The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson – Harvard Business Review – 2012
It’s important to appreciate that Jobs’s rudeness and roughness were accompanied by an ability to be inspirational. He infused Apple employees with an abiding passion to create groundbreaking products and a belief that they could accomplish what seemed impossible. And we have to judge him by the outcome. Jobs had a close-knit family, and so it was at Apple: His top players tended to stick around longer and be more loyal than those at other companies, including ones led by bosses who were kinder and gentler. CEOs who study Jobs and decide to emulate his roughness without understanding his ability to generate loyalty make a dangerous mistake.
“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs told me. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain.” Most of them do. “He would shout at a meeting, ‘You asshole, you never do anything right,’” Debi Coleman recalls. “Yet I consider myself the absolute luckiest person in the world to have worked with him.” Go to story
excerpt from lecture on Srimad-Bhagavatam 2.9.4, Japan, April 22, 1972:
A spiritual master has the right to chastise. Father, spiritual master, they are advised to chastise. Putram cha shishyam cha tadayen na tu lalayet. So father and teacher is advised by Chanakya Pandit that “You should always chastise your son and disciple. Chastise.” Tadayet. Tadayet means “Simply chastise. Always find out mistake.” Don’t be angry, but it is the business of the teacher and the father simply to find out your mistakes, not to find out your good things. Tadayen na tu lalayet. Lalayet means patting: “Oh, my dear son, my dear boy, you are so nice. You have done…” Sometimes it is done, but it is the business of the teacher and the father to chastise. Never recognize the disciple’s business or son’s business as very good. Then they will spoil. That is the injunction of Chanakya Muni. Lalane bahavo doshah: “If you simply pat, then there will be so many faults.” Lalane bahavo doshah. Doshah means faults. Tadane bahavo gunah: “And if you chastise, oh, they will be very much qualified.” Tadane bahavo gunah, tasmat: therefore, putram cha shishyam cha tadayen na tu lalayet, “simply chastise. Don’t pat.” This is the injunction, moral injunction. So, so far we are concerned, when our spiritual master used to chastise, we took it as blessing. That was very nice. And he would chastise like anything. “Damn rascal, foolish, stupid,” anything, all good words.
