21st Century Leadership

21st Century Leadership

Andrea Perrucci

Dr. Anthony Campo

BUS 302

Strayer University

05/30/2015

21st Century LeadershipSteve Jobs As A Leader

Steve Jobs is known for his exemplary transformational leadership style.  He held three key personal characteristics of a transformation leader.  Jobs is said to have been creative, passionate and a visionary in his industry.  Although he lacked the interpersonal characteristics that are important for a transformational leader being less empowering and interactive than a traditional transformational leader he was still well respected and his leadership style is studied and taught today.  

Transformational leaders expect high performance from their employees while creating an attractive vision for the future by infusing work with meaning.  Transformational leaders commit to providing employees with tools that will allow them to flourish.  

Transformational leadership takes transactional leadership to the next level by not only satisfying current needs, encouraging employees to move toward achievement and growth with constant improvement on both personal and organizational levels (Steinwart & Ziegler, 2014).

Apple’s Organizational Structure, Culture And Vision

While the culture allows employees to be engaged, enabled and energized, the workers unfortunately do sometimes perceive the culture to also include a touch of fear and intimidation.  Apple employees are not empowered but follow orders and have a narrow band of responsibility.  Apple employees are separated into silos and trustworthiness is not assumed but earned.  There is a high level of secrecy and separation of teams and still, employees are passionate about their jobs and work extremely hard (Rice, 2012).

Employee benefits include health and dental insurance, life insurance, 401K plan with 6% matching, stock options and employee discounts.  Apple has recently revamped and improved some of the perks afforded to Apple employees to attract new talent and retain employees.  Some of the new perks include longer parental leave for expectant mothers, up to 4 weeks before and upwards of 14 weeks after.  Expectant fathers and other non-birth parents can take 6 weeks.  Their donation matching program now includes matching for employees’ actual time at $25.00 per hour of time volunteered.  Apple has also created a wellness center and medical facility at the Cupertino CA headquarters.  Here employees can primary care doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors and dieticians (Apple.com, 2015).

When it comes to employee development, Apple employees are encouraged to take the initiative and drive their own career and development.  Apple does offer its employees resources to help them attain their career goals.  Available is a career management strategy that helps employees identify skills and abilities that would help them in future positions.  Also offered is a comprehensive career resource library which offers current information on careers, a listing of job opportunities and a bulletin board that features current industry trends.  Brown bagging seminars are informal sessions to keep employees up-to-date on current industry and career trends.  Networking groups are available on a weekly basis and assist employees in learning more about the functional areas at Apple from a developmental or career changing perspective (Apple.com, 2015).