Reading time – 31 seconds; Viewing time – 81 seconds  .  .  .

In conversation at a holiday open house, I learned that a couple of the people with whom I was talking are long time Apple employees. They live on the delivery end of products to schools and are among those doing well by doing good. Because I’m both a behavior geek and a student of leadership, I asked their opinion of Steve Jobs as a leader. They were less than fully enthusiastic.

On the other had, they were fine with his leadership, even in the face of the rather obvious lack of social skills that Jobs demonstrated. The standout for them seemed to be his mania for “insanely great products” created through imagination, elegant engineering and inspiring product design, to the point that even the innards of Apple’s products had to be elegantly designed. Because of that, my conversation mates were clear about what was important and they were inspired by that. That mattered so much that they could forgive Jobs’ frequent and well publicized interpersonal failings.

Perhaps a lesson from this is that leaders don’t have to be perfect in order to be strong leaders who inspire dedicated followers. However, they must be insanely clear about what is important. Think different: True North. Got it?

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