As Apple CEO, he has defied his skeptics and refashioned the world’s most creative company on his own exacting terms. Now, in a frank conversation, he offers new insight into his leadership—explaining why he sees himself as an outsider, how he asserts Apple’s values, and what he does to keep from staring at his iPhone all day.
But his perception of himself, despite the position he has achieved in life, remains that of an outsider: “I’ve never been described as normal,” he says. A gay man who grew up in the rural South, he has turned his comfort with discomfort into a superpower. “I always hate the word normal in a lot of ways, because what some people use to describe normal equals straight. Some people would use that word in that kind of way. I don’t know—I’ve been described as a lot of things, but probably normal is not among those.”
https://www.gq.com/story/tim-cook-global-creativity-awards-cover-2023