Candor And Transparency Aligning Leadership - Sample Solution

Question: Discuss about the Candor and Transparency for Aligning Leadership. Answer: Introduction In this report, leadership quality of a 21st century leader has been evaluated. In order to conduct this assignment, the co-founder of company Apple, Steve Jobs has been selected. Steve Jobs is considered as 21st century tech leader, who had left behind a legacy. It has been found that most of the companies are now working across global boundaries. Leaders who handle teams across different countries are aware of the fact that they need different leadership styles in order to cope up with different cultures. It has been found that Steve Jobs leadership style is the integral part of the success of company Apple. In order to conduct this assignment in appropriate manner, at first the description of the leader and the organization has been provided along with the situation or context of the organization. In the next section, leadership quality of Steve Jobs has been critically evaluated by referring to the concepts and theories of leadership. It includes aspects such as leadership styles , traits, behaviors and attitudes of the leader. In the final section, some recommendations are provided to motivate people towards their work. Description of the leader, the organization/industry, and situation/context Steven Paul Steve Jobs was the American businessman, industrial designer and inventor. Steve Jobs was the former Chief Executive officer, chairman and co-founder of the company Apple (Apple 2017). He is the majority shareholder of Pixar and member of the board of director of the company Walt Disney. Steve Jobs was adopted in San Francisco and raised in the Bay area of San Francisco during 1960s (Bengtsson et al. 2016). He had attended Reed College during 1972. After dropping out from the college, he came to India during 1974 (Steinwart and Ziegler 2014). He sought enlightenment by studying Zen Buddhism. Steve Jobs had co-founded Apple with Steve Wozniak and develop Apple I as the first personal computer during 1976 (Yoffie and Cusumano 2015). After one year, they had developed Apple II, which helped them to get fame and wealth. According to Yoffie and Cusumano (2015), Apple II was the first successful mass-produced personal computer. Then after some year, Steve Jobs left the company and took some members with him to develop NeXT. It is computer platform development organization specialized in business markets and developing state-of-the-art computers for higher education. Jobs also helped to enhance the industry of visual effect and produced the first computer animated film name Toy Story. During the year of 1997, the company Apple had acquired and merged with Steves NeXT (Yoffie and Cusumano 2015). It helped Steve Jobs to become the CEO of the company again. Kane (2015) stated that, at that time, the company was verge of bankruptcy. During the time, Jobs helped the company to revive from that critical condition. He had provided a new idea for the advertising campaign of the company Think different. In addition, He worked closely with Jonathan Ive to develop a wide range of product that would have superior cultural ramification. It includes products such as iPod, iPhone, iTune Store and iPad. Mac OS is also modified and become macOS. It is modified depending on NeXTSTEP platform of the company NeXT (Kane 2015). The name of Steve Jobs is connected with American Multinational Technology Company named Apple. The name Apple was given by Steve Jobs during his visit to an Apple firm (Apple 2017). According to Jobs, this Apple will bring a sense of joy in the mind of listeners. The company designs, manufactures and sales computer software, consumer electronics and provides different online services (Apple 2017). The major hardware products of the company include MAC, iPod, iPhone, macOS, AppleTV and Apple watch. In addition, the company offers different types online services such as Apple Pay, iTunes store, iOS App store, iCloud. According to Yoffie and Cusumano (2015), the company Apple is known for its innovative products and services among its customers. For this reason, customer loyalty for the company is high. In terms of revenue, the company Apple is worlds biggest information technology company. In addition, Apple is the second largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world (Apple 2017). In the year of 2014, the company had become the first U.S. organization to be valued more than US$ 700 billion. As of April 2016, the company has approximately 478 stores in 17 countries all over the world (Apple 2017). There are approximately 115, 000 permanent employees work in Apple. At the end of 2015, the worldwide revenue of the company was $234 billion (Apple 2017). The revenue generation of the company, accounts for 1.25% GDP of U.S. (Apple 2017). The efficient leadership quality of Steve Jobs and his inspiration has helped the company to become worlds most valuable brand for 4 consecutive years (Apple 2017). The name of Steve Jobs is not only related with the company Apple, but also with Pixar and Disney. In the year of 1986, Steve Jobs had founded the Graphics group, which was later named as Pixar. The company had developed partnership with Disney and developed the first computer generated animated film named Toy Story in the year of 1995 (Pixar 2017). Steve Jobs was credited as the executive producer of the film. After the merger, Jobs had received 7% share of Disney and joined the board of director. He became the largest individual shareholder of the company Disney. Under the surveillance of Steve Jobs, the company Pixar has produced numerous numbers of successful animated movies over the last 15 years (Yoffie and Cusumano 2015). Movies like WALL-E, Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Toy story 3 have received best animated films over year. Floyd Noman had described Steve Jobs as mellow and mature individual who had never interfered with the creative methods of the filmmakers (Pixar 2017). The president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ed Catmull mentioned in his book Creativity Inc. that Steve Job is fast thinker. Jobs advised him to just explain it until they understand. However, in their 26 years of working, they never had any loud verbal augment. Steve Jobs always let Ed Catmull to do the job in his own way and never criticized his work (Pixar 2017). Evaluation of the leader by referring to concepts and theories of leadership According to Yoffie and Cusumano (2015), leadership is the function of a personal or individual, who guides a group of people to achieve their goals. In the year of 1976, Steve Jobs had cofounded the company Apple in his garage. He was ousted from the company in the year of 1985 (Apple 2017). In the year of 1997, Steve Jobs was returned to the company to rescue it from bankruptcy (Apple 2017). During 2011, by the time he died, he made Apple the most valuable company in the world (Apple 2017). There are seven major industries that Jobs helped to transform. They are such as personal computing, tablet computing, retail stored, phones, music, digital publishing and animation movies. After reviewing different models and theories related with leadership, Steve Jobs leadership category can be analyzed. According to Kriger and Zhovtobryukh (2016), leadership style of Steve Jobs is a combination of Transformational leadership style with the personality of autocratic leader. Personally, it can be opined that Steve Jobs was basically an autocratic leader. According to Harris (2015), an autocratic leader prefers to take all the decisions on their own without consulting with team members. It is most applicable to Steve Jobs, as he tried to take all decisions on his own. Carroll (2013) stated that, all the decisions taken in the company Apple has to be gone through Jobs. In order to maintain health and to reduce obesity among employees of Apple, he decided to reduce the plate size. According to Steve Jobs, it will reduce the total amount of food consumption and maintain the calorie intake. After assessing the autocratic leadership style, some major advantages and disadvantages of this leadership style can be found. Rajaraman (2014) stated that autocratic leadership style is appropriate and most applicable in situation, where decisions need to be taken in emergency. It is applicable, where team input or team agreement is not required in order to get successfu l outcome. However, Kriger and Zhovtobryukh (2016) criticized autocratic leadership style by stating that this leadership style can demoralize employees. It can reduce the value of employees for a company. It can increase absenteeism and reduce employee satisfaction. These two factors can increase employee turnover rate of a company (Shah and Mulla 2013). After analyzing numerous journals and articles related with autocratic leadership and Steve Jobs, the reason behind Jobs adaptation of this leadership style has been found. During 1997, The Company Apple announced to buy NeXT for $427 million (John and Shetty 2014). It brought back Steve Jobs as the CEO of the company that he cofounded. At that time, the company was on the verge of bankruptcy. It was his major objective to return Apple to profitability. For this reason, Jobs decided to adopt autocratic leadership style and took decisions on his own. These decisions included terminating few employees and terminating some inefficient projects like OpenDoc, Cyberdog and Newton (Toma and Marinescu 2013). He had modified the licensing program for McIntosh Clones and made it too costly for the manufacturers to continue producing these machines. In addition, he had also decided to improve the recycling program of e-waste during 2005 (Hurley-Hanson and Giannantonio 2013). This program includ ed the environmental friendly disposal of old Apple products. According to Avolio (2016), Steve Jobs can be perceived as demanding perfectionist. He always aimed to make the business of Apple and its product at the forefront of information technology industry. He had modified the company in such a way that, Apple becomes the benchmark of innovation and trend setting. However, analyzing the biography of Steve Jobs, it has been found that he also had transformational leadership traits. Jobs had strong emotional intelligence and integrity with strong focus towards work. There are certain traits of transformational leadership can be found in Steve Jobs. He was humble, empathetic, authentic and self-aware. Lussier and Achua (2015) stated that, Jobs was able to inspire his employees with a shared vision of future. From the theory of transformational leadership, it has been found that the major role of a leader in an organization is to communicate his or her point of view and decisions with subordinates. According to Shah and Mulla (2013), the main responsibility to a transformational leader is to show employees the necessity of change or transformation within a company. Like an efficient transformational leader, Steve Jobs was able to communicate his mission and vision with employees of both Apple and NeXT. According to Kane (2015), Steve Jobs possesse d 3 major characteristics that help him to be reminded as a transformational leader of 21st century. These characteristics are such as visionary, passionate and creative.. However, there are two major characteristics of transformational leadership was missing in Steve Jobs. They are such as instructiveness and empowerment. Northouse (2015) stated that, there are many people who remembered Steve Jobs are innovator. Although, this characteristic is not a part of traditional transformational leadership style, but it reflects the discourse of consumer electronic industry upon which he had significant impact. He was considered as innovators innovator, who has created lots of job opportunity in United States. He had the unique ability to recognize talented and skilled individuals and employ them in Apple. He had faced lots of ups and downs as leader. He was ousted from the company that had been confounded by him. Again he was brought back to the company as CEO, to save it from the verge of bankruptcy. He faced numerous amounts of adversity and setback. However, he rose above those adversities. In comparison to other 21st century leaders, there are some major advantages of Jobs leadership quality have been found. They are such as: Steve Jobs believes in working smart, while other leaders believe in working smart (Heracleous and Klaering 2014). Steve Jobs prefers to take risk in a job while other tries to play safe. Steve Jobs believes in innovation, while other believes in copying Steve Jobs saw possibilities and opportunities in challenges, while others saw only obstacles Finally, in order to view the leadership quality of Steve Jobs, it is require to mention about the commencement speech delivered by him. Live each day as if it was your last, someday youll most certainly be right. Discussing how the company can be lead differently It has been found that, Steve Jobs mainly followed autocratic leadership style. According to Howard (2013), this leadership style has advantages in situations, where it is required to take decisions quickly. It is particularly effective construction projects and military operations. However, in the present corporate world, autocratic leadership has negative impact. It leads to high rate of turnover among employees. It also causes low morale, developing resentment among subordinates and stifled creativity. As Apple is known for its innovation, hushed creativity due to overly autocratic leadership style will not be a good brand image. It will also cause poor employee performance. Hence, it requires some changes to make stronger impact on followers. They are mentioned below: Collecting feedback from employees The most important thing that required to be implemented in the company is to collect feedback. It will help the leader to understand, whether his or her autocratic leadership style is becoming an obstacle in their way of work. It will also work as a method of communication, where employees towards identifying the issues that company are facing. For this purpose, 360 degree feedback can be used. It will provide workers a safe environment, where they can provide honest analysis of the leadership style of their senior (CEO). This 360 degree feedback will help the CEO to analyze the strengths and weakness of his or her personal leadership style and make changes accordingly. It will also help to improve the delegation skills of autocratic managers. Coaching and discussions There are various other ways in which autocratic leadership style of customers can be improved. They are such as books, seminars, discussions and coaching programs. Providing empowerment Empowerment means providing employees the opportunity to take critical decisions in emergency condition. It will help the employees to feel their worth within in the company Apple. It will also make them more responsible towards their jobs and improve the overall organizational performance as well. Conclusion In this assignment, the leadership of Steve Jobs has been evaluated. It has been analyzed that, the leadership trait of Steve Jobs is the mixture of autocratic and transformational leadership style. He preferred to take all the decisions on their own without consulting with team members. He was brought back to the company to save it from bankruptcy and return it towards profitability. Due to control this urgent situation, he was forced to adopt this autocratic leadership style. However, he also had some characteristics of transformational leader. Like an efficient transformational leader, Steve Jobs was able to communicate his mission and vision with employees of both Apple and NeXT. It is not easy to walk in the shoe of an efficient leader like Steve Jobs. However, there some recommendations provided, in which employees can be inspired more. They are such as gathering regular feedback from employees and providing them empowerment. Reference list Apple, 2017.Apple. [online] Apple. Available at: https://www.apple.com/ [Accessed 10 Jan. 2017]. Avolio, B.J., 2016. Candor and Transparency: Aligning Your Leadership Constellation.People and Strategy,39(4), p.16. 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