STEVE JOBS’S NARRATIVE INTELLIGENCE

Phuoc D. Nguyen

Steve Jobs delivered his commencement address at Stanford University in June 2005, he stated his leadership and management journey storytelling at Apple under a self-narrative form. The first story that he called ‘Connecting the docs’, his narrative in the first story was about how he dropped out from Reed College after only six months of study. This was one of the most difficult decisions in his life but this story dampened Stanford graduates in this commencement. Jobs emphasized his ongoing effort to design and create the first Macintosh computer 10 years from the date he dropped out of college. “But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography” (Jobs, 2005, p. 2). His second story is about his love and loss he emphasizes his departure from Apple and his return to Apple. “Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually, we had a falling out” (Jobs, 2005, p. 2). Jobs’ case was the only one in the business world; in this story, the combination of his talent, energy, vision, and love created NeXT and Pixar after he departed from Apple and then returned to Apple. “Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did” (Jobs, 2005, p. 3). This second story focused on his leadership journey at Apple, NeXT, and Pixar.

Denning (2007) states “Narrative intelligence is the capacity to understand the world in narrative terms. It means being familiar with the various components and dimensions of narratives and knowing the different patterns of stories that exist, as well as which narrative patterns are most likely to have what effect in which situation” (p. 262). Jobs not only owned the capacity to understand the world but also analyzed his leadership narrative, he understood people and deeply understood himself, he mastered himself and mastered people, and he analyzed main and root causes to use ‘the law of cause and effect’. His background was a ‘technical man’ and he had never studied technology, leadership, and management, but his narrative intelligence was excellent. He was a leadership, management, and technical genius.

Hamstra (2013) proposes “Narratives provide a whole-person experience that connects an external and internal search for meaning. Additionally, narratives can engage the whole person while also connecting to other individuals through patterns of relationship” (pp. 20-21). Jobs’ leadership narrative revealed his whole-person experience and in-depth analysis that it connected to standing up with energy and talent after stumbling. His speed delivered an inspirational and very strong message to Stanford graduates, and everyone listened and read his message. He used NeXT’s products to revive Apple to get out of bankruptcy and led Apple again to gain optimized performance increases. This shows his leadership effectiveness which connects to his leadership narrative. However, Jobs needed to improve his leadership narrative, for example, he did not need to emphasize his departure from college in a commencement because very few people do as Jobs did when they did not graduate from college and did not have a clear career. “Normal people cannot compare to a genius!’