Steve jobs situational leadership is Low relationship and low task and High readiness?

Answer 1

Steven Jobs is capable of using each of the four styles described in the Situational Leadership model. However, his style preference appears to be S4 (Style 4) - Low amount of task behavior (Structure) and low amount of relationship behavior (Support). Like many CEO is style profile is 1/4 and he tends to alternate between style 4 (above) and the very directive S1 (Style 1) High Task/Low Relationship. This kind of leader has little time for people requiring hand-holding. They tend to make a decision up front as to whether this person "gets it" or not. If you get it, then you tend to get a delegating (or abandoning) S4 and if you don't get it he tends to lay a bunch of structure on you. He does not suffer fools as we all know so he he doesn't have to use that style as much. There all well documented accounts of when he has -- they tend to be intense and memorable.

That said, I saw a recent story where he tried to use a S2 with a snotty user, a woman that wanted his PR Department to do her homework for her. The S2 didn't work so he snapped back to an S1 ... appropriately.

The problem with his style is that it tends to foster the all important self-fulfilling prophecy. If he delegates (S4) to you, you tend to rise to to the challenge of bootstrapping thyself for the task at hand. If he tends to use S1 then you become a quivering pile of goo. Once he's deemed you as "not getting it" it's near impossible to make it back into the (I got this" camp and in fact it may be time to pack your things.

In calm moments when the stakes are high for a task and he's working with people he's invested in, Steve is perfectly situational and flexes his styles appropriately as per Hersey's Situational Leadership model. This does not get much airplay.

How do I know? My sister worked for him at Apple Computer and I worked for Dr. Paul Hersey, (the man that developed Sit Lead) for nearly 20 years.

Great question - Sit Lead is the ultimate leadership hack but you're not gonna learn it on the web. The depth of this model is phenomenal and you must "peel the onion" to get it. Use organizationally (And Apple does) it becomes a virtual leadership operating system. See www.situational.com for more.

Good luck with the paper.