Jobs or Gates: Differences in Leadership
Two of the biggest entrepreneurial names in the business world, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates offer a unique but different set of leadership skills. Both are successful business owners that have developed Fortune 500 companies through their dedication and hard working personality.
Bill Gates Leadership Style
Bill Gates offers a more participative leadership style. He believes in the value of input from his employees for overall company success. The driving force behind the success of Microsoft is the enthusiastic and hardworking attitude of Bill Gates. He understands that in business you will have fluctuations and changes that you must adapt to in order to succeed. With this business attitude, Gates has created a company that has been able to withstand the storm and still come out on top as a shining star. Through the process of delegation of tasks, Gates was able to develop a company that utilizes the skills of his team members to the fullest.
Bill Gates vs Steve Jobs
One of the biggest differences with Bill Gates from Steve Jobs is he was not as creative as Steve. He didn't share his passion for developing through his ideas alone. Instead he utilized the ideas and advice of his team to produce some of the biggest technology game changers in the market today. He was a genius in his own way.
Bill Gates had a unique skillset. He was able to visualize his goal and dreams and move forward with his process to make them come true. His envision for the world to have a computer in every household has gained significant traction and success since his early years.
Steve Jobs Leadership Style
Steve Jobs offers a more autocratic leadership style. An autocratic leadership has one person in charge, the authoritarian, who collects little to no input from team members. The leader is the main person in charge of decision making and typically decides based on their ideas rather than solid evidence. While this style of leadership may seem harsh to some it has opened a door to success for Steve Jobs.
Through his innovative ideas, Jobs has created one of the most successful tech companies on the globe. Though his attitude and leadership style may have come off as cocky to some, his dedication to innovation and design has surely benefited not only his company, Apple, but consumers all over the world.
Jobs understood the importance of taking risks and could be considered one of the biggest risk taking leaders in the world. Even though during his career he made mistakes, he was always the first to learn from them and grow with what was necessary to succeed.
Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates
Unlike Gates, Jobs didn't understand the benefit of working together as a team with your employees. He was seen as demanding on his team members and more of a dictator than an actual leader. While his techniques were difficult to those who worked for him, they were quite effective for the success of Apple products.
Steve Jobs had a creative design mindset. He wanted to develop his products how he saw best fit. He was once quoted as saying "people don't know what they want until you show it to them." Which helped Steve in this creative and design process in creating products he knew the consumers wanted.
Steve Jobs had an ability to recognize the beneficial skills in people, just in a much different way than Bill Gates. He was a true motivational speaker. He had the ability to get people interested and passionate about something. He developed a working atmosphere that was created through positive thinking and innovative design.
Conclusion
When comparing the two leadership styles between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, they are on a completely different spectrum entirely. From the leader and follower relationship style of Bill Gates to the Leader style of Steve Jobs, both offered some of the most successful products ever to the world. Each leadership style may have been entirely different but they had one major thing in common, the passion and dedication to innovation in the world of computing technology.
While Steve jobs offered only one set of ideas to be used to the board, he still was a genius when it came to innovative design. Through the process of trial and error, Steve Jobs learned from the mistakes that he made along the way. This process made Apple, a successful business in mobile technology and personal computing. The difference between great leadership like that of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs when compared to other CEO's is that they understand what needs to happen. This is the most important step for any leader, having the ability to recognize what needs to be done and how to execute this in order to become more productive and successful.