There are different types of leadership power; position power and personal power are two types of power. These can be exemplified by examining two different leaders who leveraged the two power types.

Position Power

Position power is obtained based purely on an individual's position within a hierarchy, seniority within a hierarchy can be used in order to reward or punish an individual. One well-known example of a leader, often cited as a visionary entrepreneur, Steve Jobs. While he may have had a high level of focus, and achieved great things, he was also an individual who leveraged position power. Jobs was known to have a low level of tolerance, expected everybody to comply with his orders, without question (Celse, 2014). He was able to make these high demand because of his position, which meant that his power was legitimate (Schein, 1992). However, to demonstrate he was leveraging position power, rather than simply setting goals, it is necessary to examine some examples.

When working with VLSI Technology, a company manufacturing chips for Apple, he is document it as barging into a meeting and telling the members that they were all "fucking dickless assholes,"... The leveraging of this power obviously worked, the chips were delivered on time (Love, 2011). Jobs whilst the CEO of Apple, so had the power to punish for non-delivery. Another example may be seen early in his career, when working at Atari (Love, 2011). Jobs recruited Wazniak to come and help him develop a smaller version of Pong, with Atari paying a substantial bonus for completing the project on time. Jobs was in charge of the negotiations and project, and lied to Wasniack regarding the level of the bonus, which resulted in jobs keeping the majority of the money received from the bonus (Love, 2011). In this case, the source of position power is slightly different, as jobs within charge of the contract and had had the power to choose whether or not to share the bonus equally with Wazniak. This is a different type of position power, where Jobs was effectively utilising his position to benefit itself, to the detriment of his partner.
A third example may be seen when Mobileme was launched, and Jobs decided to fire the project leader after the press criticised the product as being unfinished (Love, 2011). Jobs held a meeting with the…