1. Steve Jobs – Traits, Leadership Style and Motivation – 979 Words
Traits Characteristics
Steve Jobs is capable in influencing his people for strong desire in work. He was a micro
manager and possesses a high degree of passion for his mission, innovation, work and even the
smallest of items. He shares his passion with his staff, provides the vision, guides the
development and makes many key decisions. Most of the collaborators had been yelled by him
but they appreciate his passion of his, especially when they see the effect of his work. (Simon
and Young 2005), remarked Steve captured the spirit of his groups and dictates that though
working long hours at work, they shared one common attribute, that is, to build an amazing
computers that shocked the world. The effort that they put in is more than the amount they earn
and pursuing their career path. (Simon & Young (2005)
Steve Jobs is a task-oriented person who tends to focus more on his task and organization
performance. He creates for himself a reputation of a terror inspiring taskmaster who screams at
workers and randomly fired those unlucky ones. He is an autocrat who had remade from a big,
dysfunctional corporation into tight, disciplined ship that execute on his demanding product
schedules. (Leander Kahney, 2008) He also possesses strong confidence of his capability and
has strong belief in his way of controlling (Andrew DuBrin, Peter Miller, Carol Dalglish, 2006).
He is lacked of emotional intelligence and does not listen to people’s feelings, what he only
listen is their ideas. Their ideas must be challenging as Steve will force the people to stick up with
the ideas and often raised their blood pressure to test if they know the facts and have strong
arguments. (Leander Kahney, 2008)

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

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

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