It's possible to be honest and tactful at the same time, but doing so requires developing quality real-time filters, which is hard and takes lots of practice. One hypothesis is that powerful people have the luxury of not developing such filters because they can better get away with alienating the targets of their (often, to be fair, dead-on) criticism. Mistaking correlation for causation, people then conclude that operating without such filters is the cause of such power, rather than an effect.
As a thought experiment, consider the Jobs quote from the OP:
We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I am full of shit and I can tell them the same.
Now, what would you guess was the rough ratio of brutal honesty directed to Jobs to the brutal honesty coming from Jobs? In physics parlance, I'm guessing it was << 1. Jobs was human, and even an advocate of brutal honesty would probably rather hear "Steve, I need to talk to you about a delicate subject..." than "Steve, you smell like shit and need to take a shower." [1] Considering that Steve could fire you at will, which tack would you take?
[1] I once had the pleasure of hearing Mike Scott tell me and a group of other Caltech grad students about his first duty as Apple's first president: tell Steve that, contrary to his belief, a "fruitarian" diet does not result in zero body odor. If memory serves, Mike was wisely oblique and tactful when bringing up the subject.
As a thought experiment, consider the Jobs quote from the OP:
We are brutally honest with each other, and anyone can tell me they think I am full of shit and I can tell them the same.
Now, what would you guess was the rough ratio of brutal honesty directed to Jobs to the brutal honesty coming from Jobs? In physics parlance, I'm guessing it was << 1. Jobs was human, and even an advocate of brutal honesty would probably rather hear "Steve, I need to talk to you about a delicate subject..." than "Steve, you smell like shit and need to take a shower." [1] Considering that Steve could fire you at will, which tack would you take?
[1] I once had the pleasure of hearing Mike Scott tell me and a group of other Caltech grad students about his first duty as Apple's first president: tell Steve that, contrary to his belief, a "fruitarian" diet does not result in zero body odor. If memory serves, Mike was wisely oblique and tactful when bringing up the subject.