Sunday, October 25, 2015

A511.1.3.RB_MalvoisinLeon


            When it comes to leaders that inspire me the most the one who I like to think of the most is our president of the Unites States of America, Barack Hussein Obama. World leader elected by the people of American since 2009, and is currently serving a second term in the office.  Obama inspires me as an individual due to his educational background and strive for success. 

            "[Barack Obama] is the 44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at University of Chicago Law School between 1992 and 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the   United States House of Representatives in 2000 to Bobby Rush" (as quoted in Barack Obama, 2015, para. 1).  Indeed, with such an intensive and diverse background in both education and professional experience. Obama is who I like to refer to as a born leader, and an individual that strive for success and inspires me and many other people of the world to strive for success as well.

            As identified by Yukl, 2013 "Leadership is the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objective" (Para. 6). Certainly, his leadership approach during his presidency in the white house has inspired me to become a leader and to pursuit a Master degree, in Engineering Management with a focus on leadership.

            Since leadership and management typically can't take place by the same person, Obama has his subordinates to manage some of the country's financial crisis.  For example, the economic policy, as identified by Barrack Obama (2015) " In March, Obama's Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, took further steps to manage the financial crisis, including introducing the Public-Private Investment Program for Legacy Assets, which contains provisions for buying up to two trillion dollars in depreciated real estate assets."
   
            Furthermore, thinking about the video of Simon Sinek's TEDx talk and the “why” of leadership, it seems what he is communicating is if a leader change the way he or she communicate the information from inside out (starting with why, how, what) to his or her followers by first stating "why" she or he is doing what he/she is doing. That leader would most likely get more followers to follow his or her leadership. It's a simple case of reversing the standard flow of which information is shared and how the brain operates for most people. If  you start with what most people wants to hear, which is "why" they're doing what they're doing. Then, you would most likely convince these individuals to follow your leadership.        

             According to Sinek, (2009) People don't buy "what" you do, they buy "why" you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody that need what you have, the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe...the goal is not to higher people because they can  do the job, no the goal is to higher people because they believe what you believe. Indeed, if  someone believe in a theory or someone, he or she would most likely follow that individual. So, if that concept can be applied to the workplace, than that business or the leader of that would have lots of followers, and the business would most likely be a success. Hence, yes this "Why" of leadership should be considered within the discussion of managerial work as well.

References

Barrack Obama. (2015, October 22). Retrieved October 24, 2015, from Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
 
Yukl, G. (2013). Introduction: The Nature of Leadership. In Leadership in organizations. (8th ed., pp 7). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

Sinek, S. (2009, September 28). Start with why -- how great leaders inspire action  [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4ZoJKF_VuA&feature=share&list=PL42F8562DCD3CCEA8

 

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