Zineb El Baraka

Corporate leadership

Quality of leadership has been and probably always will be an important element for
organizations. The need for having leading managers recently imposed and it represents currently
a significant challenge due to the increasing complexity of our universe. Hundreds of companies
and dozens of industries have been forced to restructure in order to remain competitive.
According to Landis, E. A., Hill, D., & Harvey, M. R. (2014) Maccoby (1979) concluded from
his observations that the need of firms to survive and prosper requires a higher level of
leadership than ever before .When organizations experience change, it is imperative that their
organizational leadership is adequate to meet the challenge (p.98). Meaning that the challenges
posed by intense competition, keeping costs to the lowest level, increasing quality, improving
service to customers, and quickly imposing new products on the market are not easy. In order to
tackle these problems, companies should modify the usual ways of overcoming these challenges.
It is difficult to understand leadership without placing it in the history of business
organizations. Leadership is often distinguished from management. Rather, it is currently defined
as the ability to project into the future and inspire the teams desire to succeed and even excel,
while the management is more concerned about creating teams and controlling their outcomes.
When it comes to the relationship between leaders and subordinates, the latter recognize
some value to management, but the leaders are considered a part of a group or team after having
proved their values to their subordinates. As stated by Boseman, G. (2008), Leaders are

afforded the opportunity to lead not because they are appointed by senior managers; they lead
because they are perceived and accepted by followers as leaders(p.36). In other words, leaders
receive their authority from a group as they have been accepted for that post. To remain in a
leadership position a person should allow the group to obtain satisfactions that would be
unattainable for them elsewhere.
A leader is primarily used to perform functions which an organization needs to firstly achieve its
goals and also provide an adequate level of satisfaction with its members to motivate them to
invest their energies. If these functions are not insured, it is assumed that the group or
organization will be reduced to a minimum level of operation, or it will be difficult for the
business to achieve the objectives effectively and efficiently.
As LOBONEA (OLTEAN), A. (2014) found The leader will invest his energy in motivating the
teams, in situations that require major changes, in crisis situations, in innovations. This phase
requires a visionary leader who emphasizes creativity, who inspires and impresses with the
intensity of his vision. It is a leadership that maintains positive interpersonal relationships
between the leader and members of the organization, mutual trust, honesty, availability and
within normal limits, also friendship(p.248). Thus, a competent leader acquires many qualities
such as integrity; he must be honest and right in what he says and does. Also, he needs to have a
strong meaning of communication so that dialogue would be encouraged in the organization.
Moreover, one of the essential characteristics, a leader should be visionary knowing where to go
and sharing his passion and goals. A leader is someone who promotes loyalty and values among
the employees. In addition, he is humble, passionate and enthusiastic to motivate those around
him.

For the purpose to be truly effective, a leader must look for and handle the necessary resources,
coordinate actions, produce results, measurement and control, make reports and ensures process
quality of the goods and services. As a visionary, he creates alone or with others a vision for his
company, he finds ways to communicate effectively, inspires team members at the level of
feelings and reason. A leader also acts as a coach searching for talents internally and externally
where he forms successors by amplifying their potential through interactions where he serves as
coach. Another role assimilated by a leader is being an educator; he passes the information,
knowledge and experience through traditional educational opportunities such as conferences,
conversations, workshops and informative exchanges in order to improve the skills of the team
and the intellectual capital of the organization as a whole. As an ambassador, he forms strategic
alliances for mutual support; designs effective strategies to strengthen relations with the media
and other institutions and promotes the philosophy, history and the services of its organization.
One of the most influential, recognized leaders in the world is Steve Jobs. Skillful speaker,
charismatic and visionary, as it was shown in the research of When he recruited key people,
beyond the obvious need for competence, he focused on ensuring most importantly that they
cared a great deal about precisely the same things that mattered to him; Steve Jobs would tell his
team what the end product was going to look like and also the exact steps of the way that would
be followed to get there (p.15). He is the engine of the company that he founded in 1976 with
Steve Wozniak. He was expelled in 1985 and sales dropped; but when he returned in 1996, the
business picked up. He was responsible for all of Apple's innovations: the graphical interface, the
mouse, the iMac, iPod, iPhone. He manages his team with enthusiasm and authoritarianism that
attract and frighten at the same time.

In 1996, the same day of departure of his predecessor, he launched during a meeting "Tell me
what's wrong here" Without waiting, he answers himself: " Its the products, they are horrible"
He took radical decisions by reducing the ranges that gave birth to one of the most emblematic
of IT products: the iMac. His attention to detail and perfection is proven by the fact when he
eliminated the first version of the iPod due to a click that occurred when headphones are
plugged. According to the media, he was uncontrollable and detestable manager for some of its
employees even if they recognized his visionary who gave meaning to the work.
Moreover, his leadership was marked with an unusual personality that sometimes hid all the
work of the entrepreneurial team; as everyone knows, if he was the leader and the first trade of
the company, he had enough little technical knowledge, the latter originally held by Steve
Wozniak, his partner in the venture. Having a broader vision than design thinking, we can be
very critical about the character of Steve Jobs and be measured in the act of taking it as a model.
However, since Jobs is the cause of one of the largest capitalization in the world and has revived
Apple with the iPod, it shows that a corporate needs not only managers, investors or financial
specialist, but also entrepreneurs like Jobs, who necessarily have a dark side, self-centered and
individualistic. In fact, Steve Jobs is often presented as a business model because he knew better
than others talk about him and had many of the skills and characteristics required to be an
efficient leader.
Every day, the business world knows many paradoxes. Among them the place given to a person,
is strongly torn between extreme positions. The ability to work with others, to enlist them in the
mission of the company is a key issue. Richardson, A. (2013) shows that Strong leadership is
intrinsically linked to business success, yet many organizations fall short of their potential

because they do not equip their staff with the necessary skills to lead effectively. While all
leaders have the ability to manage, only a small portion of managers have the necessary skills to
become strong leaders, leaders with edge, and this is stifling business growth (p.28). In this
context, the human dimension is a real capital, the latter based on the values of the organization,
the executive leadership and on the development of people and relationships of trust between
actors. To this end, the leadership challenge is not just in the mastery of techniques and abilities
to do the job; of course it is always necessary to know the technical, management, strategy and
other knowledge. Yet the ability to lead others and give them the will to progress is a plus that
makes the difference.
On the whole, the leader has a fundamental role to play in fostering the climate in which trust is
possible. Human resource management systems and total quality management are concerned. It
is absolutely necessary to translate these intentions into concrete actions and criteria values
preserved in the organization. The success of the organization depends on it.

References
Boseman, G. (2008).Effective Leadership in a Changing World. Journal Of Financial Service
Professionals, 62(3), 36-38.

De Silva, Z. (2011). Steve Jobs -- Best Corporate Leader Ever?. New Zealand Apparel, 44(11),
15.

Landis, E. A., Hill, D., & Harvey, M. R. (2014). A Synthesis of Leadership Theories and Styles.
Journal Of Management Policy & Practice, 15(2), 97-100.

LOBONEA (OLTEAN), A. (2014). THE BEHAVIORAL MODEL OF A LEADER. Analele.

Universitatii 'Eftimie Murgu' Resita. Fascicola II. Studii Economice, 242-249.

Richardson, A. (2013). How to be a leader with edge. Management Services, 57(4), 28-29.