What makes a good leader in the business world? Someone who is highly creative, intuitive and also has a good balance of the other side of their brain for seeing their vision through, being able to hire the right people who can take care of the finances in creating and running the company as well as making the product or delivering the service.  A great leader is someone who can weather the political climate of their company as it grows and changes as well as the political company of the country within which they are located.  I remember a brilliant former boss used to say “I hire people much smarter than me to get the job done”. I used to think he was feigning humility but as I live longer in this world I realize that he was telling the truth and that tactic is a very smart one to create a great company.

A couple of years ago I was returning from a conference in Boston and befriended one of the fellow attendees. Turns out that she had been a personal assistant to Steve Jobs.  She had a lot of respect for him.  Yes, he could be a task master and yes he could be hyper focused about the work at hand. But she said, “he was fair with his employees” and that he never asked more from her than he would do himself.  She also said that he rewarded generously.

Steve Jobs and Apple made a big mark across the globe.  I go to sleep by the din of my husband’s iPad every night as he peruses articles etc.  I remember having to learn how to use an Apple II way back when I was working for a local University.  I couldn’t understand why the hard disks were called floppy disks.  Then I moved to another job in the publishing industry that used PC’s (except for the art department where they were using Quark) and at least a decade more of other jobs all using the PC and Word.  And now I’m out on my own and typing this blog using a MacBook Pro.

Still, I wonder why so many of us are “feeling” the passing of Steve so keenly tonight.  There are big changes happening right now in the world, perhaps we feel untethered without a visionary who says things like the following at conferences to inspire us:

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.” – Steve Jobs

Here’s to you Steve Jobs, for a job very well done.  Rest in Peace.