Oscar Gonzalez
MBA- 671
Capstone Project
Intro
Throughout the weeks so far in the MBA program, it has really taught me more about
leadership. Before this, there some little and obvious knowledge about what leadership means to
me. Being in sports especially football, it has taught one to truly understand what it means to be a
leader. For example, in high school there were many leaders in the team that would get everyone
locked in a ready to go. Those leaders would of course be the ones that every other player would
look up too. This is when I truly began to understand what leadership is and is something that I
wanted to accomplish and was eager to be seen as one. Just by playing football and getting into
college, the evolution of leadership was strongly seen. Now these leaders were mature and knew
what was best for the team and this was perfectly shown not just by their words, but also their
actions. Now taking being in the MBA program, it has not only taught me more about leadership,
but it has also taught me the importance in leadership on the business side. A leader in business
should be able to motivate their employees and make sure they value their work.
Abstract
This paper will evaluate the importance of leadership and will be able to see the
distinctive perspectives on management and leadership. This will show the history of leadership
and how it was seen a couple years ago. The evolution of leadership will be one of the most
essential sections of the paper because more skills are learned for anyone to be a leader. There
are also current and different practices involved with leadership. There are different traits in
order to become a successful and ethical leader. We will examine closely on what skills,
processes, and tools are needed as well to become successful in order to manage people and
projects.
Lit Review
Evolution of Personality differences in Leadership
To begin, the right way to get in this is to see the evolution of leadership. Leadership is
easily known as the most important themes that needs to have in any business. Leadership in the
early times can be easily designed as someone telling others what to do. This person will
generally be the type to carry the alpha title and everyone knows that they need to follow him.
Some evolution for leaders can be seen by others models of leadership, for example one article
says, “similar to those of other recent models of leadership, in which individual movement is
assumed to reflect a compromise between attraction toward an individual’s own preferred goal
and toward other individuals in a group, with individuals varying in the relative weighting of
these two tendencies” (Johnstone, 2011). What this means is that a leader is focused on other
individual goals. That is genuinely important that leaders care about their workers and want them
to strive for greatness. This should be introduced to humans at a young age so they can get
accustomed to becoming a leader. This also led for management to be focused and become
better leaders. With the development of new technology, this means that managers and leaders
should adapt to the technology and the economy. During the early times, management “early
views of management were heavily oriented toward efficiency, at the expense of attention to the
manager-as–leader” (Taylor, 1911). This can still be seen now in the present on how when
managing or being a leader that one needs to be efficient. As to adapting to improve as a leader,
one has to be able to adapt to others in their team. It can be during any situation, that leader
should be able to perform under pressure. Throughout the years and countless times of adapting,
we can ensure that leadership has been the same and only thing that changes will be the new
skills and the adaption of the economy and diversity. People might also try to see who can
emerge as a leader. Those who can emerge as leaders are those with certain traits. Some of these
traits can be “ morphological, physiological, or behavior traits increasing their propensity to act
first in coordination problems” (King, 2009). These are just some of the traits that make one a
leader and manager, but more on this subject will come throughout the paper.
Responsible Leadership: Pathways to the Future
To become someone with the right leadership skills and know what is going on around
them, they must first become responsible. There are certain environmental and social forces that
generated the interest in finding research and practices in leadership. There are several ways to
find out more and get more knowledge on what a responsible leader can be. The obvious about
what being responsible in commonly known as being accountable and have the right moral
decisions. This is the common norms that people should already know when being responsible.
Now this needs to be added to being a leader and by doing this, it can improve someone’s goals
in life. “Responsible leadership is geared toward the concerns of others and asks for what and to
whom leaders are responsible… this is arguably one of the most under researched concepts in
this field, as well as one of the most relevant” (Pless, 2011). This has helped me learn how
important any leader has to be. To be responsible, there are also some simple issues that
managers have to face and these ethical dilemmas can come from a wide number of areas. For
example we see below:
• Advertising (desire to present your product or service in the best light)
• Sourcing of raw materials (does the company buy from a supplier who may be
underpaying their people or damaging the environment?)
• Privacy (should the company have access to private e-mails that employees write on
company time? Or the Web sites they visit during work hours?)
• Safety (Employee and community)
• Pay Scales (relation of the pay of top executives to the rest of the company)
• Product pricing policies (variable pricing, discounts)
• Communication (with stockholders, announcements of plan closing, etc.)
These are just some examples on how managers can handle any ethical dilemmas and must use
some of their leadership skills to get through this. Being under pressure and having to deal with
all the problems would just make a person become more accomplished. Just like dealing with
these dilemmas, there are a couple steps that is shown in chapter 3 about making sure how to
handle ethical decision making process.
1. Assess the situation: What are you being asked to do?
2. Identify the stakeholders and consider the situation from their point of view
3. Consider the alternatives you have available to you and how they affect the stakeholders
4. How does the action make your feel about yourself?
5. Make a decision
6. Monitor outcomes. How did the decision work out? How did it turn out for all
concerned?
Reading through chapters and by doing this, it allows me to gain more knowledge about how
mangers are using the right tactics for any situation. Being a leader should already prepare you
for situations like this. This is why learning more about this is helpful because it be useful in the
long run.
8 Essential Qualities That Define Great Leadership
There should always be some way that can help anyone become a great leader and with
this source found, it has really opened my eyes on ways that it can work. To summarize on how
this article can teach me more about leadership, it would say that nearly one third of employees
do not trust their management. Some reason of this may be that the manager may be lacking
many leadership skills. It is imperative to have a great relationship with the employees because
this will allow your work to succeed because everyone will be on board. Seen before and always
someone saying this is that managers that have the perfect qualities to show great leadership can
really inspire and influence their team/group to be accomplished and can really get work done at
no rush. One essential that help out with leadership would be to have sincere enthusiasm. This
can be seen in a leader because employees like to get positive feedback on their work. A leader
who is always wild up and has amazing relationships with their employees can really be