¶ … Leadership is difficult to quantify; studying it empirically is not a simple task, because so many different variables can be considered as the potential result of leadership. If we want to evaluate the leadership of a given CEO -- for example, to assess the leadership achievements of Mo Abudu, founder and CEO of EbonyLive TV and its various affiliated ventures (Inspire Africa, VLA) -- what statistics should we be measuring? The most popular measurement, of course, is purely financial, and regards a CEO as the sole motivating factor behind any company's economic performance -- most studies that examine Steve Jobs's leadership at Apple are quick to mention that, at the moment of Jobs's death, Apple actually had more money in the bank than the United States government (Isaacson 2012). But it is naive to assume that merely counting cash is a good way to measure leadership, just as rapid growth is not always sustainable growth. In evaluating the leadership qualifications of a large corporation, it is undeniable that employee satisfaction or employee retention might actually be more important to the daily performance of the corporation than the kind of explosive growth rates that are unduly overemphasized by investors and stock markets. Explosive growth rates are, of course, no good predictor of the stable long-term prospects of a given business enterprise, even if they are taken to be an indication of bold and decisive...

(Chen Van Velsor 1996).
Steve Jobs is often held up as a model for business leadership, and perhaps the most important fact about Jobs is something that he shares with the case study proposed for examination here, Mo Abudu, CEO of EbonyLive. This is a very specific model of business leadership because the leader is almost wholly identified with the corporation, being not merely the founder but also the source of vision and (more importantly) the public face of the business. Abudu's leadership style at EbonyLive follows this model familiar from Steve Jobs at Apple, although other examples can readily be adduced -- Sir Richard Branson at Virgin, Elon Musk at Tesla, or Jack Dorsey at Twitter are all examples of leadership in this same style. What are the characteristics? Even though each of these leaders is engaged in a very different field of business -- Abudu is an "old media" CEO compared to Dorsey's "new media" or "social media" business, Jobs and Musk produce high end consumer goods (computers, cars), and Branson is probably best known for transportation but is legendarily polymathic -- each is the public face of the business in the media itself. Just like Jack…