In this part, we’re going to explore four popular leadership theories.
During our explanation and examples of each model,
I want you to consider the following questions :
In this model, what different types of behaviour have you
observed in the leader?
Imagine that you are part of this leader’s team.
As a ‘follower’, which behaviours worked for you?
Which behaviours did not work well?
Does this leadership style fit you as a leader?
Please write a few sentences about what fits and what does not fit,
given who you are.
How effective is this style is in a context of a networked and highly dynamic world with
unstructured problems?
The first model is trait-based leadership - a theory that relates to the Hero leader.
The core belief of trait-based leadership is that one can become a great leader by emulating
the personal characteristics and behaviors of great leaders.
One can think of big heroic leaders such as Winston Churchill,
the former British prime minister during WWII, or you can think of Nelson Mandela,
the first president of South Africa after the abolition of apartheid.
A more recent example is Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple.
In the following clip we will illustrate the Hero leader using Steve Jobs.
Please carefully observe the behavior of Steve Jobs and how he is described by others.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life.
Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20.
We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just
the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees.
We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier,
and I had just turned 30.
And then I got fired.How can you get fired from a company you started?
Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought
was very talented to run the company with me,
and for the first year or so things went well.
But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out.
When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him.
So at 30 I was out.
And very publicly out.
What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone,
and it was devastating.I really didn’t know what to do for a few months.
I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped
the baton as it was being passed to me.
I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly.
I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from
the valley.
But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did.The turn of events
at Apple had not changed that one bit.
I had been rejected, but I was still in love.
And so I decided to start over.I didn’t see it then,
but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever
happened to me.
The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again,
less sure about everything.
It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT,
another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who
would become my wife.
Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film,
Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio
in the world.
In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT,
I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is
at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance.
And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.I’m pretty sure none of this would
have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple.
It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.
Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick.
Don’t lose faith.
I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did.
You’ve got to find what you love.
And that is as true for work as it is for your lovers.
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life,
and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.
If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking.
And don’t settle.
As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.
And, like any great relationship,
it just gets better and better as the years roll on.
So keep looking.
Don’t settle.
Let us briefly reflect on trait-based leadership.
Steve Jobs is clearly a very impressive leader who had a significant impact on this world.
The trait-based leadership theory says that we can become a great leader by acting like
Steve Jobs.
The issue with this theory is that we are not Steve Jobs.
Being Steve Jobs probably worked for Jobs, but will it work for us?
And can we do it without losing ourselves?
Will our people trust us if we as leaders display behaviors that are not ours?