Harvard Business Review

Over the years there have been questions about the management style of Steven P. Jobs, co-founder of Apple.  Many have asked if Mr. Jobs was, well, to be blunt, a jerk. 

These charges by critics stem in part from Mr. Jobs’s tendency to be rude to people.  It was no secret that Mr. Jobs had an outwardly aggressive penchant for control and he would often put down anyone he didn’t like.  Sometimes his rudeness was personal, other times business, often it was both. 

But Walter Isaacson, author of the biography “Steve Jobs,” believes Mr. Jobs is being misunderstood when people ask this question.  As Mr. Isaacson writes in an article about Mr. Jobs for the Harvard Business Review: “His petulance and impatience were part and parcel of his perfectionism.” 

The article, titled “The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs,” offers 14 tips and rules for being a good manager and inspiring employees to do the “unimaginable,” as Mr. Jobs was unarguably capable of doing. 

The list of management rules include: simplifying products, taking responsibility from end to end, tolerating only “A” players, focus on a few good products and, of course, bending reality. 

Mr. Isaacson points out in the article that if Mr. Jobs had truly been a jerk, as his critics say, then he wouldn’t have been able to build the most loyal and hardworking management team of any company in America. 

“Those who did not know Jobs interpreted the Reality Distortion Field as a euphemism for bullying and lying,” Mr. Isaacson writes, referring to Mr. Jobs’s famous ability to make people believe almost anything by bending reality. “ But those who worked with him admitted that the trait, infuriating as it might be, led them to perform extraordinary feats.” 

Mr. Isaacson refers to a conversation he had with Mr. Jobs about working only with “A” level employees.  Mr. Jobs told him: “I don’t think I run roughshod over people,” but if something is no good, “I tell people to their face.  It’s my job to be honest.”  When Mr. Isaacson pressed Mr. Jobs if he could get the same results from employees without being so mean, Mr. Jobs respond, “But it’s not who I am.” 

Managers who try to emulate Mr. Jobs by just being rude or aggressive are missing the point, Mr. Isaacson argues in the article.  Mr. Jobs was striving for perfection. 

“It’s important to appreciate that Jobs’s rudeness and roughness were accompanied by an ability to be inspirational,” Mr. Isaacson writes.  Most importantly, he aptly points out that the Apple executive team stayed with the company longer than competitors and that these employees were more loyal than other companies, even those with nicer, gentler bosses. 

“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them,” Mr. Jobs told Mr. Isaacson. “ By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things.” 

It’s tough to argue that Mr. Jobs was wrong.  Measured by its market capitalization of more than half a trillion dollars, Apple is now the largest public company in the world.  And under Mr. Jobs, the company invented and transformed the computing, music, phone, tablet, retail and publishing industries and made entire industries realize the importance of simplicity and design.