4 ms·

There's no such thing as a 'natural-born leader'.

• unfocussed_mike 5y ago
  I came here to say exactly this. Leaders are taught. Though I have a sneaking, unscientific suspicion that good leaders may have some neural advantage in theory of mind -- I wonder if they are better at it generally but also better at maintaining and exploring theory of mind for multiple people at once. A good leader knows what you have already demonstrated you can do, knows what you can't do, and knows how to help you see what you could do. And they can do this with a team of people, including identifying those who have some of this skillset and can be delegated to. Frankly I am not sure any of this is Jobs, who was very capable of refining ideas but also capable of abandoning them, and who also had some slightly sociopathic traits; he was OK making enemies in the moment, OK telling people exactly what he thought of people bluntly, OK brutally criticising work. And then just as OK going back to those people and starting again with them. I think Wozniak is right that Jobs had to learn to be a leader, but his fundamental technique in what I have seen seems to be the ability to decide and to re-decide. I once worked for someone in the UK who had worked for Jobs (albeit with one seemingly rather hapless, permeable management level inbetween). He told a few stories and the impression I get is that Jobs didn't care who saw his temper, but didn't bear grudges, particularly, except against bad concepts. If you were incompetent, you were gone, but that was the end of the ill will.