The Great Man Perspective Business Essay - Free Essay Example

What are your personal goals for this course.   Can you identify any well-known leaders who have achieved these goals already? What do you hope to get out of this course?   Are your personal goals in-line with the course goals as described?   What will you put into the course in order to achieve your personal goals? Examine the newspaper , tv or internet. Identify at least one example of the Great Man perspective on leadership in action? Do the images you find stress a single individual as a hero or saviour? Any women? Any of other ethnic groups? My personal goal for this course is to learn how to become a great leader. What qualities to have as a great leader and how I can be a leader by having these special qualities. One of the well known leaders is Gandhi. He was the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule. He led the Indian people and negotiated with the English. He was very religion person. Gandhi had all the good qualities a good leader should have with him. He was the pre- eminent political and spiritual leader of India during the Indian independence movement and also he helped India to gain independence, and inspired movements for civil rights and cross the world. My personal goals are in line with my course goals as described. I will have to do a lot of hardwork in order to achieve my personal goals. One example i could identify of a Great Man perspective on leadership in action is Nelson Mandela. He fought for equal rights and brought equality in his country. So he can be regarded as a hero. He went to prison for his fight for equal rights. Blog 4 Blog 5 5. Today we looked at the power of a written Personal Development Plan. List five goals and five k ey skills that you would like to develop over the course of this trimester. Why are these ten things important to you? How do these goals and skills relate to your current leadership abilities? Five goals that i would like to develop over the course of this trimester are: Goal 1: Improve my Communication Skills Goal 2: To get B+ grades in all my units Goal 3: Achieve my Diploma in Management by the end of the year Goal 4: Apply for work Permit Goal 5: Get a job relating to my Diploma on my open work permit Five key skills that i would like to develop over the course of this trimester are: Speaking/Talking, 2. Active listening, 3. Critical thinking, 4. Problem solving and 5. Decision making These ten things are very important to me in my career and in my life. I would like to achieve all my five goals to become a great leader and become a good manager of some organization. To become this I have to have those key skills. Speaking/Talking is very imp ortant to convey information effectively. How Active listening has a major impact on your leadership and can help in obtain information, understand and learn. Critical Thinking is using logic and reasoning to identify the strengths and weaknesses of alternative solutions, conclusions or approaches to problems. Making decisions in our daily lives and in the workplace can be one of the most overlooked processes. Blog 7 Good leaders are made not born. Anyone can be a leader to a certain extent. Leadership can be easy taught. Leadership skills are like organising,   mobilizing and utilizing strategies and resources can be easy to adopt by anyone. If you have the desire and will power, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders are made and they develop through a never ending process of self-study, education, training, and experience. To inspire your workers into higher levels of team work. There are certain thing you must know and do these types of things come natural ly, but are acquired through continual hard work and study. Made leaders they do lot of hard work to improve on their leadership skills, they also familiar with the changing environment. They are not resting on their laurels. To make my argument valid, for example if a baby prince was to be king when he grow up by based only on his royalty and if the prince was not educated more than an average person, will he prove to be a good   leader? No he wont be a good leader of his country. Most people may say that born leaders are accurate they may say this because they think they are born with leadership qualities. These people may have no knowledge of leadership in this changing world. I am not 100 % happy with my abilities right now, but I am working towards developing my skills and I am sure that I can do it , if I input a lot of hard work. I know this   leader Hitler who was not that famous for his success but he develops his greatness for fighting and sacrifi cing his life for his country. Blog 8 Discuss the leadership concepts and ideologies that you were able to identify in the two movies that you had chosen and viewed over the weekend. What are some similarities and differences that you find between the leaders you have identified in the movies and yourself? Identify one leader you liked/ disliked from each movie. What leadership concepts covered in class can you identify in this leader? Are there any qualities/ concepts that youve identified which youd like to develop in yourself? Specify. For movie remember the titans the two coaches work together as team to help encourage the players to play as a team and stop the racism.   They helped both white and black players to become friends and played as one which helped them to reach the finals and win.   Both coaches showed good communication and leadership skills and break through the differences  within team and the whole tow n.  The two movies which I have viewed are Remember the Titans and Lagaan. The leader i liked most was Amir Khan in lagaan.   He had a great leadership skills and have motivate his team till the end of the game.   He worked towards sucess through hardwork and believed within him all the way.   His leadership encourge me to increase my skills in leadership and communication.   Always believe myself and have can do attitude and never lose hope even in hard times. The leaders in Remember the Titans were Coach Boone and Coach Yoast. The two coaches work together as team to help encourage the players to play as a team and stop the racism.   They helped both white and black players to become friends and played as one which helped them to reach the finals and win. Coach Boone used dictative leadership and Coach Yoast used democratic leadership styles.. There are some similarities and differences between the leaders in the movie and me. Like Coach Yoast, I wi ll meet people personally and discuss with them if I have any problem with them rather than confronting them in front of other employees. In Remember the Titans I liked Coach Yoast. I liked the way he handled each difficult situation with ease. I also learnt that keeping ones cool is very important in leadership. Being a leader in one thing, being a good leader is another. Blog 9 Today you presented, formally, to the class for your assessment. How have you developed as a presenter from Week 5? Self-evaluate your presentation and score yourself a mark out of the possible 10. What were your strengths and/or weaknesses as a presenter? Is there anything that you would do differently if you are given a chance to re-present? What and why? Reflecting back on the leader you identified in Week 5: Have you been able to develop any of the qualities you identified in yourself? Today i presented formally to the class for my assessment. If i compare my pre sentation from week 5 then i guess i have improved my communication skills abit. I was able to maintain eye contact throughout my presentation. If self-evaluating my presentation, i would possibly mark myself 6 out of 10. For my presentation, i had well research and gain knowledge of the topic i was gonna present on so that im able to keep control and attention of the audience. Only thing i was lacking in was confidence. I really got nervous while presenting. If im given another chance then id do lots of practice before presenting. There is a saying practice makes you perfect, so by practicing, i might be able to overcome the nervous thing i always come up with and will help me become a good presenter. In week 5 i identified about Abraham Lincoln. He was a hard working and determined person; above all he was excellent in speaking speeches and quotes. Due to his speeches and determination he was a great leader. I have become determined and a hard worker but m still not so good in pre sentation and working upon it to become a successful presenter. Blog 10 In class today we learned about leaders in small businesses and large organizations and also about leaders of profit organizations and non-profit organizations. Small private businesses look at leadership as being either authoritarian, participative or laizzez faire. In small private business the vision and change is higher compared to large public business. Small businesses are always different from large public businesses in terms of access to resources, financial, technological and human. In large public businesses there is positive attitude to risk and change including leaders tolerate mistakes, creates change, willing to take risks, not afraid of challenges and learn from mistakes whereas in small private businesses the leader also advocate change and learns from mistakes. For profit organisations the leader will plan, organise and control the business to make profits. Non-profit leaders are usually d ependent on donations. In contrast with the for-profit sector, non-profit leaders usually achieve more if they work collaboratively with other interested parties. I wanna be a democratic leader. Make sure about the working environment for my employees are in good condition. Employees view will be taken in decision making. I will also make sure that the customers have excellent service. Also will have rewards and benefits for employees hardwork. All my customer service reps will go through customer service training. All these will only happen if I become a leader and I make sure that I work hard to achieve that Blog 11 The two movies which I have seen are Taare Zameen Par and Singham. The main character in taare zameen par were amir khan and ishaan. Amir Khan is the teacher to the school at which Ishaan is schooling. Ishaan had dyslexia and other students hardly interacting with him. He took out tome to be with Ishaan and found out that though Ishaan was not good in studies, bu t he was good in other activities like art. Amir helped Ishaan in his studies. Ishaan proved to be a very brilliant student towards the end. Amir was very much appreciated for being such a brilliant leader. In Singham the main character is Baji Rao Singham. He is against corruption. His main aim is to catch this bad man who has been avoiding the police for some time. Singham is able to avoid catch the bad man through his dedication and cleverness. He had his whole police force support with him. Leaders should be such who has the support and trust of its team with them. I want to have the trust and support of my society with me when I become a leader. I will make sure that I always consider them in all the decision which I make. Blog 12 Before the class my view was that with leadership comes power. Some leaders misuse the power and some do not. Misuse is when leaders use power for their own good. Some leaders with the use of power influence others in a positive way. Leaders use powers in the sense that they know that what they say will be done by the employees without any questions. Leaders in power see themselves the most superior of them all. This at times leads to them using power negatively. Negative leader makes people do some work which they do not want to. For example some leaders make employees do their personal things like picking the children from school. Though the employees see this as wrong, they cannot say no because they have the fear of being fired from work. All of my view about leaders and power was reflected in our leadership class this week. Leadership and power go together. For some leaders power comes with leadership and for some leadership leads to power. An unsuccessful leader whom I have come across is Laisenia Qarase, former Prime Minister of Fiji. He was a very biased leader. Almost all his decision was mostly in favor Fijians. The other races like Indians were left out. Even some of the Fijians felt that Qarase was being biased towards the Indians and other races. His leadership soon came to an end when the military took over his government. Leaders should not misuse their power as this will lead to their downfall. All leaders should have Democratic Leadership style. Blog 13 In this course we have to form a group in one of the units. We had a 3 member group. The person we chose as our leader was really good as she is someone whom we can trust to do well in our project assement. We selected couple of topics to work on and then the leader made sure that everyones approval for on a topic. Delegation work in a team is very important. Our leader delegated work to each and every one depending on our capability and knowledge. Everything was going well as evry step we take advice from lectures. We finished the project without any problems. In class today we learnt about how to be an effective leader. Some of the qualities of an effective leader is being with the time, meeting dead line on time, patience, tr ust, and etc. I lack in meeting deadlines. I am always helping others. This makes me lack behind in my work. I will learn how to manage my time well so that I can do both at once. I love helping others as there is a saying what goes around comes around ae so later on when il be needing help then their might turn up to help me. Blog 14 Throughout this course we have been looking at many leaders. Some leaders were fiction and some non-fiction. The most surprising thing I found out was that there were some leaders whom I never knew or heard about but yet they were great leaders of their time. The leader who stayed in my mind was Mohandas Gandhi. He is known as successful leader worldwide. Mohandas Gandhi had all the good qualities a great leader should have. He was a political leader of India and also a spiritual leader during the Indian independence movement. He helped India to get independence through his causes. He used non violence to achieve his goals. As a group leader, I have become more confident in my leadership style because of the way we finished our project without any difficulty. This boosted my self-confidence and motivated me to do better next time. What I want to learn more is how a real leader thinks in a difficult situation e.g. New York Mayor, Giulani.. During the twin tower crisis, Guilani stepped down from his high post and helped the people on the ground who needed him. He helped them get back to their feet. He also guided the whole of New York City through the difficult time. It would have been great if I could talk to some leaders to learn from them what all they learned after becoming a leader. I also want to ask them how do they make decisions right there and then