Different leaders across the corporate world have exhibited different leadership styles to bring the

best performance out of their team. In any case, every leadership style comes up with its set of
pros and cons.

Transformational leaders exhibit intellectual simulation to establish favorable conditions for their
workforce for sharing new ideas and aiming for consistent innovation. Transformational leadership
is the potent force where the leader acknowledges and capitalizes upon the needs of his followers
(Steinwart & Ziegler, 2014). Transformational leaders infuse work with meaning and articulate an
attractive vison for the followers. Via the ignition of followers' job commitment, transformational
leaders use a variety of behaviors to provoke organizationally advantageous actions e.g., improved
mission performance. That is, workers who are motivated by transformational leadership are more
likely to immerse themselves in their jobs, which leads to greater mission success (Lai, et al.,
2020).

Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple Inc. exhibited the transformational leadership style to help
him achieve his inspiring vision and take his organization to new heights. According to a research
by the journal of educational leadership, Steve Jobs was associated with words like creative,
visionary, and passionate by his colleagues (Steinwart & Ziegler, 2014). With his vision for
innovation, Steve Jobs was able to carry his team and go on to revolutionize the smartphone
industry. His charismatic personality and obsession with dreaming big forced his team to re-
examine their lives, achievements and purpose in life. For the growth of his organization, he laid
down numerous solutions such as a virtual assistant (Siri). Likewise, he coined the idea of App
Store, where he provided a platform to an enormous pool of developers to showcase their talent
and skill.

As a perfectionist himself, Jobs motivated his employees to be at their best by setting the tone
through his own behavior. In his motive to create quality products, he went on to create the iPhone,
which paired the features of an iPod with that of phones and computers. Likewise, the impact that
Steve Jobs had was not confined to smartphones. He went on to culturally transform the way in
which music, movies and mobile communications were experienced by people.
The impact that Steve Jobs had on the smartphone industry is still acknowledged by the current
CEO of Apple, Tim Cook who said that, “The think different approach of Steve Jobs is still very
deeply embedded in Apple (Reisinger, 2019).” Another statistic supporting the impact of Jobs’
invention of the iPhone is the cumulative sales number of the iPhone from June 2007 till November
2018, which stood at 1.5 billion units (Nath, 2020).

Even during Jobs’ tenure as the CEO of Apple, several colleagues that worked with him talk about
how lucky they were to have worked under his leadership, which empowered them to perform
beyond expectations and work on something that was beyond their imagination. Steve Jobs
employed transformational leadership to fuel the growth of his organization by working towards
the collective growth of his workforce.

As a transformational leader, Jobs’ success was not just in his ability to transform the entity that
he worked for, it was in how he transformed the people around him. Few CEOs will match the
technical maverick that was Jobs, from his ability to step out of the box to his profound enthusiasm
for his business. We also learn a great deal about creativity from the man who changed the whole
world of digital technology and communication through his contributions.

Transactional leadership is a form of leadership style that is goal-oriented and brings together a
workforce for the fulfillment of a task or achievement of an objective. This approach plays a key
role for managerial leaders who follow a supervision and organizational control approach that not
only ensures high level performance of the team but also completion of the task or goal. While it
creates a win-win situation for both leaders and their followers, failure to accomplish the target
has its own consequences as well (Bass & Riggio, 2010).

Commonly referenced as the one of the most successful leaders in history, Bill Gates has over the
years developed a transactional leadership style that has brought his company, Microsoft, huge
success. Known for his high emphasis on a rigid structure, organizational hierarchy, and his use
of a reward-punishment system in order to achieve goals, Bill Gates has always been clear about
his vision and approach to make Microsoft as successful as it is today and by following the
transactional leadership approach, he has made sure that his team and employees do not deviate
from their paths (Shah & Mulla, 2013).
Bill Gates’s leadership style was based on a process which involved training employees via
development of systems that involved controlling, planning and organizing tailored employee
responses to certain situations. Based on each of the decisions they made, Bill Gates would provide
them with rewards and punishments accordingly. Hence employees at times felt extremely under
pressure to deliver, however the exceptional level of training they underwent, ensured that each of
them came out on top in individual tasks (Hamad, 2015). This is one of the reasons why current
and past employees always speak highly of his leadership and man management skills (Likierman,
2009).

Bill Gates had gained popularity for his approach which aligned with those of a transformational
leader initially, however over time Gates had developed a stricter following of the chain of
command while at the same time maintaining his charismatic leadership approach. Although as a
transactional leader, Bill Gates would delegate his employees on the tasks but he was always open
for their suggestions and continued to be their guide therefore using this opportunity to allow his
employees some freedom and also maintaining his autorotative role. On the contrary, there remains
a debate over how much Microsoft might have fared had Gates adopted an approach of providing
his employees more freedom. For Gates, controlling was the central part of his leadership style
and with that he could shift the focus towards completion of task in hand to efficiently achieve the
desired targets.

His profound ability to lead from the front and influence people around him with his novel ideas
and enthusiasm for technology was a major attraction point for every talented individual in the US.
The success of his transactional leadership style is also reflected upon the higher diversity of
workforce that Bill Gates had manage to gather at a single workplace. Several individuals that did
not agree with Gates’s approach would argue about the lack of autonomy within the group and the
challenge for Bill Gates to keep his team motivated to achieve his mission, as a major concern of
this approach. Despite this claim, Gates had adopted an approach that developed a rigorous process
to recruit several young minds who had potential to become leaders of the future.

Driven by their passion to change the world of technology, both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs have
had remarkable success with two different leadership styles. While Gates was able to develop an
exceptional workforce that followed his lead, Bezos had the ability to acknowledge the needs of
his team and followers and create an environment that ensures his team perform at their maximum
potential. Even though both approaches have been highly successful in the past, transformational
leadership style is more suited to the future generations as autonomy for employees and innovation
has become the priority for every leader today.
References
Bass, B. & Riggio, R., 2010. The transformational model of leadership. Leading organizations:
Perspectives for a new era, Volume 2, pp. 76-86.

Hamad, H., 2015. Transformational leadership theory: Why military leaders are more charismatic and
transformational?. International Journal of Leadership, Volume 3 .

Lai, F.-Y., Tang, H.-C., Lu, S.-C. & Lin, Y.-C. L. &. C.-C., 2020. Transformational Leadership and Job
Performance. The Mediating Role of Work Engagement, 10(1).

Likierman, A., 2009. Succesful leadership - how would you know?. Business Strategy Review, 20(1), pp.
44-49.

Nath, T., 2020. Investopedia. [Online]

Available at: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/012815/how-steve-jobs-
changed-world.asp
[Accessed 2021].

Reisinger, D., 2019. Inc.. [Online]

Available at: https://www.inc.com/don-reisinger/tim-cook-remembers-this-one-thing-he-misses-about-
steve-jobs-and-his-one-lesson-that-still-guides-apple.html
[Accessed 2021].

Shah, T. & Mulla, Z., 2013. Leader motives, impression management and charisma: A comparison of Stee
Jobs and Bill Gates. Management and Labour Studies, 38(3 ), pp. 155-184.

Steinwart, M. C. & Ziegler, J. A., 2014. Remembering Apple CEO Steve Jobs as a “Transformational
Leader”: Implications for Pedagogy. Journal of Leadership Education, 13(2).