Leadership Style

Steve Jobs practiced an autocratic leadership style when he led Apple. He strongly believed in this leadership style because he wanted the products created by the company to be effective and something that consumers would expect and want. He was very strong with his decisions and expectations and his staff were well aware of this. “According to the American author Andrew Keen’s best seller, called The Cult of the Amateur, there is not a single time where democracy was practised at Apple” ⁽¹⁾. It was all along the traditional leadership style which was the autocratic leadership style. Based on my opinion, the reason why Steve Jobs believed in autocratic leadership would be because in this case, output and innovation has to occur rapidly, and if he were to lead his company democratically, decision making would be slow, causing the innovation to occur less rapidly. “It is the way he led his team that made Apple go so far.”⁽¹⁾ In my opinion, I believe that in a company, in which products have to be created and developed fast enough, it has to be autocratic leadership. This would be because the staff has no choice but to follow the strict instructions of the leader, which means that the chances of the job being completed by the deadline would be higher, as compared to other leadership styles, in which the dictation and authority of the leader is a little lesser than that of an autocratic leader.