Steve Jobs

Power and Politics

Types of Power:
How has Jobs done it? Jobs draws on all six types of power. His vision and sheer force of will helped him succeed as a young unknown. But the same determination that helps him succeed has a darker side—an autocracy and drive for perfection that can make him tyrannical. Let’s take each of these in turn.

• Legitimate power. As CEO of Apple, Jobs enjoys unquestioned legitimate power.
• Expert power. His success has built a tremendous amount of expert power. Jobs is renowned for being able to think of markets and products for needs that people didn’t even know they had.
• Reward power. As one of the richest individuals in the United States, Jobs has reward power both within and outside Apple. He also can reward individuals with his time and attention.
• Information power. Jobs has been able to leverage information in each industry he has transformed.
• Coercive power. Forcefulness is helpful when tackling large, intractable problems, says Stanford social psychologist Roderick Kramer, who calls Jobs one of the “great intimidators.” Robert Sutton notes that “the degree to which people in Silicon Valley are afraid of Jobs is unbelievable.” Jobs is known to berate people to the point of tears.
• Referent power. But at the same time, “He inspires astounding effort and creativity from his people.” Employee Andy Herzfeld, the lead designer of the original Mac operating system, says Jobs imbues employees with a “messianic zeal” and can make them feel that they’re working on the greatest product in the world.

Jobs’s ability to persuade and influence has come to be called a “reality distortion field.” As Bud Tribble put it, “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything.” Jobs’s power is not infallible—he was ousted from his own company in 1987 by the man he hired to help him run it. But he returned in 1997 and brought the company back from the brink of failure.
Power can result from sheer drive, persistence, resilience, and the ability to tolerate conflict.
Power can come through the projection of an image of strength that may not yet be the reality. Jobs’ ability to create a sense of inevitability about Apple’s products is legendary. Even those who accuse him of having a “reality distortion field” manage to find themselves talking about his devices.

Influence tactics: 
The lesson recognizes those influence tactics by leaders as rational persuasion, inspirational and personal appeals, consultation, ingratiation, exchange, coalition tactics, pressure tactics, and legitimizing tactics. Although many of these tactics will fit Steve Job’s profile, his inspirational appeal stands out as his best tactic along with his socialized power.
It focus on values, emotions, and beliefs to gain support for a request or course of action. “Stay hungry, stay foolish” (Steve Jobs) is a good example of this tactic. Inspirational appeals are effective when they are authentic, personal, big-thinking, and enthusiastic.

Job’s ability to push his workers beyond their limits came from his ability to make them believe they can do extraordinary work in a short period of time which many deemed to be impossible; this was called Job’s reality distortion field.

Another reason for Steve Job’s success as a CEO is that he was a leader with socialized power which is the service of higher goals and includes empowering rather than having the need for personalized power for the person’s own needs. This is shown through his push for perfection in Apple products and focusing more on the product’s quality than on the profit.
The success of Apple can be greatly attributed to Job’s ability to motivate his workers through his inspirational appeal and the use of socialized power.

However, just before time of launch of Macintosh, the computer was unable to say Hello which it first was saying, 3 hours ago. Jobs threatened Andy Hertsfeld by pressurizing him that during the launch speech, he is going to mention that the software which was supposed to say hello, which became a failure, was designed by Andy, among other people’s successes. This made him to strive to do whatever was possible for it to say hello and it worked.  

One of the things that Steve Jobs was able to do very well was to create a beyond reality field, both in positive and negative ways for him. It helped to motivate his team to finish projects by desired deadlines (regardless of how impossible they seemed). He did this by addressing people passionately and having them see things from his eyes. He conveyed his vision repeatedly and had others believe in his mission

Impression Management:
Steve Jobs is the master of Impression Management as he helped to build initial support and funding for Apple when the company was just getting started. While Steve Wozniak was the computer genius behind Apple, Jobs was responsible for attracting potential investors. He used impression management to aid him in reeling in the investors and getting them to jump on board with his plan.
Investors and businessmen were struck with the impression that Jobs was very intelligent and had a very bright future. The impression that Jobs made on those people allowed Apple to get the funding it need to start building its’ self into the super company it is today.
Once Apple was a full functioning company Jobs didn’t stop using impression management to his advantage. He used his ability to make himself look powerful and intelligent to sell products. Jobs would deliver his pitch and empathize how he was trying to save the American school system by bring them into the technological age, as if he was doing them a service by selling them the computers.

Steve Jobs also engaged in Impression Management, when his wife came to him  before the Macintosh Launch and he made excuses, when she was asking for evidence regarding his statement about the his wife in Time Magazine.

Communication

Jobs used several techniques for clear communication. His slides were simple and he used images and pictures to make it easier for his audience to remember the messages. He spent a lot of time planning every detail of his presentations.
When he used to present or launch a new product, he always engaged in non-verbal communication with the audience and used body language, facial expressions, intonations with physical distance.
Jobs looks like he knows exactly what he’s doing.  He appears trustworthy.  His posture is confident yet easy, as if he were talking to an old friend.  His head is up, his shoulders are back, he stands tall, and his hands are open.  He invites the audience to listen to him with his body.