market. Back then, Microsoft had its DOS operating system, but Gates had his engineers copy from the Macintosh OS and develop their own version: Windows.

The fallout when Jobs found out was pronounced. While they continued to partner together, albeit very awkwardly, the competitive side of the relationship between Jobs’ Apple and Gates’ Microsoft garnered more media attention. It was constant fodder for legions of loyal fans of both companies.

Jobs was very vocal about his views on Microsoft. In a 1996 television documentary entitled Triumph of the Nerds , Job’s said, “they (Microsoft) have absolutely no taste. And I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that they don’t think of original ideas, and they don’t bring much culture into their products.”

As for his erstwhile close friend Gates, Jobs had this to say shortly thereafter: “I told him I believed every word of what I’d said but that I never should have said it in public. I wish him the best, I really do. I just think he and Microsoft are a bit narrow. He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.”

In television and print ads, Apple went after Microsoft’s designs, painting their rival as the big bad institution with Apple as the rebel ready to change the system. Who doesn’t remember the Get A Mac ads of the 1990’s, with the PC guy who looks conspicuously like, well, Bill Gates?

The Conflict with Google

When the battle shifted to mobile, Apple’s iPhone was a leader, with Microsoft barely considered a major player. However, it was Google’s Android that soon became the biggest threat to Apple’s mobile dominance. Jobs used this to his advantage, playing up some controversy and depicting Google as the copycat. “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

Using Controversy to Strengthen the Brand

In his talks and media interviews, Jobs always cleverly used these controversies to further strengthen his message that Apple was the original purveyor of ideas in the tech industry, and this endeared him and his products to his loyal cult following. He was able to engineer the message and translate it into sales and brand loyalty.

Now, you may not necessarily have to shore up a massive head-on collision with your competitors or rivals, but the lesson we can glean from Jobs is to manage controversy when it does come up in such a way that you still come out in control. As they say, bad publicity is still publicity, and if the limelight is already in your direction, you can seize that moment to engineer a message that would resonate with your intended audience.

Jobs also recognized that this kind of competition is healthy, because it pressures all sides to step up their game, which then benefits the end users. That said, if you feel you have to show some teeth as a leader, be like Jobs and don’t be afraid to speak up, as he did on several occasions: “We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

8. Develop Your Speaking Skills

Do a quick search on YouTube or any search engine right now on Steve Jobs, and you will be sure to find many video clips of his speeches given during product launches, commencement ceremonies, and other public gatherings. Many of his most memorable quotes come from presentations he made for big product unveilings or lectures he gave to students or business groups.

In his speeches, Jobs seems very much at ease with his material. In reality, he did not start out as a strong public speaker. Jobs realized early on that if he were to be an effective leader, he would have to project an image of steady confidence, and the most striking way to do this would be through his presentation skills, which he set out to improve throughout his life.

Preparation is Key

The key to Steve Jobs’ success as a presenter was his preparation. He would spend hours going over his material, practicing at home in front of the mirror and doing rehearsals in front of his team well before he was scheduled to speak. Every detail would be scrutinized, and he wanted visuals, lighting, sound, and effects timed right down to the second. Each public speech was a performance in and of itself, and he knew that his every word would be viewed and studied over and over again. Because of this, he demanded perfection from himself and those around him.

His biggest rival, Bill Gates, knew firsthand how seriously Jobs took his presentations. “I mean, it was just amazing to see how precisely he would rehearse,” Gates is quoted in the book Becoming Steve Jobs. “And if he’s about to go onstage, and his support people don’t have the things right, you know, he is really, really tough on them. He’s even a bit nervous because it’s a big performance. But then he’s on, and it’s quite an amazing thing.”

One of the most popular speeches Jobs ever delivered was a commencement speech he gave at Stanford University in 2005. Jobs is said to have written the speech and rehearsed it at home over and over again, in front of his children, even during dinner time. Laurene, his wife, said she had “almost never seen him more nervous” than during the days prior to that speech. He was focused on making it as precise a performance as he possibly could.

Jobs’ speeches are highly entertaining and equally informative with just the right amount of inspiration thrown in. How did he do it? He drew from his own experiences, packaged his stories into everyday language, and made sure to use colorful descriptions that painted a picture very clearly in the minds of listeners.

Why Public Speaking is So Important

Why is it important to improve your presentation and public speaking skills ? In your many roles in the workplace or your chosen profession, you will be called upon to present your proposal, defend an idea, or simply engage in meaningful discussions about important decisions your group will be making. With the power of presentation, you can deliver a strong case and convince people around you to share your vision and enthusiasm.

Jobs effectively used visuals with short, quotable headlines to drive his message home. In addition, he patterned many of his speeches as stories, mostly with a villain (a problem) and a hero (the solution they have discovered). He focused on the benefits of what he was presenting, such as product features, and he zeroed in on what he knew his listeners would be looking for: things that would improve their personal lives.

Because he prepared and rehearsed incessantly, Jobs avoided reading notes while giving his speeches. Rather, he would keep a list of bullet points to guide him through the presentation, and he knew the material by heart. As a leader, it is important for you to come across as personal and engaging to every single person you are addressing. This can best be achieved by establishing eye contact with as many people in the room as you can. It may seem difficult at first, but with practice, you can improve this skill and become just as effortless as Jobs seemed in his appearances.

Public Speaking is an Art and a Science

Of course, Jobs never forgot to have fun during his speeches. Once, when showing how easy it was to use the maps feature on the iPhone, he prank called a Starbucks number and asked to have 4,000 lattes to go (for his audience). Everyone laughed, and it was an icebreaker that relaxed the audience and also made them more willing to listen to what he had to say. When appropriate, you can lighten the mood or share funny anecdotes that connect you to your listeners and break the monotony of listening to one person speaking for a long period of time.

It’s often said that public speaking is an art. But it is also a science, much like designing machines or troubleshooting complicated computer systems. It requires an understanding of who your listeners are and what interests them, and how you can position your message in such a way that would inspire them to get on your side and accept what you are offering. With intensive preparation and practice, you can also increase your leadership status by excelling in your presentations.

9. Plan for Succession

No matter what your position in your company or organization, you will not last forever in that role. A wise leader prepares for this reality by ensuring there are plans in place for grooming the next leader to take his place, as well as a smooth transition.

Steve Jobs fully understood and accepted the fact that sooner or later, someone would replace him at the helm of Apple. He prepared for this by delegating various responsibilities and training people he knew would be well-equipped to take over. In particular, he worked closely for many years with Tim Cook, Chief of Worldwide Operations for Apple, who would eventually become CEO.

In the book, Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader , it is revealed that succession planning at Apple started even as early as 2004. When Jobs had medical issues in 2004 and 2009, Cook had already taken over indefinitely. Cook knew very well that Jobs was not looking for an exact replica of himself – just a worthy successor.

“Apple would not be served well to have a CEO who wanted to or felt like they needed to replace him precisely. I don’t think there is such a person, but you could envision people trying. He knew that I would never be so dumb as to do that, or even feel that I needed to do that.”

Cook also narrated how hands-on Jobs’ approach was in training the next generation of leaders at Apple. “Steve cared deeply about the why,” he told authors Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli. “The why of the decision. In the younger days I would see him just do something. But as the days went on he would spend more time with me and with other people explaining why he thought or did something, or why he looked at something in a certain way.”

Planning Early On

Because he put a plan in place early on, Jobs was able to personally inculcate many of his strategies and visions to his team, ensuring that the transition, once he was gone, would be one that is smooth and without the feeling of sudden upheaval among those left behind. This succession planning was also one of the reasons why Jobs started Apple University. It would train Apple’s next leaders by reminding them of the company’s past successes and mistakes.

Whoever replaces you will never be able to exactly replicate what you have done or how you run the company and make decisions. This is not the end goal of succession planning; rather, an intuitive leader will train the next person to have the same vision and passion for excellence necessary to lead the organization to greater heights. He should do all of this while staying true to the established brand and delivering promises to the target market as well as stakeholders.

It can take years to find someone who fits this role. However, it is more than likely the ideal candidate is someone already within your team who understands the culture and has been through most of the ups and downs to know why certain decisions are made, and how priorities are set. Jobs had the advantage of actually being able to personally mentor Cook well before he stepped down, so he knew his company would be in good hands.

Giving Leadership Opportunities

This need not be an elaborate task. You may be able to creatively include this in your regular activities as a way to train next leaders and also see potential team members who have that drive you are looking for. During proposals or presentations, you can delegate assignments and see which team members display the passion and attention to excellence you are looking for. Spread out big projects across your workforce and look for those natural-born leaders who take charge and become the key drivers in their respective circles.

Leaders plan for the future, and succession is an important part of that. To this day, many in the business community consider Steve Jobs’ handover to Tim Cook as one of the more successful transitions in corporate America because it involved long-term strategy and personal mentoring. It was this careful planning and vision that enabled Jobs to resign with confidence and send out this message as he stepped down:

To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community: I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come. I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, Director and Apple employee. As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple. I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you. Steve

10. Be Inspired

In 1996, Steve Jobs was quoted, “Picasso had a saying — ‘good artists copy; great artists steal’ — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” Yet Jobs and his company, Apple, protected their patented ideas furiously, suing Microsoft and HP in 1988 for alleged copyright infringement (regarding Windows and New Wave’s similarities to the Macintosh and Lisa). More recently, Apple also filed numerous lawsuits against Google’s Android operating system, specifically targeting Samsung, HTC, and Motorola for their similarities to the iPhone and iPad.

So what did Jobs really mean when he bragged about how they stole great ideas? When Phil Schiller, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, was asked to explain this statement by Jobs, he said:

“I think what he meant by ‘steal’ was you learn, as artists have, from past masters; you figure out what you like about it and what you want to incorporate into your idea, and you take it further and do something new with it. I can see why people might confuse that with the current use people have for that phrase. You don’t just say, ‘I want something that looks just like yours and I’m going to sell it too.’”

Jobs, it appears, was referring to taking inspiration from others and making their ideas your own in order to create something new, rather than just copying ideas and then passing them off as yours. When you take what works for others, tweak it to make improvements while adding more value and features, you are no longer just stealing or copying from others, but improving on past successes and creating new ideas altogether.

Make the Wheel Better (Don’t Reinvent It)

As mentioned in previous chapters, computers, mobile phones, and other devices already existed when Jobs entered the picture and started to revolutionize design. He set to make these devices more user-friendly, better-designed, as well as more relevant to their modern life. This is why he is still regarded as a leader in innovation. He may have borrowed ideas from those around him, but he executed better and pushed the boundaries of creativity and functionality, blending them into well-loved consumer tech products.

This recognition of the value of culling ideas from other inspirations may have come from Jobs’ love for art and music early in life. He described this artistry in an interview with the Smithsonian:

“I think the artistry is in having an insight into what one sees around them. Generally putting things together in a way no one else has before and finding a way to express that to other people who don’t have that insight so they can get some of the advantage of that insight that makes them feel a certain way or allows them to do a certain thing. I think that a lot of the folks on the Macintosh team were capable of doing that and did exactly that.”

As a leader, you should not be trapped in a bubble of your own ideas and perspectives. This is a dangerous position that hinders growth and limits your potential for expansion. Rather, you should always be learning and open to fresh ideas from others around you with more experience, or who have made errors in the past and have learned from them. There is much you can learn from networking with peers, attending seminars or business lectures, or reading up on current events and biographies of influential personalities who can add to your knowledge.

Borrow from the Best

People are no longer discovering new musical notes, and yet we continue to hear great new music using those very same musical patterns. Why does it sound fresh to our ears? It is because musicians and songwriters are simply figuring out new ways to combine past influences with their own melodic patterns and rhythmic combinations, coupled with lyrics that speak to the human experience.

It is ironic that while Jobs mentioned that he got his famous quote from Picasso, the painter himself was said to have never uttered those exact same words. Rather, the quote seems to have been passed along in various iterations from T.S. Eliot, Igor Stravinsky, and William Faulkner. Funny enough, the very idea being espoused by Jobs – building on the great ideas of others – seems to have found a perfect example in the question of who really said this line originally.

However, whether it was Picasso or Eliot, the lesson remains and that is to be a receptacle of great, positive ideas you will find every day. These inspirations may come from your family, friends, colleagues, peers, perhaps even your closest competitors. Build on these concepts, add your own touch, and expand your horizon as an effective leader.

Conclusion: Leadership Is About Leaving a Legacy

Steve Jobs was an incredible individual who revolutionized the digital world. His ideas will continue to influence several generations of innovators across the world. His ideology, charisma, vision, and dynamic nature have managed to revolutionize the way technology has been integrated into our daily life. He was not only a great innovator, but also an exceptional leader. He was the founder of Apple, one of the most successful companies in the world, and was also able to lead Pixar and several other organizations to success. Jobs truly believed that passion is that one thing that has the power to change the world.

Our Role in the Universe

More significantly, Jobs recognized the sobering, but all-important truth, of the preciousness of time and the urgency of leaving a positive impact on the world. In a public speech, he once declared, “Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.” You may not think of it much, but your actions as a leader now have a ripple effect on the lives of people around you for years to come.

In his visionary designs and innovations, Jobs always looked to the future, knowing well that his work would become the framework for even greater, grander achievements in the generations to follow. This is why he was known as a perfectionist who obsessed over the smallest details, and demanded excellence in every aspect of operations. He was acutely aware of his finite role in the universe, and wanted to make the most out of it in the limited time given to him.

When Jobs Was Nearing The End

His acceptance of the inevitability of death gave him a sense of urgency because he felt he had so many dreams to turn into reality. According to Jobs, “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Jobs was aware that his life was ending, and that he had to make it all count. In his speech at Stanford, he said that “all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure-these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving behind only what is truly important”. Death is the best motivation there can ever be, and there is no reason why you shouldn’t follow your heart when you know that death is unavoidable. All those dreams that seemed silly — maybe it’s time that you start doing something to turn them into reality.

The Impact of Steve Jobs

The people who have made the most impact in our world are the ones who were looking beyond what they can see with their own eyes, to a future that was better and greater than what they could have imagined. This is what ignited their passion to invent automobiles, airplanes, electric lighting, telephones, wireless communications, printing presses, industrial equipment, vaccines and computers. Their legacy lives on to this day because what they focused on were ideas that transcended the physical limitations of their time.

How much of an impact will Steve Jobs have on future generations? It remains to be seen, but it is safe to surmise that his immediate impact – revolutionizing technology, communication, and entertainment – will continue to grow as the next generation of innovators and dreamers continue on the path that Jobs and others have forged.

How Will People Remember You?

The question you should ask yourself now is: “How will people remember me when I am gone?” Your legacy, or how you lived your life or made your mark, should matter more than any material wealth accumulated or professional achievements. Every little thing you are doing now has an impact on the future, and how you will be remembered.

Your leadership in your immediate circle will also be your legacy; your contribution to your community. Use your time wisely, enhance your skills, make the most of the opportunities presented to you, and you will have lived life the way Steve Jobs did:

“We’re here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise why else even be here?”

Steve Jobs was an inspirational leader who managed to influence everyone around him with his confidence, adaptability, vision, and ability to think outside the box. After reading this article, we hope you find yourself inspired to be a better leader. Follow the lessons in these posts and you’ll be one step closer to unlocking your true leadership potential.

Remember: becoming a great leader isn’t something that can be done overnight; it takes constant daily practice. As Jobs said, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” – keep challenging yourself, take risks and remember that the only limits that exist are those you place on yourself.

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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

An immensely comprehensive, thoroughly researched and well-written biography by Walter Isaacson brings us a candid and detailed overview of Steve Jobs’ captivating life. Read the worldwide bestseller which inspired the major motion picture Steve Jobs.

Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal

With a parallel overview of the evolution of computers, Karen Blumenthal follows the extraordinary journey of the genius behind Apple. From his parents’ garage to the forefront of technology, Steve Jobs pushed the limits of success in every way.

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender

Breaking down all the stereotypes, myths and stories surrounding Steve Jobs, Brent Schlender managed to create a uniquely insightful book about one of the greatest minds in modern history. Examine the visionary behind some of the most coveted products around the world.

Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers. Photo used under creative commons, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Nichollas_Harrison

Tim Cook photo by Valery Marchive (LeMagIT) – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16228490

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs often butted heads over the years. Photo via CC licence: GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2480672

Steve Jobs Photo via creative commons: https://www.flickr.com/photos/detroity2k/

40 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 7

Chapters 8-14

Chapters 15-21

Chapters 22-28

Chapters 29-35

Chapters 36-42

Key Figures

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Isaacson draws attention to the complicated relationship between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates . Discuss the role of this relationship in Jobs’s trajectory at the helm of Apple, citing specific examples from the text to support your response.

While Isaacson highlights the many qualities of Jobs’s that made him a genius, he also accentuates his flaws and shortcomings. What does Isaacson ultimately convey about the cost of genius?

Which of Jobs’s products is the clearest representation of his own identity as an individual? Support your answer with direct evidence from the text.

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Exploring Steve Jobs’ Unique Personality Traits and Psychology

• 01/18/2024 01/18/2024

Steve Jobs, the iconic co-founder of Apple Inc ., exhibited a complex psychological profile shaped significantly by his early life experiences and family dynamics. Born to a Syrian father and American mother, he was adopted shortly after birth. This aspect of his upbringing likely had a profound impact on his psychological development. Adoption can sometimes create feelings of abandonment or issues with self-identity in the adopted child. For Jobs, it seems to have fostered a relentless pursuit of excellence and a deep-seated need for control, possibly as a means to assert his identity and value.

Moreover, the nurturing environment provided by his adoptive parents, especially his adoptive father, played a crucial role in shaping his interests and ambitions. His father’s background as a mechanic and carpenter instilled in Jobs an appreciation for craftsmanship, detail, and design. This upbringing likely contributed to his later insistence on high-quality, well-designed products. It’s a classic example of how parental influence can significantly shape a child’s interests and career trajectory.

Table of Contents

Personality Traits and Behavioral Patterns

Steve Jobs was known for his intense personality and demanding leadership style , characterized by his perfectionism, extraordinary focus, and extreme dedication. These traits, while contributing to his immense success, also created challenges in his interpersonal relationships. Jobs’s perfectionism often led to him being highly critical of others’ work, which, while driving innovation, also created a highly stressful work environment.

His focus and dedication were evident in his ‘reality distortion field,’ a term used by his colleagues to describe his ability to convince himself and others to believe almost anything, using charisma, bravado, and relentless optimism. This trait was a double-edged sword; it allowed him to inspire his team to achieve the impossible but also led to unrealistic expectations and burnout.

Moreover, Jobs’s behavior can be analyzed through the lens of the Big Five personality traits model. He exhibited high levels of openness (creative and open to new experiences), conscientiousness (detail-oriented and organized), and extraversion (energetic and assertive), but possibly lower levels of agreeableness (challenging and critical) and emotional stability (prone to mood swings and emotional outbursts).

Professional Relationships and Leadership Style

Steve Jobs’s professional relationships were marked by his intense, often mercurial leadership style. He was known for his ability to charm and captivate, as well as his tendency to be brusque and even harsh with colleagues and employees. This dichotomy reflects a complex interaction of high self-confidence and, potentially, a deep-seated insecurity stemming from his adoption and feelings of abandonment.

His approach to leadership was unconventional. Jobs was not a leader who sought consensus or relied heavily on delegation. Instead, he was deeply involved in every aspect of Apple’s operations, often pushing his team to their limits to achieve perfection. This ‘hands-on’ approach was instrumental in Apple’s success but also led to significant tension and conflict within the organization.

Personal Life and Interpersonal Relationships

In his personal life, Jobs was known to be a private individual, with complex relationships with his family and friends. His initial denial of paternity for his daughter Lisa and the subsequent reconciliation reflect a man struggling with personal demons and responsibilities. This aspect of his life demonstrates the challenges he faced in balancing his intense professional life with personal relationships.

Jobs’s relationship with his biological family was also complex. He initially showed little interest in connecting with his biological parents or siblings but later established a relationship with his biological sister, Mona Simpson. This evolution in his attitude towards his biological family might indicate a maturing perspective on identity and relationships as he aged.

Legacy and Impact on Technology

Steve Jobs’s legacy in the technology industry is monumental. He was a visionary who fundamentally changed how we interact with technology. His emphasis on user-friendly design and innovation has left an indelible mark on the industry. However, his psychological profile also played a role in this legacy. His perfectionism, while driving Apple to new heights, also created a culture of high pressure and intense competition within the company.

What do you think of Steve Jobs’ psychological profile?

As we close this exploration into the intricate psychological landscape of Steve Jobs, we invite you, our readers, to share your thoughts and perspectives. Do you find parallels between your own traits and those of Jobs? Or perhaps you see his approach to leadership and innovation in a different light? Your insights and opinions are invaluable to us, so please leave a comment below and join the conversation.

Moreover, if you found this deep dive into Steve Jobs’ psyche intriguing, you’ll be excited to know that we’ve explored other remarkable minds in the world of entrepreneurship. Check out our psychological profiles on visionaries like Elon Musk , Jeff Bezos , and Richard Branson . These profiles offer a unique glimpse into the minds that have shaped our modern world. So, dive in, compare, and let us know your thoughts on these influential figures as well. Your engagement helps us create content that resonates and informs. Let’s continue the journey of discovery together!

Ismael Abogado

Psychologist and constant learner of the mind and soul.

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Steve Jobs Commencement Speech Analysis

Looking for Steve Jobs commencement speech analysis? Want to understand how Jobs uses ethos, logos, pathos, and figurative language? Take a look at Steve Jobs Stanford speech analysis below.

Introduction

• Speech Analysis
• Rhetorical Appeals Used

Is it necessary to follow passions or reasons while choosing a career? What effects can losses and failures have on a person’s life? In spite of the complex character and deep ethical, philosophical, and psychological meanings hidden in these questions, they are answered completely in Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford University in 2005.

Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, Inc., is known as one of the world-famous and successful entrepreneurs whose unique approaches to business and marketing provoked the great public’s interest. That is why Jobs’ speech on the importance of finding an interesting and loved job drew the attention and gained the recognition of the graduates during the Commencement Day at Stanford University in 2005.

Steve Jobs Stanford Speech Analysis

The goal of Steve Jobs’ speech is to persuade the graduates to find jobs that they can truly love because of their passion for definite activities. Thus, Jobs is successful in achieving his goal because of his exclusive approach to structuring the speech and to blending the rhetoric appeals in order to discuss well-known concepts and ideas of love, loss, and death in a unique form; that is why it is appropriate to examine Jobs’ manipulation of methods of persuasion in detail.

In his speech, Jobs demonstrates the virtuous use of rhetoric appeals in the development and presentation of one of the most persuasive commencement speeches in order to draw the student’s attention to the significant questions which can contribute to changing a person’s life.

Steve Jobs Commencement Speech: Rhetorical Appeals

The strategies used in developing the structure of the speech and the rhetorical strategies are closely connected. Jobs’ speech can be divided into five parts which are the introductory part to evoke the graduates’ interest regarding the topic discussed, the three life anecdotes, and the concluding part, which restates and supports the author’s arguments presented in the main part of the speech.

It is important to note that each of the three stories told by Jobs is also developed according to the definite structure pattern where the first sentences of the stories can be referred to the pathos, the personal experience can be discussed with references to the ethos, and the final parts of the stories are organized as the logical conclusions, using the logos.

The first reference to ethos is observed in the introductory part when Jobs states, “I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation” (Jobs).

The uniqueness of Jobs’ approach is in the use of the reverse variant of the ethos as the rhetorical appeal because Jobs has no credibility to discuss the importance of university education, but he has the credibility to discuss the points necessary for professional success because of stating his position as the co-founder of Apple, Inc., NeXT, and Pixar.

The next three stories presented in the speech are used to develop Jobs’ argument about the necessity of doing what a person loves and the importance of finding these things and activities. This argument is developed with references to the concluding or logical parts of the author’s stories which are also highly emotional in their character. Steve Jobs uses pathos in the first sentences while telling his stories.

Thus, the discussion of the details of the child adoption in the first story, the reflection on the happiness of building the first company, and the mentioning of the main question in life, “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”, contribute to the audience’s emotional reaction because of describing the author’s own feelings and emotions (Jobs).

The credibility of Jobs’ considerations depends on the presentation of his own personal and life background and experiences to support his ideas. The use of pathos in the speech is observed when the author concludes with the results of his experience: “If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do” (Jobs).

Discussing the near death experience, the author uses the sentence “About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer,” which combines the ethos and pathos strategies (Jobs). Thus, Jobs can use more than one rhetorical appeal in a sentence.

Nevertheless, Jobs’ goal is to persuade the graduates to act and find the things that they love to do, and the focus on logos is observed in the stories’ concluding sentences when Jobs provides the logical argument: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work” (Jobs). These concluding remarks are based on the logical rethinking of the evidence and facts presented as examples from the author’s experience.

The repetition of such phrases as “Don’t settle” and the final phrase, “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish,” contributes to drawing the audience’s interest in the presented facts and ideas (Jobs). The effectiveness of using rhetorical appeals depends on the author’s style and his use of repetitive structures and imperative sentences, which sound persuasive.

In his speech, Steve Jobs achieves the main goals of the speech by focusing on ethos, logos, and pathos and by using the author’s unique style. Jobs presents his developed vision of his career and passions in life with references to the ideas of love and death and supports considerations with autobiographical facts.

Works Cited

Jobs, Steve. ‘You’ve Got to Find What You Love,’ Jobs Says: Text of the Address . 2005. Web.

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Home — Essay Samples — Business — Steve Jobs — Steve Jobs Stanford Speech: Pathos, Ethos and Logos

Steve Jobs Stanford Speech: Pathos, Ethos and Logos

• Categories: Steve Jobs

About this sample

Words: 1253 |

Published: Dec 16, 2021

Words: 1253 | Pages: 3 | 7 min read

Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech masterfully employs pathos as its primary rhetorical device, with occasional touches of ethos and logos, to effectively convey the message of embracing the limited time we have. Pathos, the emotional connection between speaker and audience, is the cornerstone of Jobs' speech. Through the three poignant stories he shares, Jobs allows the audience to emotionally connect with his experiences, fostering a deeper appreciation for his message. This emotional connection enhances the clarity of his message and its profound impact on the audience.

While ethos plays a supporting role, it is crucial in gaining the audience's trust and acceptance of Jobs' speech. It underpins the credibility of his message and the audience's willingness to embrace it. Logos, though sparingly used, is deliberate in its limited appearance. Excessive reliance on logic and reasoning would overshadow the core idea encapsulated in Jobs' famous words, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish."

Steve Jobs' awareness of his audience's aspirations and expectations is evident in his strategic use of rhetorical appeals. He tailors his speech to resonate directly with his audience, ensuring that the tools of rhetoric serve a specific purpose. Ultimately, Jobs successfully accomplishes his intended goal, leaving a lasting impact through his compelling and emotionally charged address.

Table of contents

Introduction, steve jobs commencement speech analysis, works cited.

• Jobs, Steve. “2005 Stanford University Commencement Address.” Stanford News, June 12, 2005. https://news.stanford.edu/2005/06/14/jobs-061505/

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Steve Jobs Deathbed Speech

Apple co-founder steve jobs did not leave behind a deathbed warning about how the "non-stop pursuit of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me.", published nov. 7, 2015.

About this rating

In November 2015, a rumor began circulating on social media that when Apple co-founder Steve Jobs passed away at age 56 in 2011, he delivered a speech or left behind a deathbed essay about the meaning of life.

One of the earliest iterations of this rumor we've found was published on gkindshivani.wordpress.com under the title "DID YOU KNOW WHAT WERE THE LAST WORDS OF STEVE JOBS?":

"I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others' eyes, my life is an epitome of success. However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to. At this moment, lying on the sick bed and recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death. In the darkness, I look at the green lights from the life supporting machines and hear the humming mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of god of death drawing closer ... Now I know, when we have accumulated sufficient wealth to last our lifetime, we should pursue other matters that are unrelated to wealth ... Should be something that is more important: Perhaps relationships, perhaps art, perhaps a dream from younger days Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me. God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth. The wealth I have won in my life I cannot bring with me. What I can bring is only the memories precipitated by love. That's the true riches which will follow you, accompany you, giving you strength and light to go on. Love can travel a thousand miles. Life has no limit. Go where you want to go. Reach the height you want to reach. It is all in your heart and in your hands. What is the most expensive bed in the world? Sick bed ... You can employ someone to drive the car for you, make money for you but you cannot have someone to bear the sickness for you. Material things lost can be found. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost — Life. When a person goes into the operating room, he will realize that there is one book that he has yet to finish reading — Book of Healthy Life. Whichever stage in life we are at right now, with time, we will face the day when the curtain comes down. Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends. Treat yourself well. Cherish others."

Although Steve Jobs passed away in 2011, the above-quoted essay didn't begin circulating online until November 2015, was not published anywhere outside of unofficial social media accounts and low-traffic blogs, and has not been confirmed by anyone close to the founder of Apple.

Furthermore, after Steve Jobs passed away on 5 October 2011, his sister Mona Simpson remarked on her brother's final words while delivering his eulogy:

Steve's final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he'd looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life's partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve's final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

While the above-quoted essay does not represent either Steve Jobs' final words nor remarks he made (in either oral or written form) at any time during his life, his biographer Walter Isaacson did record Jobs' expressing regret at the end of his life about how he raised his children:

"I wanted my kids to know me," Mr Isaacson recalled Mr Jobs saying, in a posthumous tribute the biographer wrote for Time magazine. "I wasn't always there for them, and I wanted them to know why and to understand what I did." "He was very human. He was so much more of a real person than most people know. That's what made him so great," he added. "Steve made choices. I asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, 'It's 10,000 times better than anything I've ever done'." It wasn't always thus. In the early stages of his career, Jobs, who was adopted, denied being the father of Lisa and insisted in court documents that he was "sterile and infertile". He acknowledged paternity when she was six, and they were later reconciled.

By Dan Evon

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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6 Common Leadership Styles — and How to Decide Which to Use When

• Rebecca Knight

Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances call for different approaches.

Research suggests that the most effective leaders adapt their style to different circumstances — be it a change in setting, a shift in organizational dynamics, or a turn in the business cycle. But what if you feel like you’re not equipped to take on a new and different leadership style — let alone more than one? In this article, the author outlines the six leadership styles Daniel Goleman first introduced in his 2000 HBR article, “Leadership That Gets Results,” and explains when to use each one. The good news is that personality is not destiny. Even if you’re naturally introverted or you tend to be driven by data and analysis rather than emotion, you can still learn how to adapt different leadership styles to organize, motivate, and direct your team.

Much has been written about common leadership styles and how to identify the right style for you, whether it’s transactional or transformational, bureaucratic or laissez-faire. But according to Daniel Goleman, a psychologist best known for his work on emotional intelligence, “Being a great leader means recognizing that different circumstances may call for different approaches.”

• RK Rebecca Knight is a journalist who writes about all things related to the changing nature of careers and the workplace. Her essays and reported stories have been featured in The Boston Globe, Business Insider, The New York Times, BBC, and The Christian Science Monitor. She was shortlisted as a Reuters Institute Fellow at Oxford University in 2023. Earlier in her career, she spent a decade as an editor and reporter at the Financial Times in New York, London, and Boston.

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