Steve Jobs: Servant Leader

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Steve Jobs
In 1976 Apple was co-founded by Steve Jobs while in his parents garage. 1985, Steve Jobs was ousted, (drove out) but returned shortly after in 1997 to save the company from bankruptcy. Then in October of 2011 Steve Jobs died. Even as his death shocked the world he built the most successful business since he was re-introduced to the company. Along the way since 1976 Steve built seven types of industries including: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. Steve Jobs way to perform excellence was to, was intensely focused when committed, confident enough to take risky leaps, and charismatic enough to enlist legions of employees and customers in the relentless pursuit …show more content…

Jobs may have been, “the greatest business executive of our era,” but he was a mercurial, demanding, and tyrannical one. All too often he was the antithesis of the “servant leader” model popularized in the 1990s.However, Jobs’s seemingly destructive behaviors sparked peak performance as much as they undermined it, depending on where and how he applied them. Jobs’s volatile approach to leadership is both fascinating and perplexing. For instance, Jobs had a fickle commitment construct — he fell in and out of love with people much too easily, both personally and professionally. In his relentless pursuit of top talent, he was able to create highly skilled organizations. But he also missed the potential contribution of many people who were not yet (and perhaps never would be) so-called A players. It is surprising, however, that many of the people Jobs abandoned along the way retained a grudging respect for his positive qualities — and a few even came back for more of his particular brand of abuse.When it came to teamwork, Jobs had a highly effective modus operandi with a dark side. He always challenged teams — from those involved in the early product efforts led by Apple