The best leaders are not in business for personal glory or iron-fisted control.
They lead because they seek to serve a higher purpose and use their unique gifts and skills to make a positive impact on the organization and the people they encounter.
An example of a leader whose heroics strides and leadership qualities have forever been engraved in the sands of time is Tim Cook.
Who is Tim Cook? What is his approach to leadership? And how has his style of leadership reshaped how Apple staff work, think, and behave?
I’ll be answering these questions. Let’s embark.
Apple Before Tim Cook
If you’ve ever owned an Apple product, you’re likely aware that Apple has a long and storied history. The company originally started as a small software business in the late 1970s, and it’s now one of the most profitable companies on the planet.
Apple Inc. went public in 1980, to instant financial success. And in January 2022, Apple became the first to hit a $3 trillion stock market value. a
Apple is the largest information technology company by revenue (totaling $274.5 billion in 2020) and, since January 2021, the world’s most valuable company.
Before Tim Cook took over as CEO in 2011, Apple Inc. was led by co-founder Steve Jobs in 1997.
During his time as CEO, Steve Jobs’s leadership style was autocratic. He had a meticulous eye for detail and surrounded himself with like-minded people to follow his lead.
His creative awareness, his ‘meticulous eye for detail’, was clearly a driving force in Apple’s success.
However, from 2011 when Tim Cook took over Apple, to 2020, Cook doubled the company’s revenue and profit, and the company’s market value increased from $348 billion to $1.9 trillion.
Does that mean there is something incredibly different about Tim Cook’s leadership style that stands him out from Steve Jobs? And took the company where it is now?
If so, it is something worth learning.
Who Is Tim Cook and What Is His Leadership Style?
Timothy Donald Cook joined Apple in March 1998 as a senior vice president for worldwide operations. And then served as the executive vice president for worldwide sales and operations.
He was named CEO in 1997 when the company was on the verge of bankruptcy, and he led the company through its recovery.
In 2011, Cook took over as CEO again upon the death of Steve Jobs. And ever since, he has been overseeing a relentless pursuit of innovation and fresh ideas that have turned Apple into a much larger force than it was when Jobs was still alive.
He has advocated for the political reformation of international and domestic surveillance,cybersecurity American manufacturing, and environmental preservation.
Tim Cook has an estimated net worth of about $1.4 billion. He also received $10.7 million in non-equity incentives, which likely comes from a percentage of Apple’s profits.
In his first year as CEO, Tim Cook introduced new ways of working and thinking into the Apple culture. Tim Cook has made an immediate point to stress transparency and teamwork within the Apple organization.
Tim Cook is known as a leader who will trust the opinions and voices of the team he surrounds himself with.
According to Fox Business, Cook chose to forfeit up to one-third of his stock-based compensation (nearly $130 million over eight years) if Apple’s stock underperformed the S&P 500. Which sets a great example of making the right decision as a leader.
It is also not hard to see that Tim Cook has a democratic leadership style that lets the talents of everyone at Apple contribute to the company’s success. Unlike Jobs, who was the center of the organization, Tim Cook is determined to become Apple’s driving force.
Cook is described as being much more methodical and focused on finance and social good. Whereas Jobs’ was more outspoken and devoted to the designing side.
5 Essential Lessons to Learn From Tim Cook’s Leadership Style
Here are a few takeaways from Cook’s leadership style:
1. Diversity of Leadership Is Massively Important
Diversity isn’t just an HR buzzword (or anold wooden ship, either). In fact, a plurality of backgrounds among your employees can actually help to create more revenue for your company.
The idea behind this philosophy is that people bring lots of different experiences to the table, and companies that can harness the most amount of creative experiences will be more innovative in their approach to business. Cook very explicitly recognizes that fact and has made diversity a cornerstone of his management philosophy.
“We want diversity of thought,” he says. “We want diversity of style. We want people to be themselves. It’s this great thing about Apple. You don’t have to be somebody else. You don’t have to put on a face when you go to work and be something different. But the thing that ties us all is we’re brought together by values. We want to do the right thing. We want to be honest and straightforward. We admit when we’re wrong and have the courage to change.”
2. Transparency is Key
Cook knew transparency would be key. With harsh criticism about the standards of Apple’s global employees (especially through their manufacturing partners at Foxconn), Cook opened the doors and invited the world to see how Apple’s operations really worked.
By doing this, he not only created goodwill around the company but set industry standards for other manufacturers.
“Our transparency in supplier responsibility is an example of recognizing that the more transparent we are, the bigger difference we would make,” Cook says. “We want to be as innovative with supply responsibility as we are with our products. That’s a high bar. The more transparent we are, the more it’s in the public space.”
3. Read Customer Emails. (If Anything, It Humbles You.)
You think you understand your customers…but do you? Even Tim Cook, head of the world’s most valuable company, carves out time to walk around company stores and read customer emails.
“I’ll walk around our stores,” he says. “You can learn a tremendous amount in a store. I get a lot of emails and so forth, but it’s a different dimension when you’re in a store and talking to customers face to face.
You get the vibe of the place…Not allowing yourself to become insular is very important—maybe the most important thing, I think, as a CEO.”
4. You “Can Only Do a Few Things Great.”
Considering the size of Apple, it’s pretty remarkable to think about how few products the company actually creates.
“I mean, if you really look at it, we have four iPods. We have two main iPhones. We have two iPads, and we have a few Macs. That’s it,” he says.
The point is: focus on what you do best and do it the best you can. “We argue and debate like crazy about what we’re going to do because we know that we can only do a few great things,” he says. “At the right time, we’ll keep disrupting and keep discovering new things that people didn’t know they wanted.”
5. Admit You’re Wrong
Ultimately, Cook’s advice for entrepreneurs and CEOs is advice that’s pretty helpful for anyone, really.
“So many people, particularly, I think, CEOs and top executives, they get so planted in their old ideas, and they refuse or don’t have the courage to admit that they’re now wrong,” he says…
“Maybe the most underappreciated thing about Steve was that he had the courage to change his mind. And you know — it’s a talent. It’s a talent.”
Summing Up
There’s a lot to learn from Tim Cook’s life. And a lot to imitate from his leadership approach if you want to build your company to an enviable height as Apple has.
As a business owner or C-level executive, it’s critical to learn a thing or two from Tim Cook’s exceptional leadership style in order to grow your company from a start-up to a Fortune 500
