Being Apple: Steve Jobs

The way leaders exercise their power in an organization or a country has always been a topic of
critical discussion. Some are termed as toxic leader like “Kim Jong-un who led North Korea into
International Isolation by violating UN policies and it’s people to mass wide spread poverty
(ABC News, 2017)”, while some personalities like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela are
considered to be transformational leaders as they became successful in leading people towards
their vision. However, there is one persona whom the critics have not been able to put in one
leadership category. He is the man who gave the world its first PC, Steve Jobs, has been argued
as a toxic leader because of the threat possessed by his actions. Nonetheless, Jobs has also
been argued as a transformational leader because of his vision which would revolutionize the
technology industry and his ability to inspire employees for achieving this goal. Hence,
analyzing both sides of the argument, this essay will evaluate the weightier side and finally
reach to a conclusion.

To begin, Steve Jobs exercised two bases of power. One is the legitimate power which was
granted by his position as a CEO of Apple and another is the power as control or surveillance.
Power is the ability of influencing people and getting your works done by resisting their
opposing will (Weber, 1974). Like there are two sides in a coin, the impact of power that Steve
exerted in Apple had both positive and negative effect. First of all, after taking over the position
as an interim CEO of Apple in 1997, he found that there were loose tongues all around the
company who would leak information to the media. Hence, utilizing his legitimate power,
“Steve introduced and implemented culture of secrecy at apple {Economist (2007)}”. On one
hand, this helped to prevent information leaks to Apple’s rival firms on the other hand it led to
firing of employees who talked about the company without any authorization. This
demonstrates Steve as paranoid character nonetheless, this approach of maintaining secrecy
was critical for the company to prosper and Steve was able to do so only because of the passion
he held for the company and its people.

However, the exercise of Jobs legitimate power at some level could be termed as toxic. “Toxic
leaders are those who have superficial charm, are arrogant, over-confident, manipulative and
ruthless and someone who lack empathy and remorse (Thomas, 2010; Jackson and Parry
2008)”. For instance, “when MobileMe was launched in 2008, it could not deliver the quality of
service it promised to. Hence, Jobs called up the MobileMe team and asked them what it was
supposed to do. And hearing the answers that MobileMe didn’t meet, Jobs fired the team
leader on the spot which shows his ruthlessness {Lashinsky, A. (2011)}”. As a leader, “what Jobs
really felt was all he could contribute towards the company was building a strong A class
players {Kahney, L. (2008)}” and seeing those who are not best people in the world, it was
painful but as a CEO, he had to use his legitimate power to get rid of them. Being able to form a
perfect team is every company’s goal and employees working their best to live up to Steve’s
expectations is quite remarkable but what about those who required a little motivation and
encouragement? Of course, most of them never got the chance and were fired or left the jobs
eventually due to hard circumstances they faced working in the company for Steve because he
was like an Organizational Terrorist. If an employee failed to deliver as expected, he would
downright humiliate and bring them into tears. In summary, Steve was so focused on taking out
the best from his employees that he ended up in becoming a demoralizing factor and reflects
toxic behaviors.

Furthermore, Jobs utilized his legitimate power to suppress resistance. Where there is power,
there is resistance (Foucault, 1979: 45). In his quest for perfection, when the product
development team refused to follow management decisions, Steve restored the decision-
making rights to the senior managers in such a way that he had control over all the aspects of
Business. This implies that through his legitimate power, Jobs also enforced power as control.
“Power as control results employee into self disciplining individuals and they normalize with the
expectations of their leaders and comply with them (Jackson and Carter, 2000:105)”. To
support, Jobs had created such environment in apple where people learnt to normalize and
thought as if they were being watched by Jobs from behind their shoulders all the time. This led
the employees to exert their full potentials as Jobs could come by with unsatisfied face if the
job was done wrong. To conclude, Jobs power as control yielded positive outcome as it was
able to bring the utmost from the motivated and intimidated employees neglecting the
resistance that had been suppressed.

Another example where jobs suppressed resistance was when the Engineers provided jobs 38
reasons why the iMac couldn’t be produced. He simply said, “I am the CEO of this company and
we are doing this because I think it can be done”. From this statement, we derive that jobs was
self-absorbed and over confident person. He ignored other people’s perspective and only
focused on his own and by exercising the power as control, he manipulated the employees to
give it their all and even more. These characteristics of jobs entails that he was a toxic leader.
To support, when Jobs was involved in the Macintosh project, he wanted his team members to
follow Unitarist approach which tells that “Organization is a harmonious whole which exists for
a common purpose (Farnham and Pimlott 1991: 31)”. However, this happy family trait did not
exist in other parts of the company and to kindle the 3 sided battles that emerged in the
company, Jobs called the other two projects members as B and C grade players. This toxic
nature of jobs led to competitive tensions and he was expelled from the company by CEO John
Sculley in accusation of trying to control every division even which was not in his jurisdiction
and for the losses incurred by the company by failing to produce effective Macintosh
computers. This situation can relate to the definition which says, “Organizations are sites of
domination where less powerful are constantly outflanked by dominant managers who have
power to conceal conflicts of power and can define social reality (Alvesson, 1987: 8; Fulop and
Linstead, 2004; Lukes, 1974)”. Looking at it, John Scully provided reasons which seemed
legitimate for ousting Jobs from the company but it was pure politics practiced by him. It is
because as soon as Scully knew that Jobs was planning to ask him to leave the company, he
backfired on him and came up with reasons to conceal resistance and stay in the company. To
conclude, Jobs toxic behavior gave birth to power battle which caused organizational politics
and had him expelled from the company.

Nonetheless of the power dynamics at Apple, Jobs has been observed as a (transformational)
charismatic leader. Charismatic leaders are those who “engage, changes and transforms people
(Burns, 1978:4)”. He had a vision for the company and was able to incorporate it in hearts of
the employees. For instance, Trip Hawkins who was involved in the Lisa project at Apple said,
“Steve’s vision was kind of frightening and it could not be eradicated off his mind. He led us to
believe in his vision and we worked like we were there to change the world {Young, J. S., Simon
W.L. (2005)}”. This is how a transformational leader affects the mindset of people. Although,
Jobs made his employees work to their fullest, he was wicked tongued at many times, there
were employees who wanted to work hard for Steve and if he didn’t like their work, they would
put in extra effort because the vision that Steve Jobs set had been a common vision that
everyone at Apple wanted to achieve. As a response there was low turnover rate and from
US$5 billion in 2000, Apple had grown into US$351 billion in 2011.

Finally, the way Steve Jobs exercised his power can be prone to both toxic and transformational
leadership. Looking at the growth in figures, as much as Steve’s achievement in Business world
is spectacular and transformational, observing from the inside, we can see the darker picture.
Yes, Steve managed to incorporate a common vision in his employees but the way he would
manipulate them unless they exerted their full potential leads him to be a toxic leader. Steve
Jobs was visionary and a passionate leader, however, the fact he ignored other people’s
perspective and wanted to move along his own road, reflects arrogance and self-absorbed
behavior which are characteristics of a narcissistic leader. Hence, judging from Steve Jobs
leadership style, the way he exerted his power at Apple, it would be more appropriate to
consider him a toxic leader.

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