Content Analysis Personality is a combination of traits that classifies an individual’s behavior (Achua&Lussier, 2010). By understanding people’s personalities, you will be able to explain and predict others’ behavior and job performance. Between, the big five model of personality is the most widely accepted way to classify personalities that has been proved by researchers. The big five model of personality categories traits into the dimensions of surgency, agreeableness, adjustment, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.
Surgency consist of leadership and extraversion traits. The leader of Apple Inc. , Steve Jobs is a person in high surgency. People with high surgency wants to ahead and leading through competing and influencing. Extraversion is described as positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek out stimulation and the company of others. His self-confidence may at first be mistaken for extraversion; however, extraversion in a socially interested way appears not to be extractable (David Kramer, 2010). Agreeableness involved traits related to getting along with people.
People with agreeableness personality, will behave very sociable, friendly, easygoing and compliant, warm and caring. Steve Jobs is a low agreeableness person. He is not sociable, friendly, warm and caring about his employees. A former Apple employee said: “ No one greets him or says hi to him. Low ranking employees are afraid of him. I remember him walking around the campus one time and groups of people in his way would just split and let him walk through. ” (Nicholas Carlson, 2008). This has proved that he is low agreeableness person. Adjustment consists of traits related to emotional stability.
Based on, adjustment is on a range between being emotionally stable and unstable. People strong in adjustment are characterized as being good under pressure, having self control, being calm, secure, and positive. Steve Jobs is low adjustment person. He sometimes gets emotional and yells at his employees. Conscientiousness includes traits related to achievement. It means responsible and dependable. It also shows that the person willing to work hard to achieve goals and to success. Steve Jobs have this trait. He willing to work hard and put in time and effort to accomplish goals to achieve success.
Openness to experience has the traits that related to being willing to change and try new things. People with this trait are those imaginative, nonconforming, unconventional, and autonomous. Steve Jobs definitely have this trait. From Apple Inc. ’s product, we knew that Steve Jobs is a very imaginative person. Traits of effective leaders are a list of traits where effective leader should have. Not all effective leaders have all the traits, but they must strong on some of the traits, and others traits can be developed with some effort. Dominance is one of the two major traits of surgency.
People are dominant want to be manager and be in charge. In spite of that, they can’t be too bossy or use bullying style. It affects all the other traits that related to effective leaders. People have high energy trait with a positive drive to work hard to achieve goal. They will never felt tired to work, enjoyed to work, focused on the positive and have stamina and tolerate stress well. Like Steve Jobs, he is a good example for the leader who has high energy. He will never feel tired to work, will work hard to achieve the goal and manage to handle his stress.
Self confidence indicates whether you are self assured in your own judgment, decision making, ideas, and capabilities. It influence individual goals, efforts and task persistence. It is positively related to effectiveness and advancement. Steve Jobs has known with his self confidence. Locus of control is a range between external and internal belief in control over one’s destiny. Internalizers believe in the control of their own destiny. However, externalizers believe in fate, luck and not their own destiny.
Steve Jobs applied internal locus of control because he believe his own action will affect the outcome but not the luck affect the outcome. He is confident and able to learn from his mistake but not blaming other or luck. Stability falls under the adjustment in the Big Five dimension with effectiveness and advancement. A stable leader are able to control his/her emotion and avoid their anger have bad outcome. In this case, Steve Jobs might not fall under stability. He can’t control his emotion and as mentioned earlier, he will yells at his employees.
Steve Jobs’s hot temper is as notorious as it is well-documented (Nicholas Carlson, 2008). Integrity refers to behavior that is honest and ethical, making a person trustworthy. Integrity is the opposite of seeking self interest at the expense of others. It is important to run a successful business. As example, Apple Inc. is getting more successful now a days. “ We do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. You know, there’s a porn store for Android. You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn.
That’s a place we don’t want to go – so we’re not going to go there”(Randy Sly, 2010). This has shown Steve Jobs is making ethical business and care about the moral of society. Intelligence is the ability to think critically, to solve problem, and to make decision. Intelligence is the best used tool to predict jobs performance. It has been categorized into openness to experience dimension. Emotional Intelligence is the ability to work well with people, and is important healthy relationship. Self awareness, social awareness, self management and relationship management are the four components of emotional quotient.
These four components explain how we manage emotion. Steve Jobs has a low emotional intelligence when he leading Apple Inc. Flexibility refers to the ability to adjust to different situations (Achua& Lussier, 2010). Steve Jobs can quickly get into the situation when he returns back to Apple Computer Inc. in year 1995. Sensitivity to others refers to understanding group members as individuals, what their positions on issues are, and how best to communicate with and influence them. Steve Jobs has no this trait. He doesn’t sensitive to others and doesn’t care about others’ feelings.
Achievement Motivation Theory is a theory used to explain and predict behavior and performance based on a person’s need for achievement, power, and affiliation. According to Achua&Lussier, the need for achievement is the unconscious concern for excellence in accomplishments through individual efforts. High need for achievement falls under Big Five dimension of conscientiousness. Steve Jobs has fulfilled the requirements. He has an internal locus of control, self confidence, and high energy traits as mentioned earlier. He is goal oriented people; he will set moderate, realistic, attainable goals.
He will also seek challenge, excellence, and individually. The need for power is the desire to influencing others and seeking position of authority. High need for power falls under categories of the Big Five dimension of surgency. People with strong need for power have dominance trait and must be self confident with high energy. Steve Jobs confident in himself have high energy to work, ambitious and competitive, and he is less concerned with people, he only concerned about himself. Attitudes are positive and negative feelings about people, things, and issues.
Attitudes will influence employees’ job performance. Leadership attitudes included Theory X and Theory Y, Pygmalion effect, and Self concept. Theory X and Theory Y uses to explain and predict leadership behavior and performance based on the leader’s attitudes about followers. Employees with Theory X dislike to work and must be closely supervised. Theory X managers lead their employees by using external means of control such as threats and punishment and they will display more coercive, autocratic leadership. In this case, Steve Jobs would classify as a Theory X leader.
He will directly tell his employees what to do. The Pygmalion effect proposes that leader’s attitudes toward and expectations of followers, and their treatment of them, explain and predict follower’s behavior and performance (Achua& Lussier, 2010). According to Carmine Gallo, on January 8, 1983, Steve Jobs held a conference call assembling the final pieces of the Macintosh for a road show during which Apple would introduce the new computer to dealers. Jobs didn’t want the software shipped with the Mac labeled as demo and he set deadline for disk duplication on January
