Steve Jobs Strengths and Weaknesses as a Leader

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Steve Jobs’s strengths and weaknesses as a leader, as well as his leadership style, philosophy and values. Steve Jobs was one of the most successful entrepreneurs and inventors of all time. He distinguished himself because of his authenticity and creativity, always thinking outside the box.

Background

Steven Paul Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in San Francisco, California, to Abdulfattah "John" Jandali and Joanne Schieble, two graduate students from University Wisconsin. Being born out of marriage, the baby was put up for adoption. Jandali was a political science professor and Joanne a speech therapist (all about Steve Jobs, 2013). Shortly after Steve was placed for adoption, his biological parents married and had their second child, Mona Simpson. Jobs was not able to find out information on his biological parents until he was 27, when he had enough money to contract a private investigator.

Paul Reinhold Jobs and Clara Jobs, a middle-class Armenian couple, adopted Steve Jobs at birth. Originally, Joanne and Jandali wanted their son to be adopted by an educated family. Although the Jobs family did not meet the requirements for the agreement of the adoption, Joanne agreed as long as they promised that they would later send him to college. The family moved to the Silicon Valley a few years later, making Steve Jobs grow up in a neighborhood of engineers working on electronics in their garages. Growing up in this environment shaped Steve’s interest in the field. At age 13, he met 18-year-old Stephen Wozniak, an electronics prodigy kid, who eventually became his colleague at Apple.

About five years later, Steve Jobs told his parents he wanted to enroll in Reed College — a very costly lib...

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...r, “You need a lot of passion for what you're doing because it’s so hard. Without passion, any rational person would give up.” Steve Jobs, at age 30 was fired from Apple in spite of the fact that he helped start it. He describes the aftermath of that event and though he didn’t realize it right away he stumbled upon the realization that he still loved what he did even after being fired. This realization inspired him to start PIXAR and NEXT. PIXAR is now the most successful animation studio in the world. NEXT was bought by Apple and Steve Jobs was rehired by Apple. So for Steve Jobs the single most important contributing factor to his success was passion for what he did. It was the driving force that helped him focus all his creative genius, enabled him to overcome obstacles and ultimately achieve his vision, that apple's products and services would change the world.