Leadership Analysis: Tim Cook and Michael Friedman

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Introduction

To a great extent, leadership refers to skill application by a person, enabling them to steer and guide an organization, a community, or a people towards increased performance and progress. A leader is an individual who has the authority to direct others in a particular field. A strong leader inspires, motivates, respects, trusts, and encourages their team to produce their best work. At the same time, a poor leader lacks management attributes and only concentrates on the ideas that reinforce their viewpoints (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Tim Cook, the current chief executive officer of Apple, is a strong leader who has worked to transform the company into customer-oriented and developing innovative workers. An example of a poor leader is Michael Friedman, the former executive director of Purdue Pharma, who could not guide others due to his dishonesty, leading to the entity’s bankruptcy. The paper will compare and contrast Tim Cook and Michael Friedman as the representatives of strong and poor leadership.

Strategic Leadership Role in Promoting Organizational Success

Strategic leadership is a manager’s capability to express their aims for the part or the entire organization and to persuade and motivate their subordinates to acquire that vision. Significantly, strong leaders embrace strategic leadership, which results in organizational success by spearheading exemplary work culture, and employee behavior and promoting talent (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Superiors, including Tim Cook, positively impact the company members as they implement organizational change by allocating resources, creating favorable corporate structures, and demonstrating their strategic vision. Due to their uncertainty tolerance, strong commanders work in ambiguous surroundings on challenging issues that affect and are influenced by external factors (Juneja, 2021). Over the years, Apple has recorded increased revenue, high product sales, and global expansion under the leadership of Tim Cook, who has engendered tactical productivity. Strategic leadership helps establish an environment whereby the workers forecast the firm’s needs in the context of their work.

A strong leader inspires subordinates to follow their ideas and substantially utilizes incentive and reward systems to encourage quality and productive employees to produce extensive performance. Poor leaders, such as Michael Friedman, are considered risk-averse and lack adequate planning, inventiveness, and perception to aid workers in realizing their objectives. The absence of self-awareness, team engagement, and articulacy made Michael use deceptive marketing services to promote opioid-enhanced products, which led to the company’s massive lawsuits, thus deteriorating organizational success. Even though both poor and strong leaders manage diverse work of stakeholders, the bad managers do not create shared value for themselves and the general society. Therefore, poor strategic commanders concentrate on short-term financial performance instead of promoting corporate governance (Juneja, 2021). An exemplary superior does embrace the strategic vision of the shareholders. He makes the workers develop autonomy and open communication to polish organizational culture challenges that hinder the firm’s success. A bad leader does not invest in having the right talent pool for the business entity, thus relying on their expertise and ideas.

Leadership Skills

Managers must have conceptual, technical, and interpersonal skills to execute their leadership roles and functions effectively. Unlike poor leaders, strong executives deploy conceptual capabilities to assess problems, develop innovative solutions, filter crucial databases, comprehend sophisticated relationships, and generate feasible mental models (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Good leaders have a great sense of interpersonal attributes, such as teamwork, the ability to tackle disputes, nonverbal and verbal communication, empathy, pragmatic attitude, and active listening to influence workers and sustain social networks. Despite most poor commanders’ immense technical skills, their leadership competency has generally deteriorated. The low-performing superiors consider themselves natural leaders and do not have practical lessons to develop leadership prowess (Marone, 2022). On the other hand, strong managers, including Tim Cook, are willing to continue furthering their careers as transformative leaders. Poor superiors, such as Michael Friedman, face challenges in effective problem-solving meetings since they have not developed interpersonal and cognitive skills.

To a great extent, leadership skills can be developed by adopting various best alternative strategies implemented by strong managers. Effective leaders typically enhance their management capabilities by practicing discipline at work. In that case, they meet deadlines, end meetings on time, and keep appointments. Poor managers, who are naturally disorganized, must find clarity by removing barriers for them to exceed goals. Another way to develop leadership skills is via learning to follow. A strong leader has no issue yielding restrictions to another individual when appropriate (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). They do not feel intimidated when someone disagrees with them to spearhead their ideas. Tim Cook has promoted an organizational culture where workers share ideas freely, which has made him grow his leadership skills, unlike Michael Friedman. A good leader must develop situational awareness, whereby they can project and handle problems before they happen (Marone, 2022). Such ability enables one to recognize opportunities overlooked by others. The undertaking inspires other team members, who see a manager as a source of encouragement and guidance. Lastly, strong superiors develop their leadership skills by resolving interpersonal conflicts and being discerning listeners.

Strategic Leadership Principles

Typically, a strong manager uses strategic leadership principles to develop high-performance teams and improve organizational productivity. A strong leader distributes responsibility by pushing power downward across the business entity (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Since they are future-oriented, they empower workers at all levels to make decisions. Since poor leaders do not delegate duties, they lack the potential to have an opportunity to witness what occurs upon taking a risk. The principle escalates adaptability, collective intelligence, and organizational resilience over time by harnessing the wisdom of individuals outside the traditional decision-hierarchy hierarchy (Fadhil et al., 2021). Tim Cook has a small management support team that ensures all assignments are performed effectively to meet deadlines, increasing organizational performance. Micheal Friedman, a poor leader, believes in performing all executive duties alone and does not encourage job autonomy. Strategic leadership success depends on a strong leader’s implementation of ethical behavior principles. Poor managers are self-centered, manipulative, autocratic, and dishonest, which leads to the failure of having quality productivity teams.

In the company, the executive officer must recognize the best performing employees and assist others in improving, which increases the entity’s reputation. A strong leader develops an open statement regarding responsibilities and roles, which aligns the workforce to their lines of accountability (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). The staff becomes aware that all their undertakings must match the set code of conduct, and their actions rhyme with their words. In case of a mistake, a strong leader acknowledges them and motivates subordinates to emulate such behaviors. Another crucial principle of strategic leadership is bringing the whole self to work, whereby practical managers comprehend and handle the most demanding issues and situations. They deploy their passions, experiences, preferences, and capabilities to develop innovative solutions (Fadhil et al., 2021). Poor leaders do not involve others in solving problems, discouraging them from performing adequately, thus creating a higher-stress work surrounding. An honest and authentic job environment integrated with evidence-based research principles enables workers to share their capabilities and motivations for improving organizational performance.

Another essential strategic leadership principle involves finding time to reflect. Double-loop learning makes a strong leader study their thinking regarding a situation involving assumptions and biases. A manager conducts extensive research and determines the best time to decide and determine the attached implications. Reflection assists in learning from mistakes and helps a strong executive to determine the value of aspirations. A superior can easily tackle the high pressure of a project and manage all the subordinates effectively by correctly assigning them duties and responsibilities (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Poor leaders fail to reflect on their actions and the anticipated consequences, which lower team performance. Effective leaders ask themselves how they can best contribute and what capabilities are required in the future to enhance organizational productivity. The leaders support their human capital teams by training them, which makes them work toward increasing performance.

Lastly, recognizing management development as an ongoing practice is a strategic leadership principle to enhance organizational productivity and develop high-performance teams. No matter how experienced strong leaders are, they have the intelligence and humility to realize the essentiality of learning and growth. In that regard, strategic managers admit that they do not have all answers to problems, which makes them allow other workers with different expertise to help them in some circumstances (Ali & Anwar, 2021). Unlike poor leaders, strategic executives create room for others to share ideas by motivating modern thinking methods and explicitly requesting advice.

Importance of Power, Politics, and Perception

Politics, perception, and power are substantial in organizational culture and strategic leadership. At first, power ensures that the workers are committed and comply with the organization’s set policies. A strong leader utilizes authority to avoid resistance among subordinates, ensuring they coexist in harmony resulting in increased productivity. A strategic manager develops expert and referent power, encouraging employees to commit to activities that mandate high initiative, effort, and persistence (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Referent influence strengthens organizational culture as it helps evaluate critical decisions impacting it. The care, support, and acceptance rendered by a strong leader and their ability to solve external threats and internal problems are beneficial to improve strategic leadership.

The organizational culture and visionary intents managed by poor leaders are typically traditional as they use position power to spearhead punishments, hide crucial information, and resist transformational change (Radi et al., 2022). Organizational politics refers to several tasks related to deploying influence tactics to enhance a company or personal interests. Leaders possessing political skills tend to acquire extensive authority, enabling them to regulate stress and job demands. Politics enables strong leaders to have a greater effect on organizational outcomes and expectations by ensuring they increase innovation to remain competitive (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Perceptions are essential in strategic leadership as they enable the success of a leader. Perspectives enable evaluation of the leader’s performance to ensure proper decision-making towards improving organizational culture.

Knowledge Essentiality as a Leadership Resource

Knowledge plays a crucial role as a leadership resource, which helps in implementing activities in the business world. Knowledgeable leaders can impact and shift the direction of objectives toward long-term goals. The expertise determines which skills and resources to apply in a particular situation. Managers use this leadership resource by identifying new people and opportunities that could assist tackle the organization’s challenges, outcomes, and projects. A strong leader uses knowledge to identify factual information, determining how assets are shared and utilized (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). An effective knowledge leader comprehends that they are not a one-man team and must communicate what they know and aid in designing frameworks to attain organizational results. A strong leader can develop a cohesive culture of sharing ideas and solving employee disputes through knowledge. In addition, managers can effectively assign responsibilities as they know the capability of every employee, enabling them to lead a team towards high performance. A good manager uses knowledge to help workers showcase dyadic behaviors by offering coaching and guidance.

To a great extent, a worker’s skill level impacts the exchange correlation between the superior and the employee and determines the feasibility of assigning more tasks. Knowledge enables leaders to avoid mistakes and establish the quality of human capital, which is an essential determinant of performance (Radi et al., 2022). A poor leader does not know how to make a group of talented employees work harmoniously. Through knowledge leadership, a manager can hire people with specialized expertise in maximizing their potential to build a high-performance team. Expertise enables a superior to utilize human resource initiatives and systems to enhance worker capabilities and skills. Identifying management programs, such as benefits and compensation, development, training, succession planning, and appraisal, motivate workers to become high-performing teams (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). A poor leader does not use knowledge management, thus making deteriorated decisions about allocating scarce resources. The top executives must solve trade-offs and disputes, which can hinder building a high-performance team.

Various Systems for Organizational Leadership Development

Organizational leadership development refers to tasks that prepare existing and prospective managers to perform their roles effectively. It enhances the subordinates’ skills in crucial areas, such as project management and decision-making. The initial system is strategic communication, which entails providing the organization members with the correct database (Radi et al., 2022). When strong leaders, including Tim Cook, optimize their contributions to daily conversations, they engage and match individuals around a typical cause, minimize risks, keep workers focused, and equip them with factual information. Therefore, they establish a conducive organizational culture, reduce excuses, leverage the leadership authority, and treat errors as intellectual capital to shape behaviors and beliefs (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Another essential system for organizational leadership development is performance accountability. Poor leaders, such as Michael, fail to embrace such concepts, while strong leaders use them to clarify what is expected of employees and match repercussions or rewards with actual productivity. Effective executives build discipline into their management cycle and leadership process to attain predictability, renewal, sustainability, and learning. The delivery systems help eliminate complexity, and the managers align initiatives with proactive strategies to achieve the organization’s goals.

Considerably, human performance systems are developed to attract and retain the most talented individuals in the organization. Strong leaders utilize the framework to employ the best candidates and assist them in developing their knowledge and skills over time (Abu et al., 2021). The workers add know-how and abilities, whereby a strong leader’s reward makes them remain loyal. Lastly, the measurement systems entailing reviews, metrics, and course corrections keep a venture on track. Poor leaders do not implement measures that promote consistent behaviors, quality control, and predictable organizational results (Radi et al., 2022). Strong leaders create and sustain the measurement framework to ensure disciplined processes. They review the status of operational outcomes via primary sound metrics, track progress against planning, and ensure action is driven by insight-grounded and factual databases aimed at attaining the vision.

Impact of Effective Strategic Leadership

Effective strategic leadership can be applied to change the employees’ minds positively. To a great extent, several prospective management development merits are derived from the strategic leadership approach. At first, strong leaders, such as Tim Cook, use effective strategic leadership to transform the thoughts of their subordinates by uniting them, generating buy-in, and keeping each one on track toward collective objectives. In that way, a pragmatic leader creates a framework for practical decision-making to avoid resistance from workers. Everyone can better contribute toward achieving a common vision when subordinates feel engaged, and managers communicate the goals (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). Since strategic leadership promotes impartiality, the workers can transition their minds to ensure better organizational productivity and team performance. Strong leaders act as the role models of the organization and embrace accountability and productivity, setting the phase for general success. (Ali & Anwar, 2021) Even though some subordinates fear transparency, strong managers incorporate interpersonal response, active listening, training, and emotional intelligence building through strategic leadership, which positively changes the employees’ minds.

The strong leader uses the model to retain superstar employees by designing benefits to support them in executing their duties effectively. Strategic leadership enables a strong realize the essentiality of investing in growth and development (Abu et al., 2021). Developing an employee-centric organization that caters to the needs of the workers can make them change their mindset positively towards undertaking organizational activities (Ali & Anwar, 2021). Poor leaders, including Michael Friedman, do not adequately utilize strategic leadership. Embracing the model enables strong executives to align business entity training with broader objectives (Yuki & Gardner, 2020). The modern alignment model allows development opportunities, enabling the workers to acquire and hone skills absent within the workforce. The scenario enables the employees to change their minds positively as they know they will benefit through engaging and sharing ideas with their colleagues and obtaining support from their strong leaders.

Real World Business Situations

To a great extent, Micheal Friedman, the executive director of Purdue Pharma, acted as an autocratic leader, who had massive authority over others, made choices grounded on their ideals, and did not listen to their subordinates. Due to this, he used deceptive marketing strategies to promote high sales of OxyContin, which was against the shared value of the general community and the shareholders. The lack of strategic leadership made the employees low performers, subjecting the company to losses. On the other hand, Tim Cook, the chief executive officer of Apple, has propelled the company to record high profits. He has effectively utilized strategic leadership to enhance his management skills by deploying referent and expert power (Kim, 2020). In the company, all the workers have autonomy and freely share innovative ideas without fearing their leader, resulting in improved organizational productivity and high-quality team performance.

Conclusion

Even though both the strong and poor leaders manage company resources and are superiors of their fellow workers, noticeable differences exist between them. Thus, good leaders motivate, encourage, and empower their subordinates. They deploy strategic leadership to improve their management skills to ensure everyone in the organization shares ideas freely to improve themselves and increase organizational productivity. On the other hand, poor leaders fear being corrected by junior employees and do not inspire teamwork, thus making self-centered decisions.

References

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Fadhil, A. H., Al-Sammari, A. A. A., Al-Hakeem, L. M. H., & Qandeel, A. M. A. (2021). The role of leaders’ moral intelligence to enhance strategic leadership. Journal of Management and Accounting Studies, 9(1), 65-78. Web.

Juneja, P. (2021). Strategic leadership: Definition and qualities of a strategic leader. Management Study Guide. Web.

Kim, H. (2020). Comparison of strategic leadership: Steve Jobs and Tim Cook. Business and Management Studies, 6(3), 17-25. Web.

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Yuki, G. A. & Gardner, W. L (2020). Leadership in Organizations (9^th ed). Pearson.

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