Week 4 discussion
WEEK FOUR: The leader
needs personal skills to be a good 21st century leader
Themes this week focus on the leader as an individual. It
discusses the soft skills that a leader, as an individual, needs to create and
maintain followers.
Theme one examines the importance of personality and
emotional IQ to the leader both with respect to his leadership style and how it
will build relationships around him. Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses,
being self-aware helps to be open minded.
Learning Activity 1
Jillian Dorn, was made Captain of the USS John Paul Jones.
She worked hard for her new post and rank. Having served on several ships over
the last twenty five years, Dorn was known for being tough but fair in her
approach to her subordinates. She was civil to everyone but a loner to her
fellow officers and remote in her dealings with others. Fearful that should
would not be treated with respect and determined that she would be obeyed in
her command, Dorn became over attentive to her officers and micromanaged
everyone from the lowest seaman to her immediate second in command. She
penalized and put on report people for the smallest infraction. The USS John
Paul Jones whose serving personnel had the best morale in the fleet went to the
most demoralized and unresponsive crew. When the ship docked almost half the
ship had asked for immediate transfers. Dorn was called to task by her
superiors immediately. They said that they would give her one more chance with
the crew but if the reports continued within one month she would be demoted and
removed from the ship. Scared and worried for her career she comes to you to
ask for help. How would you assess the situation? What would you tell her to
do? Analyze how the Captain might go about changing her leadership style if
given a new ship. Take into consideration his personality traits, the
organizational values, emotional intelligence and social leadership aspects of
her role as leader. In short make her a new woman that the men would want to
follow.
Learning Activity 2
Theme two is the importance of creating a leadership style
Take one of the short personality and emotional IQ tests
located in the toolbox or in the weekly schedule and comment to the class about
what it taught you about yourself. Include in your comments the types of jobs
you might be best suited to hold as well as ways to change or improve your
personality to make it easier to assume some of the leadership traits we have
discussed.
“The standard of a true leader is that he sets also his own
rules rather than merely and blindly obeying the set of standard rules, even if
it means being treated as an idiot or a crazy by the fools. And to follow his
noble dream to attain his cherished goal, he employs his wisdom tool gained
from his own hard core experience in an open school called life ? Anuj Somany
“Doing the right thing is more important than doing the
thing right.”- Peter Drucker
