One Journey to Wise Leadership: Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs was a smart leader who created his own wisdom logic through trial and error. He discovered his noble purpose—to “put a dent in the universe”—early in life, but he limited himself to applying that purpose to Apple and his own family rather than the greater good of society. He had a somewhat rigid perspective and didn’t often value—or even tolerate well—the views of others. His role clarity—his understanding of his role in the world—seems to have improved as he went along: he picked the right people for the right roles. Many of his decisions were deeply intuitive, though they seemed counterintuitive to everyone else, like opening Apple retail stores. And he knew when to lead (as when he stuck to his decision to launch iPad despite significant skepticism) and when to let others lead (when, for example, he opened up the iPhone’s operating system to third-party application developers by creating App Store).

We do regard Jobs as a wise leader, though with some weaknesses. In our analysis, he was for most of his career unable to keep his identity separate from his role, a combination that turned him into both an egotistical manager and a great inventor. In other words, through most of his professional life, Jobs struggled to gain and demonstrate role clarity. And yet because he was so comfortable in playing the role of a customer himself—“I create products to please myself,” as he put it—his ego-centered approach to developing new products ended up also meeting the interests and needs of customers. Toward the end of his career, however, Jobs seems to have made huge progress in gaining role clarity. Aware of his mortality, he came to realize that he was a mere steward of the company he cofounded, and he gradually let go of the reins of Apple, gracefully passing the baton to a capable executive team that included Tim Cook and design chief Jonathan Ive. Hence, in Steve Jobs’s case, his six leadership capabilities were tightly integrated and worked in harmony, providing the foundation for his wisdom logic.

We surmise that Jobs discovered a great deal of his wisdom logic while running Pixar, where he learned to lead from behind and let others shine. When he returned to Apple in 1997 after his twelve years of exile, he had completed a “hero’s journey”—to use the term coined by the mythologist Joseph Campbell—bringing home (to Apple) a precious gift: his wisdom logic.² Not only did he apply his wisdom logic to create amazingly fine products, but he also cultivated a field of wise leadership within Apple. For instance, Jobs was known for his ability to shift other leaders’ perspectives at Apple and encourage them to make intuitive decisions and stick to them with fortitude no matter how unpopular they might be among Apple investors. As a result of this expanding field of wise leadership, Apple became highly successful.

In the last years of his life, Jobs began expanding the field of wise leadership beyond Apple by selectively (sometimes reluctantly) mentoring young leaders like Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Google cofounder Larry Page.³ Even after his untimely death, Jobs continues to inspire scores of leaders across industries to act and lead authentically with a laser focus on innovation.