Former Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) CEO John Sculley says Steve Jobs became a far stronger leader when he returned to Apple because he had learned a skill that did not come naturally to him in his first run at the company, which is listening.

Jobs Returned With Greater Humility

Sculley, who led Apple from 1983 to 1993 after Jobs recruited him from PepsiCo Inc. (NASDAQ:PEP), told CNBC Make It in 2019 that Jobs' leadership changed dramatically after his 12-year exile from the company he co-founded.

He described Jobs' two Apple eras as "Jobs 1.0" and "Jobs 2.0."

Jobs 1.0, Sculley said, had extraordinary vision but less patience for other perspectives. "Steve was brilliant in terms of seeing where the world would be 20 years in the future. He was so charismatic that he convinced himself, as much as he convinced other people, that he was always right," Sculley said.

"But young Steve Jobs was not as good at listening as the Steve Jobs that came back years later," he added. "His life experiences between 1.0 and 2.0 were obviously extremely influential."

Apple Faced Collapse Before Turnaround

Those years changed both Jobs and Apple. Jobs resigned from Apple in 1985 after a power struggle involving Sculley and the board. He founded NeXT, helped build Pixar into an animation powerhouse and returned to Apple when the company bought NeXT in 1997.

Apple was in crisis when Jobs came back. The company had lost more than $1 billion in the prior year and was widely described as being near collapse. Jobs moved quickly. He cut Apple's sprawling product lineup by roughly 70%, refocused the company on a few core products and ended costly distractions.

Sculley Sees Nadella As Similar Listener

He also secured a $150 million investment from Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), a stunning deal between bitter rivals that helped restore confidence in Apple and kept Microsoft software on the Mac. Jobs then pushed Apple toward sharper retail and direct-to-consumer strategies, setting the stage for the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad era.

Sculley said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella offers a similar lesson. He said he’d asked Microsoft Chairman John Thompson how he explained Nadella's success, to which Thompson replied, "He's a superb listener, and he has an open mind." Sculley said, "It's that openness and willingness to listen," that helped Nadella rescue Microsoft after it had "fallen off track."

According to Benzinga Edge Stock Rankings, AAPL holds a robust Quality score of 98.40% and continues to show a positive trend across short, medium and long-term time frames.

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