Assignment:
Leadership Paper
Choose a leader you personally admire - ideally a business leader- but you may also select a prominent leader in another field if you can relate his/her background and accomplishments to the assignment requirements. You may select someone who is currently in a leadership position or someone who is a historical character. For example:
Business Political/Religious Historical
Jack Welch Angela Merkel Peter the Great
Warren Buffet Nelson Mandela Abraham Lincoln
Bill Gates Xi Jinping Queen Elizabeth I
Melissa Mayer Margaret Thatcher Simón Bolívar
Richard Branson Barrack Obama Saladin (Salah al-Din Yusuf Ibn Ayyub)
Jeff Bezos Pope Francis Genghis Khan
Mark Zuckerburg Hillary Clinton Cleopatra
Steve Jobs Winston Churchill Napoleon
Oprah Winfrey Dali Lama Augustus Caesar (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus)
Henry Ford Vladimir Putin Alexander the Great
No fictional characters (although Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek: TNGwas a fantastic leader).
Using a minimum of three reference resources (and no Wikipedia) for your research (newspapers, business magazines, books, company reports, websites if the information is 100% credible, etc.), this assignment is designed for you to share information about your person's leadership style and impact and how that relates to what we are learning about leadership in class and in the textbook.
Note: This is not a research paper where you merely report what you learned. This is a paper to allow you to take your research, analyze it, and express your insights and opinions in relation to the class material. Some questionsthat may help guide your analysis and thinking (and you don't have to answer all of them, or limit yourself to these particular questions):
• Was your person a leader, a manager, or both? What did you find that leads you to that conclusion?
• How did your person develop into an effective leader? Would you say s/he was a born leader, or developed into one?
• What would you say is your person's leadership style? (What leadership theories may apply?)
• What do you think contributed the most to your leader's success? Were there any other key contributors?
• Did your leader inspire trust? How did s/he accomplish that? If not, what was the impact?
• What kind of power did your leader utilize? Would another base of power have been more effective? What power tactics did s/he use?
• Do you consider your leader to be ethical? Why?
• What skills did your leader demonstrate that could be applied to other organizations, in other time periods, and/or in other parts of the world or in other areas?
• What skills did your leader demonstrate that you would like to adopt? Why? How would you use them?
• What could your leader have done to be more effective?
The paper should be at least 4 pages (and I do mean 4full pages or more), 1 ½ line spacing, with 1 inch margin and using a normal 12 point font (Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, Univers, etc). Any "title" type information (your name, class, date, etc.) will not be counted as part of the 4 pages. In other words, don't substitute lengthy titles, big margins, extra lines for spacing or large fonts for actual paper content. It should contain a synopsis of the articles/books you read but mostly your commentary on what you read (see the grading guidelines - the weighing is a good guideline for content). I expect footnotes or attributions as appropriate (APA style is fine) and a bibliography.