Apple’s next CEO blends hardware expertise with a relationship-driven leadership style, according to one former Apple exec
At its core, Apple’s strengths are products, relationships, and fact-based debate.
That’s according to Kim Scott, a former executive at Apple and Google and founder of Radical Candor, an executive coaching company, who believes the company’s next CEO is well-versed in those attributes.
On Sept. 1, 2026, John Ternus is set to replace Tim Cook as CEO of the trillion-dollar company, and Scott says she’s “heard nothing but good things” about the senior vice president of hardware engineering’s leadership styles.
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“I've heard that he's very collaborative and that he's a good listener and that he's a brilliant hardware engineer, most importantly,” she said. “He's also equally good at creating organizations.”
Creating organizations is part of the Apple storied history, according to Scott, who says Al Gore quoted Steve Jobs as saying that his “greatest creation was not any product but the company” at a memorial service for the Apple founder in 2011, which she also attended.
“I think there are a lot of leaders at Apple who bring all of their brilliance about product design and that for organizational design, and I think John is no exception to that,” Scott said.
Leadership built on products, relationships and feedback
That combination of deep technical credibility and organizational design is exactly what Apple needs as it moves deeper into AI, Scott says. She views Apple as a company that, “at its core,” sells products and “integrates new technology into those products exceptionally well.”
Software and AI matter because they’re embedded in devices people already use, not as abstract platforms. From that perspective, she says, “it makes a lot of sense to have a hardware engineer at this moment in time.”
Scott also stresses that Apple is not a classic top down, command and control organization.
“You can’t get things done at Apple without good relationships,” she says. “It’s very relationship driven.”
She describes Ternus as “very well centered” and notes that he has “a reputation for building great teams around him.”
To explain what she considers good leadership, Scott uses the image of three concentric circles. At the center sits the leader, around that are the relationships they build, and the outer ring contains their responsibilities. Those responsibilities, she argues, are the same “whether they’re the CEO of a trillion-dollar company or a brand-new manager.”
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The first responsibility is creating a culture of feedback. Scott recalls a long-standing Apple idea from Steve Jobs: “At Apple, we don’t hire people so that we tell them what to do. We hire people who will tell us what to do.”
In her view, leaders must solicit feedback, give both praise and criticism, and “gauge how what they’re saying is landing” so they can adjust to different people and situations. A leader known as a good listener, like Ternus is described, is well placed to support that kind of culture.
The second responsibility is building a strong team. Scott frames it as “building the kind of team on which everyone can take a step in the direction of their dreams.” She connects this directly to Ternus’s reputation for surrounding himself with strong people and creating high performing groups. That will be critical as Apple elevates AI, hardware, and software leaders and asks them to work in new ways together.
A disciplined way to “get sh*t done”
The third responsibility is simple: get results.
“You’ve got to get sh*t done as a leader, accomplish things,” Scott said.
For her, that starts with “pushing decisions into the facts.” She describes a process where leaders listen, help people clarify their ideas, then put those ideas into what Jobs called the “rock tumbler” of debate. After real argument, the leader decides, helps persuade those who were not in the room that it was the right decision, then save time to execute and learn before starting again.
Scott says Ternus “has a good reputation for not jumping too fast into execute mode,” and for taking the time to listen and help people refine new ideas before they face that rough debate. She also believes leaders should use AI “as an opportunity to develop new products and to grow revenue,” and “treat people as assets that deserve this investment, not just costs to be cut.”
Looking at the broader leadership transition, Scott points back to what Tim Cook once called the “Cook Doctrine.” As she recalls it, Cook argued that Apple’s values are so deeply embedded that “regardless of who is in that job,” the company will do extremely well.
That strong cultural “DNA” should work in Ternus’s favor, Scott says, as he steps into an evolving tradition with a profile that matches what has long made Apple work: deep product expertise, powerful relationships, and a disciplined way of turning ideas into decisions and results.
