Leadership skills are an essential element to the development of an effective leader. Some leaders have natural abilities while others develop those skills through experience. Whether skills are learned or instinctual, great leadership is the ability to translate values and beliefs instilling motivation in the people around you. This essay serves to compare two persons with contrasting leadership styles and analyze their leadership abilities. Steve Rogers and Tony Stark are two characters from the recent movie adaptations of Marvel’s Captain America and Iron Man. I chose these movies because as Avengers, a later movie in the series, they both serve as leaders; however, their different backgrounds, values, and beliefs ultimately lead to conflict in later installments of the Marvel Cinematic Universe series.
Captain America: The First Avenger takes place during WWII. Steve Rogers is a young scrawny kid convinced it is his duty to fight in the war. Unfortunately, Steve suffers from a host of ailments and is unable to pass the initial entry physical. Determined, he travels to multiple recruiting stations in hopes that he finds someone to give him the go. Meanwhile, the government searches for a candidate to volunteer for an experimental project to create a super soldier and gain an upper hand against the Germans. Dr. Abraham Erskine, a German scientist and lead on the Super Soldier Project, recognizes Steve’s effort. After questioning, he confirms Steve’s good
In comparison, management focuses on systems and structures and is distant from the thoughts and emotions of individuals. It applies coercion in its endeavour to achieve results. The law of force has it that where there is force there is a reciprocating resistance. Therefore, managers do not attain the required attitudes and behaviours in personnel that are in line with the goals of the organisation.
There are a variety of ways to define both leader and leadership. There is not, however, a clear definition of how to become one. There is no set list of mandatory traits, either innate or learned, that a person must embody to be considered successful or proved a failure. What I feel it takes is the right mix of strengths and weaknesses in a given situation to demonstrate effectiveness. No one person has abilities without accompanying deficiencies. It’s all in the way they are balanced. The balance in the way one uses his or hers’ abilities will ultimately determine the type of leadership one has throughout time. To support these claims I will examine a well-known leader throughout the military, General James “Mad Dog” Mattis. This essay
Leadership can be viewed in many different ways and possess many different qualities. There are courageous leaders, respectful leaders, terrible leaders, and seemingly insignificant leaders but leaders nonetheless. But what is it that differentiates between a strong leader and a weak leader, or a powerful leader and an insignificant one? Is it the qualities in the leader or the decisions they make in key situations that define good leadership qualities? Some would define a good leader by their ability to do the right thing even if it is not the easiest choice. Others might define a good leader as one that possesses great integrity and leads by example. The military possesses many great leaders through a process of development and molding individuals to meet expected leadership qualities like honor, courage, commitment and integrity to accomplish any mission or goal. However, this process doesn’t always create the desired effect. So, let’s examine some good and bad examples of leadership qualities and break down what and how we can emulate them.
In the Leadership Challenge, 4th edition, it is Kouzes & Posner (2007) intention to present a road map for individuals to follow on their leadership journey. The authors stress that “leadership is not a gene and it’s not an inheritance.” Leadership they assert is “an identifiable set of skills and abilities that are available to all of us” (p. 23). They make clear that the “great person” theory of leadership is “plain wrong.” Leaders are our everyday heroes who do extraordinary things on a regular basis (p. 23).
Leadership goes beyond management, for some, leadership is instinctual and pours over into your personal life. This paper will discuss a leader I admire in my personal life, and analyze their leadership style. I will discuss how that leader has influenced my leadership style, as well as how things like environment and the economy affect my leadership approach.
From the vantage point of the present, it is easy to look back at the tenure of any great leader and draw conclusions about just what it was that made him/her great. We can examine the circumstances under which their leadership flourished; piece together what we know of their character and personality traits; delve into the factors that may have driven them; and dissect their leadership style all in an effort to pinpoint the source of their success. The ‘Great Man’ theory, popular in the 19th century and now thoroughly debunked, held that leaders are born, not made; suggesting that men like George Washington, Martin Luther King Jr., and Winston Churchill were born with the innate capacity to change the world (Landis,
Over the course of several decades, the depiction of leadership has changed. What was thought to be innovative and participative or transformational tactic to leadership has replaced the classical and autocratic or authoritarian approach. The step forward that not everything old is bad and not everything new is good was made somewhere along the way. It was determined that different leadership styles suited different situations, and it is the responsibility of each leader to figure out when to make use of an individual leadership approach or style. The two leaders selected for this assignment are Martha Stewart representing an authoritarian leadership style and William Shatner’s television character, James Tiberius Kirk from the starship Enterprise representing a transformational leadership style.
In my reflections as I prepared to write this paper, I came to the realization that leadership is much more complex especially since the paper requires that I focus on a few traits. In an effort to make it simple, I wrote down the traits that came to mind and in process had over 10 important traits but an even bigger challenge was on how to narrow them down to 3 or 4 and this is the place that required a good deal of reflection. Eventually, however, I had to prioritize them since in any case; it is not possible to get a leader that has all the traits. As I thought of the various leaders who have inspired me, I noticed that while they strived to provide the best leadership by focusing on their strong points, they still had their weaknesses. To me this provided a justification for at least identifying key desirable traits and thereafter working to improve them. I did manage to settle on four traits, which for me are indispensible if a leader or a leadership is to become effective.
Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.
During the beginning of the film, Steve is asked “Do you wants to kill Nazi’s?” by Dr. Erskine, this question is a test to see if he is fit to take the super-soldier serum. Steve answers, “I don’t like bullies. I don’t care where they come from.” By not giving into the obvious violent answer, Steve is challenging the masculine code that men need to be violent. This is what makes Captain America different from other
In today’s world, leaders are not defined by age, race or gender. They can be a high school basketball coach, the shift supervisor at the local coffee shop, or even the President of the United States of America. In as many ways that leaders can vary by appearance and responsibility, there is also a variance in the ways that they lead. This case study aims to compare three of the more popular theories of leadership. These leadership theories are situational leadership, trait theory and transformational leadership.
To begin, a doctor, named Dr. Erskine, from New York, New York created Captain America in 1941. This was a time when Americans were very proud of their nation and centered everything around World War II. The community was mostly anti-German, since Germany was one of the three countries America was battling during World War II. Captain America, who was known as Steve Rogers before he transformed over, was a scrawny boy who failed to meet the requirements to join the military. Eager to join, Steve Rogers volunteered himself for an operation that Dr. Erskine planned to conduct, which would alter his physique to that of a super human. After ingesting the “Super Soldier Serum,” Steve Rogers transformed into Captain America. His muscles and reflexes were greatly enhanced, as well as his height and frame. An agent from Nazi, Germany assassinated Dr. Erskine because he
There is no consensus that has been reached regarding this controversy, but many theories are centered on it. Chronologically, popular leadership theories include the great man theory, trait theory, behavioral theories, role theory, participative leadership, situational leadership, contingency theories, transactional leadership, and transformational leadership. Each of these theories presents a unique perspective of what comprises leadership. The main focus of this research paper is, however, the trait theory (Bass & Stogdill, 1990).
Can using survey data obtained from retail managers and executives of national retail chain store companies be used to identify the three leadership styles that were based on Quinn's theoretical model of competing leadership roles? The three leadership groups, labeled loner/internal-focused, team builder/goal-oriented, and conceptual producer/ external-focused, are identified using a clustering technique. These three clusters are then associated based on personal, organizational and managerial characteristics, using multivariate and univariate analyses of variance (Shim, Lusch, & Goldsberry, 2002). The findings indicate that leadership styles are predisposed by numerous influences such as personal values, job characteristics,
"Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it." Dwight D. Eisenhower This quote from Eisenhower rings true on many levels. During my career in the military and the private sector, I have been subjected to many different styles of leadership, good or bad. In my leadership roles I have attained, I tried to model leadership abilities by taking bits and pieces of previous leader’s styles and forming them into my own model. This has proven to work well as dealing with people from all different walks of life there is no one size fits all approach. In writing this paper, I will detail my own leadership platform drawing from the course material and various other sources. The goal of this paper is to show a solid understanding of the course teachings and perhaps give the reader a new found perspective on leadership.