Steve Jobs: A Transformational Leader

Steve Jobs, born in San Francisco in 1955, was raised in Mountain View and Cupertino, California by his adoptive parents. Everyone knows him as the former CEO, Chairman, and co-founder of the well-known company Apple, Inc. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs died on October 5, 2011, due to a battle with pancreatic cancer. But how did Steve Jobs created his legacy and why is he considered by a lot of people as a transformational leader?

Everyone knows the story of how Steve Jobs started his company. To make the story short- back in 1976, Steve Jobs struck up a partnership with Steve Wozniak and founded Apple Computer in Jobs’ parents’ garage. It was a success. And four years later, they decided to launch Macintosh. However, as the company expands and get known, Jobs was removed as head of the Macintosh team by the former CEO John Sculley. So, he resigned from Apple Computer to avoid conflicts. In 1986, Steve founded the computer company NeXT and purchased the graphics-arts division of Lucasfilm, Pixar. Pixar was later bought by Apple and once again took on Jobs as an employee. And the story goes on.

The concept of transformational leadership can be described as transactional leadership raised to the next level. It goes beyond satisfying current needs by aiming at constant improvement at both the personal and organizational levels. In simple words, Transformational leadership is characterized as the leader’s self-development and progressing to coaching and developing others.

Steve Jobs’ success in leadership is highly recognized in discussions of exemplary transformational leaders. Experts also tend to describe Steve Jobs’ leadership style as primarily transformational. . Steve Jobs even becomes a “paradigm case” of a “transformational leader” because of how his life and work stand to shape our idea about transformational leadership. His leadership at Apple and in various personal electronics industries, which are now successful companies, is proof that Steve Jobs deserved to be known as a transformational leader.