Steve Jobs is a flawed movie about a flawed leader. But go see it. The price of admission is well worth the two hour exploration of the moral ambiguity of leadership.
Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin have created an engaging but uneven production. Visually vivid and fast-paced, Steve Jobs lacks the storytelling brilliance of The Social Network: interwoven tales of Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions, insights, relationships and blessed luck that alchemically launched the multi-billion dollar Facebook. In this film, Sorkin expects us to take Jobs’ vision and abilities for granted, relegated as footnotes to the melodrama of parent-child abandonment, and redemption. OK, Jobs’ lost father and denial about daughter Lisa are part of the great Apple mythology. But the story of this guy’s leadership is so much richer.
Questions Unexplored
Throughout the film, I was longing for deeper understanding: how did Steve Jobs’ market-moving insights about the new digital future arise? What allowed him to attract brilliant acolytes and then extract every drop of their creative blood? How did he learn from failures at NEXT and Apple? Isaacson’s biography fills in some of those gaps—but the film was never intended as just the TED talk for the book. Missed opportunity.
But the film does excel in one important way: its heart-wrenching dramatizations of Jobs (played with cruel insouciance by Michael Fassbender) coolly manipulating those who served him so well. This biopic tells us too little about why Apple soldiers like Andy Hertzfeld, Steve Wozniak, and Joanna Hoffman were willing to go so deep into their personal wells for the boss. But the slavish experience of it all does shine brightly through. It reminds you why Jobs is a leader you hate to love and love to hate.
Performances of supporting actors (Michael Stuhlbarg, Seth Rogen, Kate Winslet) grab your gut: the pain of unrequited sacrifices; pleadings for even a small gesture from Jobs to ennoble one’s humanity; in-your-face emotions of well-intentioned people struggling for dignity when abused and challenged so unreasonably. You’ll wince knowingly watching the personal wreckage forced by “Steve’s reality distortion field.”
The clash of emotions pulls you in. You keep asking yourself, why has this guy risen to the status of secular god when he seems like about the worst boss anyone could ever have?
But You Know The Answer
Because people everywhere overlook bad behavior and HR prescriptions when a leader-perpetrator creates products and financial success that “dent the universe.” And despite objections to the film by Tim Cook and widow Lauren Powell, Jobs’ demeaning (if also messianic) leadership style is well established.
So should we be proud, embarrassed, or simply resigned to the lionization of leaders like Steve Jobs? Is he a “model leader” or just an exception to what the model is? Or should be?
Ambivalence About Heroic Leaders
Hard to say, given the cognitive dissonance lurking in the questions. Try this experiment at home: when you get back from the movie, pick up any recent leadership book—and compare its advice to what you just took in with Steve Jobs.
Chances are you’ll see major disconnect between the film and the book in your hand. Most leadership lore today (including some of my own)—advocates behaviors we would admire in a personal relationship. The great leaders, you read, are trusting and authentic. They’re fundamentally honest. They’re good at listening. They care about you and not just themselves.
Now Steve Jobs, in the film and beyond: a visionary and genius but also an anti-Christ of today’s best practice canons for leadership development. The guru of Apple could be deceitful, secretive, and dismissive of employee concerns. Narcissistic on and off stage, and self-absorbed with strange personal habits that he forced others to cater to. He rode his people hard, often refusing to even acknowledge their contributions. He knew the value of a talented team, but only rarely let subordinates change his mind. Jobs scorned corporate philanthropy and social responsibility.
He was tolerated for all this because he created dazzling products and a sense of elite and “techno-change-the-world-cool” around him. Chosen followers were granted membership in a special club. Part of what made the club so valuable was that anyone could be thrown out without warning.
In Praise Of Bruising Self-Interest
Of course leadership founded simply on taking advantage of others does not automatically result in “denting the universe.” But looking out for yourself, sometimes manipulating the truth or other people’s trust, and playing inauthentic roles to achieve a goal can all be helpful to your success—because that’s the real world of power and leadership.
Such in any case is the challenge of a new book by Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer, who argues vigorously, almost defiantly, for this world view. In Leadership BS, as the title suggests, Pfeffer dismisses the ideology of the current “leadership industry” and its “romantic and lay preaching” of feel-good, authentic behaviors for would-be leaders. Pfeffer remind us that so many otherwise esteemed leaders—Abraham Lincoln, Henry Kissinger, Jack Welch, Bill Gates—can all be cited in their careers for manipulative behavior, trust-destroying lies, and look-out-for-me moments. Steve Jobs is a frequent case example in the book.
Leadership BS makes a detailed, compelling argument for why modesty, authenticity, truthfulness, and caring for subordinates can actually undermine leader success. And therefore that such behaviors shouldn’t always be put on a pedestal. For Pfeffer, the most certain shrine belongs to the real and big leaders whom we admire for accomplishment and power, with all their warts, quirks, and HR-incorrect behavior.
Yes But…
Pfeffer’s perspective is a valuable antidote to the wishful thinking in many leadership narratives today. But let’s not push our moral pendulums all the way back to Hobbes and Machiavelli. Brutish and manipulative leadership will always have its place. But there’s plenty of evidence that helping others and building trust across an organization also drives individual success. Should we really dismiss the many leadership memoirs that avow trading early career cunning for the wisdom of reciprocity and people development later in life? Great leaders do grow and change along the way. Even Steve Jobs, as his cancer closed in, conceded how much he had learned from others in his earlier life.
But Are The Times A-Changing?
Finally, acknowledging the value of a more selfish, power-centric leadership model may simply reflect the high water mark of a paradigm superbly adapted to the still current world of hierarchical organizations. What about future organizational models for future kinds of work? When the creation of value depends more and more on cross-boundary networks and problem-solving, trust-building and collaborative governance will become more imperative. Forward thinking, many successful leaders are already embracing open-style, democratic and people-honoring principles—and behaviors to nurture performance communities among people who in no way “report up” to an ego-serving, high-handed master. Today’s emphasis on leaders who emphasize higher purpose and authenticity may be less wishful thinking than next-horizon adaptation.If so, consider how another film might portray Steve Jobs in some imaginary, future reincarnation, say in the year 2025—what leadership values and approach would be needed to reinvent Apple then?
Originally published on Forbes.com