Analyzing and Evaluating Historical Views of Leadership

Analyzing and Evaluating Historical Views of Leadership

Introductory Section

The first time I was explicitly asked to lead was on a tennis practice when my coach told me that I am the best player in my group, and everyone is looking up to me now, so it is time for me to lead by being a good example. Subsequently, throughout my life, I have had the opportunities to lead sports teams as a player and as a coach. In my professional career over the last nine years, I got to lead people indirectly on projects as well as in a supervisory role. As I continue to thrive to become a better leader, I wanted to investigate what I could learn from some of the most influential leaders in history. Within this paper, I will be analyzing and evaluating a leadership scenario based on an analytical framework I developed throughout my research of historical leadership.

Analysis Section

Bates (2001) argues that good leaders are open, trusting, facilitate other people’s processes. Frosh (2000) emphasizes that leaders should be able to cast a vision, facilitate the process of finding new innovative solutions. Hogan and Kaiser (2005) suggests that leaders should be visionaries, have empathy to understand group motivations, and be persistent in their execution. Van Vugth, Hogan, and Kaiser (2008) argues that leaders should have a great understanding, be able to motivate people and facilitate other people’s processes to accomplish group objectives. Wren (1995) investigated historical leaders such as Gandhi and Lao-Tzu, and his research suggests that leaders should be unbiased, serving others, facilitating other people’s processes with great determination.

Gandhi and Lao Tzu have similar ideas about how leaders should treat people with respect, resolve conflicts peacefully, focus on the act and get their affairs in order. They both expect leaders to address people with respect even though people may have a different perspective on what is right or wrong. Leaders should focus on the issue at hand and not attack the character of individuals. Leaders will not resolve issues by using violence as it will just lead to more violence. So staying peaceful is critical to the success of change. For a leader to be able to represent the different perspectives effectively they need to get their affairs in order first; otherwise, their actions will be called into question and they won’t be able to argue the correctness of their actions.

In their philosophies Gandy and Lao-Tzu have offered a different perspective on how biased a leader should stay, how a leader should resist, and how receptive a leader should be to new ideas. Lao-Tzu focused on encouraging leaders to be facilitators who are serving others to find common ground in resolving their differences. Gandhi expects leaders to have a strong moral compass, and they should only intervene if the morality of the decision makers goes against their values. Lao-tzu recommends that a leader plays the role of a mediator who makes sure that the parties listen to each other, and together they negotiate a solution. Gandhi suggests passive resistance, which tends to imply that there is one right solution, and the perspective of the leader determines what is good or bad. I also like how Lao-Tzu recommends that a leader should stay open and receptive so they can understand what is the different needs and perspective of the people. Gandhi, on the other hand, encourages a position of non-cooperation in case the people are displeased.

Gandhi and Lao-Tzu are aligned on advocating the focus to be on principles, promoting non-violent approaches, creating harmony and peace and having a full commitment to the outcome. They both aligned that attacking people and their character does not lead to a resolution, so the leader has to focus on analyzing actions. They also agree that violence does take people away from an emphasis on the issue at hand and makes them into a self-defense mechanism which ends badly for all parties. They also agree that leaders need to have a full commitment to help to achieve the desired results and that results should lead to a better world with harmony and peace.

Although both Gandhi and Lao-tzu focuses on leading people, they diverge in the way they recommend those leaders approach the issue at hand. Gandhi and Lao-Tzu differ in their philosophies in regards to their primary focus; tools used, the type of engagement. Gandhi focuses on the issue of addressing intolerable situations. Lao-tzu provides a framework to lead people regardless of the correctness of the position. Another divergence occurs in appealing to people on a more emotional level by Gandhi, where Lao-tzu advocates a more situation based logical approach. Gandhi diverges from Lao-tzu in advocating taking a side for the just cause, where Lao-tzu recommends to stay unbiased and take no sides, just facilitate the resolution process.

Lao-Tzu explicitly calls out that leaders should serve others, be conscious of group dynamics, lead in a nourishing manner and help people to do their job. Leaders need to help others by placing others well-being above their own. At the same time according to Bates (2001), they need to be aware of what is happening in the group, and not be coercive. Leaders should also lead without taking sides in a nourishing manner. According to Frosch (2000), the job of a leader of innovation is to help the people in the organization to carry out their work.

Gandhi explicitly calls out that the key to success is to rise against intolerable rules, control one's mind, employ passive resistance, and focus on the act. Gandhi mainly makes a stance against intolerable situations, by encouraging people to take a stand using passive resistance to force the resolution of a conflict. He also says that People can lead to victory for just causes if they can control their mind and be willing to die for the cause. Gandhi also advocates that passive resistance is a more powerful weapon than any war. According to Bligh (2010) “as Gandhi himself put it, “my life is my message”. Gandhi also specifically calls out that the focus of action should be against acts not against people.

Gandhi and Lao-Tzu implied in their philosophies that leaders have the ability to self-inspect, want to become good leaders, want to use their skills for good and feel like they can make a difference. Lao-Tzu implied that Leaders have a way of understanding the dynamics and laws of situations and can select the appropriate action. Gandhi also suggested that leaders will know the difference between right and wrong.

Authors Bates (2001), Frosch (2000), Van Vugt, Hogan, and Kaiser (2008) and Wren (1995) suggested that a leader needs to be able to cast a vision, motivate people, and serve others while facilitating their processes in a non-coercive way.

Evaluation Section

I used the following criteria to establish credibility for the sources used in this research. I reviewed if a journal has been published in a scientific magazine or a book. The research, in general, was focused on leadership lessons or their application in today’s workplace. The assumption underlying the criteria were that there was previous research carried out on historical leadership applicability in a large matrixed organization.

My conclusion is that the top leadership traits were casting a vision, deep empathy to understand follower motivation and group dynamics, as well as the ability to step back and become a facilitator of group processes. Within a publicly traded company, the expectations from shareholders and Wall Street is to grow the company’s revenue with a high margin. To achieve those goal organizations need to communicate clearly what the objectives are and what the vision of the company is to reach the goals. In addition to that through empathy, employee engagement needs to be created so that the organizations can tap into the vast knowledge and talent of their employees to come up with ideas on how to gain an advantage over the competition. As employees get engaged and excited about the opportunities, the role of the leader is to create an environment where teams get the freedom to find their solutions toward achieving the company’s vision.

In my personal journey on the path of leadership, I had to go through a steep learning curve. At first, I thought that my job as a leader was to come up with the way we need to get things done and make sure that the team follows on that path and we execute my vision. I had great success in the short term in achieving different objectives. However, my team was not innovating with me. Everything was dependent on my ability to find solutions to problems. People were waiting around to see what I come up with next. The way I am trying to evolve is by taking an important step back and focus my leadership on defining a purpose for our team and getting the group together to brainstorm as a team about what we should do.

In this process, I am finding out that people are different in how they approach problems but more importantly they have different talents and passions. So alternatively to my finding in the literature, I would recommend that further research focuses on the role of a leader in matching employees talents and passion with working on issues that require the skills the employee is talented in as well as passionate about . I believe this would dramatically improve morale and results.

Reference

Bates, C. S. (2001). The Tao of Leadership: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching Adapted for a New Age. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 9(1), 107-109.

Bligh, M. C. (2010). Was Gandhi "charismatic"? Exploring the Rhetorical Leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. The Leadership Quarterly,21(), 844-855.

Fosch, R. (2000, May/June). Learning from Lao Tzu: A Leadership Primer. Research Technology Management, 43(3), 27-28.

Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2005). What We Know About Leadership. Review of General Psychology, 9(2), 169-180.

Van Vugt, M., Hogan, R., & Kaiser, R.B. (2008). Leadership, Followership, and Evolution Some Lessons From the Past. American Psychological Association, 63(3), 182-196.

Wren, J.T. (1995). The Leader's Companion. New York, NY: The Free Press.