What Made Steve Jobs a Great Leader

And has made Jeff Bezos so rich

The successes of Steve Jobs's career at Apple and his successes have a common link. It’s two other men: Steve Wozniak and Jony Ive. It was about having people working with him that controlled his genius and supplemented it. Without the help of Wozniak and Ive, the world's biggest company may not have grown.

But Jobs has been through rough times as well. He lost a battle with John Sculley and left Apple when Wozniak was less of an influence. When he made his return in 1997, he soon identified the talent of Ive and promoted him and allowing Ive to play an integral part in the rebirth of Apple to the company it is today.

None of that is to take away from what Jobs achieved, but I just wanted to show that a great leader needs great people around him. You don’t do this alone. My whole career I’ve been fortunate to work with great people that I have been able to trust and cover the areas that are not my strengths.

Wozniak was the better engineer, so Jobs leaned on him. Ive’s had an amazing eye for design, so Jobs leaned on him. Jobs focused on what made him great and surrounded himself with others that were the best in their field.

I mentioned Jeff Bezos in my subtitle. While there are not big name characters like Wozniak and Ive, he has always surrounded himself with people that make him better. Anyone that’s read about him will know about the ‘S Team’: the inner circle that he surrounds himself with who are also the people he trusts. It has changed over time, but some names like Shel Kaphan, Rick Dalzell, and Jeff Wilke were alongside him for a long period of time.

Ultimately Jeff Bezos was probably more of a controlling leader than Jobs, but they shared a regard for having the…

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