He gave the world iPhones and iPads. . .
and gained a reputation as a bully along the way. She makes delicious macaroons and changes the lives of young people in the process. It's really important to have people's voices heard, so even when they're challenging – and especially when they're challenging.
If you have a vision, we look at how you can manage your self-belief alongside the need to take people with you. Pioneer, innovator, genius: words often used to describe Apple founder Steve Jobs. He brought an artist's eye to technology.
What began as a business with his friend Steve Wozniak operating from his parents' garage in the 1970s. . .
became one of the world's biggest corporations. Along the way, came the Macintosh computer, the iPad and the iPhone. Jobs' product launches turned into headline-making events.
His charisma and passion for his products were on full display. For those of you that have never used it, iTunes is the best music jukebox in the world and if you've lived in the US, it's been the best online music store in the world. But there were also stories of his harsh and controlling behaviour at work.
He would humiliate people in public, be offensive and rude, set near-impossible tasks for his team. Some were able to stand up to him and gained his respect, but Apple lost many talented people because of his harsh leadership style. So, did Apple's game-changing products have to come at the expense of so many hurt feelings?
There's one key practice, which was problematic in Steve Jobs' leadership, and this is common to many, many charismatic and visionary leaders like Steve Jobs, and that is that he didn't listen. He had very strong views, he had very strong preferences and it was very difficult to. .
. to have a conversation with him even, never mind a debate, about whether his ideas were good ideas or not. So, Steve Jobs didn't always listen.
He often wanted things to go his way. What did this mean for his staff? In practice, working for the kind of visionary leader that Steve Jobs was often means doing exactly what you're told to do.
It's not. . .
it's not a collaborative process and it's not a collective process. You have a single leader, who has very strong and very clear ideas, and who wants you as an employee to put those ideas into practice. If there's a problem, in putting those ideas into practice, it's your problem; it's not the problem of the leader or the idea, or the vision.
Leaders like Steve Jobs can make it difficult to be collaborative, or work together. So, is it best to avoid leaders with a strong vision? So, this kind of leadership can be very inspiring and it's very important to recognise that.
Whenever we talk about charisma, we are talking about leaders that people want to follow and we're talking about leaders who are. . .
often who are successful in terms of creating organisations or successful corporations like Apple. It's a kind of organisation, though, where you either fit or or you don't, and so it's a. .
. it's a black or white situation. I think it's very important to be clear with yourself, if you are thinking about joining that kind of organisation or following that kind of leader, that it might not work out and you may need to move on.
A leader with a clear vision can be inspiring, but it's important you believe in that vision too. So, how could Steve Jobs have done things differently? So, with a charismatic or a visionary leader, the.
. . one of the key dangers is that it's very easy to get carried away, to.
. . to lose yourself in the vision, and to lose sight of the other people that you work with and the collaborators that you rely on to make your vision happen.
So, I think one of the key messages about visionary leadership is always to remember any kind of product, any kind of success, putting a vision. . .
making a vision become reality involves a whole group of people and it is not just about the leader. So, visionary leaders should recognise the value of others; it's not just about them. Meet Rosie Ginday, the founder of Miss Macaroon, a company based in the British city of Birmingham and named after the delicious little biscuits they make.
But it isn't only the macaroons that make this company special. Its chefs are some of Birmingham's most troubled young people. Rosie uses her baking business to help her community.
And she gives her young staff the skills and confidence to make a mark in the world. So, how important is vision to Rosie? Vision is incredibly important.
As a leader, it's so important for you to be able to set a longer term vision – something that's bigger than, you know, small and medium-term goals, but a real purpose for your business. So, something that everybody within your organisation, whatever level they work at, can get behind and understand whether their job contributes to that longer-term vision. Rosie Ginday's vision gives her business a purpose.
So, how has she gone about achieving her vision? So, to be able to achieve your vision, you need to have a clear direction of where you're going. You need to really understand your values and you need to put a plan in place to be able to achieve that vision.
You also need the flexibility to. . .
and understanding that everything's not going to go to plan and – likelihood is – it really won't go to plan. So, you have to be able to adjust to whatever's going on around you. Rosie has a clear plan about where she wants to take her business, but is flexible about how she gets there.
To achieve your vision, you need a really strong team of people around you. At Miss Macaroon, we have a fantastic board of non-executive directors that helped me to set the strategy. We also have an amazing team of people that help us to build young people's skills and confidence, and help them to get back into work, but everybody really understands what the vision is.
Rosie's clear vision has helped her build a strong team of people around her, who share the same passion as her. Even though everybody is super-committed to that vision, it's really important that people come from different backgrounds – whether that's different industries, you know, different ages, genders, sexualities, you know, religious backgrounds or ethnic backgrounds, or even, kind of, the. .
. the commitment level to our social impact: we need different voices and thought processes around the table. Rosie actively seeks out a diverse range of people for her team, but doesn't that sometimes cause challenges?
It's really important to have people's voices heard, so, even when they're challenging – and especially when they're challenging – listening to what they're saying, because you could learn something from every conversation – so, being open to that challenge. Asking for help is really important when you need it, and just making sure that that diversity of thought helps you to grow your business and achieve your vision. Rosie understands listening to what people have to say is important, especially if it is not always what she wants to hear.
So, visionaries can inspire others and make powerful leaders. . .
but they need to remember to listen, and diversity is useful. There may be others who can help make their vision even better.
