Steve Jobs

Romina Troka

Individual Paper

Management 260

Steve Jobs

What is the most important lesson to learn from the interpersonal relationship side of Steve Jobs? (What to do . . . or what not to do, and why)

“Plays well with others,” would not be an expression that applied to Steve Jobs at any age. Yet he was the co-founder and CEO of Apple Computers, which has become the world’s most valuable company today. He was the driving force behind the world’s first widely successful personal computer in the 1980’s (the Macintosh), as well as the iMac, the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone and the iPad. In his best-selling biography, Steve Jobs, Walter Isaacson describes many of his unique qualities. But he also describes a man who was a real jerk – someone who might fit all the characteristics of a “high conflict person” : an unchanging pattern of blaming others, all-or-nothing thinking, unmanaged emotions and extreme behavior. Before starting reading the book “Steve Jobs” I always wondered what made Steve Jobs so successful ? Was his difficult personality necessary for his success? How did people around him manage his difficult personality? I think that Walter Isaacson addressed these questions very well in “Steve Jobs” .

What made Steve Jobs so successful and what to do to be successful like him ?

At the core of his success was a brilliant sense of design. He was unique in how he could take complex technological mechanisms and design them to be incredibly simple and fun for anyone to use. As a child, he learned from his adopted father all about the importance of good design with automobiles. He was allowed to take things apart and learn how things worked. He grew up in Silicon Valley outside of San Francisco, learning all about electronics from Hewlett-Packard and other tech companies. By the time he was in high school, he was part of a group of electronics geeks, who gathered to exchange ideas about the rapidly advancing potential of electronic breakthroughs....