Who is your leader and what leadership role/s has this person had?
For this term, I have chosen Abraham Lincoln as my leader. His hard work and passion for his commitment have made me select him as my leader. Abraham Lincoln was a great example and inspiring leader to select him as a role model and knowledge leader and he can handle a conflict and any situation in a smooth way. Because of his certain characteristic qualities, he holds a special place in the world’s leaders list.
Early life and leadership roles:
Lincoln was an American respected political leader ever and lawyer who served as the first man for the United States of America. As a 16 president of USA he led the nation through its greatest morals and political crises in the American Civil War. His hard work and his leadership skill helped him to fight against slavery and finally achieved it, strengthened the federal government, and by his ideology he has modernized the US economy. His journey toward the first man was remarkable. Born on 12 February 1809 as a second child to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks Lincoln. They were very poor and Thomas Lincoln's father witnessed his father's death in an Indian raid and settled in Kentucky doing hard jobs for a living. Lincoln was primarily self-educated, with irregular teaching from voyaging instructors over a year he turned and showed long-lasting enthusiasm towards education. In his early career, he joined a partner Offutt at general stores as a salesman. The business struggled a lot in the initial stages and continued for a long period of time, where he sold his share and that march he decided to join the politics, running for Illinois general assembly supporting improvements on Sangamon River. He could get the attention of the crowd with his speeches but lack of education powerful friends and money he lost the general elections. Lincoln stopped his campaign in the middle so as to serve as a captain in the Military during the black hawk war. He observed support from the crowd in his first speech and has become a tough competitor and tossed him. Later he served as New Salem's postmaster and surveyor later on, but continued his eager approach to his activity on reading and decided to become Lawyer (Self Taught) “I studied with Nobody”. In 1849 he returned to his law practice and was very annoyed by the opening of additional lands of slavery as a result of the Kansan-Nebraska Act. In the year 1854, he returned to politics as a leader in the new Republican Party and reached the debate with the national audience against Stephan Douglas. As a leader of the modern republic, Lincoln has stood in the center with friends and opponents on both sides. His Gettysburg address made a historic for nationalism and Republicans equal rights and democracy. Elected as president his main challenging part was the civil war and his leadership skills he concurred the civil war with a lot of ups and downs and is remembered as a United States martyr hero and ranked as the best president of the US by both scholars and public.
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What is your interest in this leader? Why do you want to choose this person?
When you talk about Abraham Lincoln, people would rather call him America's greatest hero. Lincoln was the person who can inspire his people by telling the stories and with his inspiring words. But more importantly because of his certain characteristic qualities people like to admire him a lot and want to set an example by considering him as a role model. He has established himself as a true leader. Knowing about him and his leadership skill will definitely inspire me and applying his skills will make me reach good heights in the future. So that is the reason I have chosen Lincoln as my leader.
What preliminary comprehensive sources have you found to support your weekly research? In other words, do you have sufficient materials and references to continue to assess and analyze this person and his/her leadership style, traits, and behaviors throughout this course?
Being a prominent leader and inspiring personality I have found a lot of journals and books written on him which might be helping me out in getting the complete information. Yes, I have enough materials and references to continue to access and analyze Abraham Lincoln.
Citations and references to this Unit 1, 2, and 3 reading materials that support your choice. Specifically, how did your leader display (or not display) aspects of Fundamentals of Leadership (Unit 1), Effective Thinking (Unit 2), and Emotional Intelligence (Unit 3)?
Fundamentals of leadership
Leadership is the influencing process between leaders and followers to achieve organizational objectives through change Robert N Lussier (2015). In the book, the author has discussed five key elements which will support the leadership definition and the five key elements would be. Influence, Organizational objective, people, change, and leader followers. It is hard to find all the key elements of a good leader. Influencing is the process of a leader communicating ideas, gaining acceptance of them, and motivating followers to support and implement the ideas through change Robert N Lussier (2015). In Lincoln's leadership to win a civil war he needs to influence his people and army in order to win the war. Being a lawyer and having good knowledge of the law he has waited for the time and expanded the reach of presidential authority. He influences his people through his speeches and motivational lessons. This makes there people to have trust in the leader which is the biggest achievement and one of the most important qualities of the leader. There are some particular qualities that made Lincoln great. He has the capacity to listen to different points of view in analyzing particular issues. From the book Team of Rivals, Kearns has noticed that Lincoln has this skill. In his leadership, he created an atmosphere where cabinet members were free to disagree without any fear of a relationship. And he also knows how to stop the decision, before taking the final decision. The best quality for a leader is to accept the mistake. Lincoln use to acknowledge their errors and learn from them and will be taking all precautions before taking any wise decision and make sure that he will be applying the learning he has learned from his previous mistakes. That’s the way he has established culture in his administration. In hard times taking credit as a leader when the team is in failure is a good positive sign for the team to make them believe that they still have faith in success. And giving credit to the team for success is the best quality true leader and Abraham Lincoln showed up the same key factor with his team. When mistakes were made by his cabinet members Lincoln stood up for his team and when serious questions were raised toward him he use to take the blame himself rather than passing it over to the cabinet. When making a high-performance team, as a leader one should know their own strength and weakness, Lincoln has a tendency to give more chances to the people because he was aware and want to recoup for his weakness. As an example, George Mc Cleland, commander in chief of the army refuse to follow the directions about the war effort and Lincoln eventually set a deadline and removed him from the position. Lincoln was very particular about his vision and has the ability to convey his message to his people. He made the concepts simple and communicate with understanding to his countrymen. When he won the civil war and won in reelection, Lincoln did not focus on his achievements but rather focused on the people to get them together with his inspirational words. As I conclude Lincoln as a leader who was self-taught and had good decision-making skills, interpersonal skills, and team management skills has helped him to remain a remarkable leader. Even after his dearth
People are still attracted to his character.
Effective thinking.
Lincoln was a great political thinker and know how to better poster his origination to success. With his great vision and wisdom so he can anticipate well in advance organization. Identifying the key factor will create an easy way to solve an issue. Brilliant leaders can hold two opposing ideas in their minds at once. Lincoln is good at creating unexpected solutions. Rather than settling for A and B, Lincoln forges a third way which contains elements for both but improves on each. Effective thinking is a skill that uses awareness, conscious thoughts, and unconscious inputs to identify primary needs and how to address the issue in an effective way. Lincoln used to be very patient and while he was about to lose hope, he used to be alone and thin and analyze the issue and use to get the possible outcome so as to get it resolved. The purpose of effective thinking is to handle the issue and make sense of our surrounding in order to decide what would be the best possible solution for any problem. Lincoln knows the importance of creating bonds with the electorate, from the initial day he tries to gain respect from the known person and try to establish a friendly environment where civilians can address him for any help. Lincoln is not born a leader, Lincoln as a president has not had any experience in leading a team but no governor or general had raised any questions about his leadership. It is all about your skills and emotions that we need to use. In order to win any person, we need to win his heart.
Emotional Intelligence:
Great leaders move us, they ignite our passion and inspire the best in us. Great leadership works on Emotions James Lewis, (2003). Character is like a tree and reputation is like a shadow. We think about the shadow but the real thing is a tree. The explanations behind his prosperity have been broadly discussed, and there is acceptable proof to recommend that Lincoln had an elevated level of passionate insight that permitted him to defeat innumerable obstructions that would have halted most people. Lincoln used to keep his vision in constant focus. To achieve this thing he need to have the best and most trusted people around regardless of the way that a significant number of them couldn't help contradicting him and freely scrutinizing him. As he was continually being tested, he needed to forgo the needs of right and put his sense of self and individual emotions aside for the advancement of others and his nation. If others has better ideas and solutions he use to listen to them and would be ready to change his mind if he needed to. Lincoln as a leader has the ability to manage his own emotions. When his subordinates challenge him, Lincoln was able to control his emotions and he never use to fight back and show anger towards them. At the point when Lincoln felt outrage he would compose a letter and not send it until he got an opportunity to calm down, typically the following day. By doing so a true leader will not humiliate the feelings of others which would be a good sign in any team. Lincoln was a great listener, and the individuals who were in contact with him generally felt heard, despite the fact that he didn't generally concur with them. He had a talent for communicating in plain language and was an incredible storyteller. He never talked over his crowd, and he utilized similitudes to come to his meaningful conclusion in a manner that his audience members comprehended and acknowledged. He had the capacity to take complex thoughts and put them into terms that everybody had the option to get a handle on. Lincoln use to understand the need of others. Lincoln had the capacity to bring individuals of contrasting assessments together and was an extraordinary middle person he had the capacity to repair walls with his adversaries.
Toward the finish of the Civil War, he put it all on the line to not mortify a crushed adversary through his words and activities. He treated their pioneer, General Lee, with respect and permitted the Confederate officers to get back with the entirety of their assets separated from their weapons. He opposed calls from certain individuals from his bureau and others to manage the South and somewhat centered around ways that he could recuperate old injuries.
Lincoln is an exemplar and model than any other person in world history. He holds a special place in Americans' memory of his great accomplishments but more importantly of certain character qualities. As a leader, he has exhibited his leadership, emotional intelligence, and effective thinking which is been explained above. Selecting Abraham Lincoln as my leader for the organizational leadership Couse will definitely help me to know more about his leadership styles and help me to relate my learning with his leadership skills.
References
- A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide). Project Management Institute, 2001.
- Bradberry, T., & Greaves, J. (2009). Emotional intelligence 2.0. TalentSmart.
- Burger, E. B., & Starbird, M. (2012). The 5 elements of effective thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
- Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Penguin, 2013.
- Kotter, John P. Leading Change. Harvard Business Review Press, 2012.
- Lewis, James P. Project Leadership. McGraw-Hill, 2003.
- Lussier, Robert N., and Christopher F. Achua. Leadership: Theory, Application & Skill Development. Cengage Learning, 2016.
- Martin, How Successful Leaders Think
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