MARKETING

Leadership Styles

Leadership Styles

Introduction

A leader is a person who influences a group of people towards achievement of a goal. A leader control and directs the people by inspiring rather than ordering. A Leader enables people to use their own initiative and experiences. A leader is a person who has a vision, a commitment and drive to achieve that vision through guiding the followers in a positive direction (Sadler 2003. pp. 4-10).

A leader is one that sees solution in every problem and communicates a vision to others and evolves strategies for realizing the vision. A leader motivates people and is able to negotiate for resources and other support to achieve to achieve the goals of followers. A leader possesses charismatic personality through which he or she inspires his followers and is able to influence the followers to work for a common cause. A leader uses a sense of mission along with creative problem skills for promoting better care and a positive working environment (WHO 2010, pp. 264-267).

Leaders follow different leadership styles for providing direction, implementing plans and motivating his followers. There are many different styles that could be exhibited by leaders in the political, business or other fields. Each leader chooses a different style of leadership depending upon the environment he or she is working as well as the nature of followers.

Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco on 24th February 1955. He was a computer designer, entrepreneur, executive and innovator as well as an all round role model for many people in their business and personal lives. As a cofounder of Apple and Pixar Animation Studios, he revolutionized the animation and computer industries, accretion a fortune value of $10.2 billion at the time of his death (Hom, 2013).

Leadership Style

As one of the ingredients of leadership, risk taking is vital for leaders especially in present disruptive environments that demand the requirement for flexibility to responds to such environments, that means changes and the trait of leadership for taking risk for performing the changes is imperative. According to Kouzes and Posner (1993), the leaders are those who take the risks inherent in innovations and talk about adventures into new territory. Steve Jobs has been famous for taking risks in terms of pursuing of innovative products. His risk taking leadership trait enabled him to bring a revolution in the field of computer, music and entertainment industry.

The difference between a leader and manager is human passion and human inspiration that a leader incorporate into his or her motivational activities; whereas, a manager focuses on the actual process of managing and dividing of work (Zaleznik 2004, pp. 74-81). As for Steve Jobs, he did not simply work at Apple as a CEO; he had a great passion for computer products and he always tried to bring something unique and fascinating for its customers. He was passionate about brining uniqueness to computer products, and same reflected in his leadership style. He transferred his passion into his followers, who in turn produced such innovative products that changed the ...