Leadership in Business Extraordinary Creativity and Leadership

Question: Discuss about theLeadership in BusinessforExtraordinary Creativity and Leadership. Answer: Introduction: Steve Jobs Steve Jobs was the most renowned person with extraordinary creativity and leadership qualities. He had a great vision about the future, and he knew that what future should look like. He was a famous innovator, who reshaped the whole industry with his innovative ideas, intellectual mind and immense will-power. Such personality of Steve Jobs, changed the face of the industry and gave to his customers, more than what they desired and what they could not even think of. He was also a motivational leader, who motivated his team and co-workers to excel in their work and capabilities. Blessed with extraordinary communication skills, he took away the heart of millions of customers, who trusted in his innovation (Blanchard, and Hersey, 2008). Some of the main qualities of a leader are communication skills, motivation, vision and innovative. He was an iconic leader, who gave birth to Mackintosh computers and became the founder of Apple and Pixar. He had the quality of leading thousands of people with his words and innovation skills. People trusted in his vision of turning the computer industry completely upside down. He believed in simplicity is a great tool to achieve success, as it is not just being minimalist but it is about creating amazing. He had the remarkable quality of pushing the people to do impossible things. These qualities have great relation with leadership, and thus Steve Jobs is considered as one of the most iconic leaders of the world (Chen, 2014). He was the person, who proved that if a person is crazy about doing something impossible; they can do. In the year 1997, when Apple was producing just the random computers, including the different versions of Macintosh, he came up with a new idea. The new idea was making a desktop, which could be portable. He dismissed all the other ideas, and asked his team member to create four computers, which stands correct on this idea. His idea saved Apple. He knew that it is more important to decide what is not important, rather than deciding what is important. He had the ability to train his team members according to his vision (Northouse, 2015). He had the ability to focus on the main idea, without thinking that what is going on in the market. He also had the ability to take together his team in every innovation, and promoted people every year. Simplicity in his designs was the biggest attraction that customers loved. His videogames and the designs of computers were based on simplicity. His idea was that every person should easily figure out the things in his designs. For him simplicity was conquering and not just avoiding complexity (Isaacson, 2012). In the design of the iPod also, he tried to cut the clutter, and wanted to get-on everything in just three clicks. Jobs took the responsibility of all the designs and user experiences. He displayed these qualities through performance of ARM microprocessor in the iPhone and by buying an iPhone from the store of Apple. His idea of understanding the needs of the customers was based on the idea of Henry Ford that customers do not know what they want, until it is shown to them. Howard Schultz The leadership qualities of Howard Schultz were based on the inspiration and motivation of his followers. He was the person, who always trusted in his employees, and encouraged them to provide their ideas and feedbacks. For this, he displayed the qualities of an amazing communicator. He uses to make personal calls and emails to his employees for seeking their advice. Schultz was in the list of 50 most influential leaders of the world. He had particular ideas about taking the company and people towards success (Avolio, and Luthans, 2008). He believed in hiring the correct people, as he believed that it is not enough to tell people that what to do, but for taking a company like Starbucks to success, it was important to hire a team of correct people. When he became the CEO of Starbuck, he sent his 10,000managers to the conference, where he himself became the communicator. His aim towards this conference was to inspire, challenge and encourage his managers to achieve the goal of the company. He believed in intuitive leadership skills. He was an inspirational communicator, he was and he is able to communicate his idea correctly, and his team comes back with great inspiration and energy (Koehn, and Grundy, 2001). He believed in consistency, thus for this customers will find the same taste in the coffee blends in all the 22,000 stores all over the world. He believed in providing the best customer care with consistency in the products. He is the person, who also believes in taking care of his team. People all over the world; admire his quality of taking care of employees by giving perks and also free rides (Stead, and Stead, 2016). He has provided the best healthcare insurance for his employees. These are some of the qualities of Schultz, which makes him an inspirational and motivational employee. One of the major qualities of his leadership is that he believes in encouraging diversity in the work place. He has respect for different cultures. The designs of the stores are made according to the place, where they are situated. He understands that every place has their own practices and preferences. These are the factors, which influence the designs of the Starbucks stores all over the world. Another important personality trait of this great leader is that he believes in partnership. He believes that having the partnership and getting the correct team is very important for building brand awareness (Schultz, 2011). For him employees and customers are the pillars of any organization. Thus, he had made the practice of making the customer feel special. He has complete trust in his employees and takes care of their needs. He believes that employees can also make suggestions, thus he listens to them. His leadership qualities display transformational leadership as well as the qualities of democratic leadership. Thorsten Heins Thorsten Heins was appointed as the CEO of BlackBerry in the year 2012. According to the critics, he made many strategic errors. Also, behind the failure, there was responsibility on the board of directors of BlackBerry. The leadership of the Heins failed because he did not concentrated on focusing on the business market earlier, where the company had niche (Aung, 2013). But, BlackBerry started concentrating on the broader global market like Apple Inc. and Google Inc. He first decided to launch all the touch screen Black Berry Z10 phones rather than launching the new BlackBerry with the physical keyboard, which were still popular. The company failed to respond to the demands of the customers. The company still kept on launching the phones with its trademark Qwerty keyboards. The company came up with the touch screen phones, but these phones were running on the operating system, which was not particularly designed for the touch screens. Though, there are still fans for the keyboards, but it was time to change the strategy (Gillette, Brady, and Winter, 2013). But Heins failed to change the strategy of the company according to the needs of the market. He had very weak vision of the future, for which he failed as the CEO. The only strength of the company was its enterprise market and its ability to stay visible in the financial crisis. Heins, could not do much for the declining the market share in the business of handset. As a leader, Heins could not display much qualities of being a innovator, a motivator or a good communicator. He could not change the strategy of the business, so that they could have increased their business. However, he tried his best to change the condition by launching the BlackBerry 10, which was a new operating system. This operating system was designed for working on various devices. The company also introduced the touch screen devices, which were equipped with the Qwerty keyboards to keep their loyal customers happy (Grobart, 2012). The main problem with Heins, was not that he did something wrong with the product or the operating systems, but it was the timing when these products came to the market. It was already too late to launch these products, as market was filled with the top most handsets of Apple and other companies. However, there is nothing wrong with the company, as it is still able to survive in the market (Youssef, 2013). The problem is with the focus, vision and other leadership qualities of Heins. He was not able to built a strong and innovative team like Schultz, who could help him to achieve the success goals of the company. He was also weak in having a vision and focus like Jobs. He could not see the future of their strategies, and thus he had failed as a leader. A leader requires having great communication skills as well, but Heins could not demonstrate any such skills towards his team. The success of a company is dependent on the perfect leadership. A company fails, if the leadership is weak. Heins could not motivate and encourage his team members and mangers to display their complete capabilities. Bibliography Avolio, B. and Luthans, F., 2008.The high impact leader. McGraw Hill Professional. Aung, S.G.M., 2013. New Light of Myanmar. Blanchard, K. and Hersey, P., 2008. Situational leadership.Leadership Excellence,25(5), p.19. Chen, G., 2014. 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