The three steps involved in creating your personal model of leadership are as follows:

1. Select the basic values that will provide the foundation of your model and identify the leadership behaviors that will result from those values.
2. Identify a clear approach for creating a sense of meaning and purpose, including contributing to society.
3. Identify the impact of one’s contributions to oneself, other people, organizations, and society.

Write a final paper of 1,250-1,500 words that presents your complete personal model of leadership. Incorporate the instructor’s feedback from the drafts of Step 1 and 2.

Use the “Creating a Personal Model of Leadership” instructions and the Rokeach Values Survey to guide you.

Prepare this assignment according to the APA guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

Directly quoted source material may not exceed 10% of the paper’s content.

Due to its inherent unreliability, Wikipedia is not considered an acceptable source for use in academic writing.

This assignment uses a grading rubric. Instructors will be using the rubric to grade the assignment; therefore, students should review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the assignment criteria and expectations for successful completion of the assignment

Personal Model of Leadership

-Instructions-

Throughout this course, you will create a personal model of leadership based on your research and reflections on what you learn during the 15 weeks.

What is a personal model of leadership?

Leadership is an important dimension of personal growth and development. Developing leadership qualities is a complex process that involves much more than simply selecting an appealing leadership model or participating in leadership training. Creating a satisfying personal model of leadership, which reflects one’s values and beliefs and impacts how one affects organizations, communities, and society is a lifelong process.

What approach should I take to complete my personal leadership model?

Building a personal leadership model can be approached from both a systematic and holistic perspective. It also requires creativity, passion, and a framework that leaders can use as they explore various models of leadership over their lifetimes. The process of creating a personal model involves continuously exploring and analyzing various leadership models. You will find certain elements of these models appealing and might choose to integrate them into your own model. Others you will not want to include. It is important to weigh the elements against your own system of values and beliefs and select the ones that will most enrich your own model and the lives of those whom you lead.

What do I use to develop my personal model of leadership?

As you explore various leadership models, utilize the table provided below to breakdown, select, and record their appealing elements. You will complete the table as you move through the steps of your leadership model throughout the course. This table will serve as a starting point or outline as you think through your personal model of leadership and write your paper.

How do I develop my personal model of leadership?

Creating a leadership model involves three steps, which include:

1. Select the basic values that will provide the foundation and identifying the leadership behaviors that will result from those values. As you select values for your own model, link each one you choose to one of these following four perspectives:

1. Values that guide you from an individual or “I” perspective.

2. Values that guide you from an interpersonal perspective.

3. Values that guide you from an organizational perspective.

4. Values that guide you from a societal perspective.

Personal Model of Leadership: Final Draft Rubric

Lecture Notes

Creating a Personal Model of Leadership

Introduction

Throughout your life, you continue to grow and develop. One dimension of development and growth is leadership. However, leadership is not merely about picking a leadership model or getting leadership training. Throughout your life, it is important to create and revise a personal model of leadership that reflects your values and beliefs, including areas such as serving the community and society. Building a personal leadership model is a process approachable from both a systematic and holistic perspective. However, it requires a framework that you can use as you explore various models of leadership over your lifetime.

Framework for a Leadership Model

Developing a personal leadership model requires a framework that you can use to design the model. The framework needs to be flexible enough to support the integration of any leadership model or parts of the model. At the same time, it needs to provide a structure that enables you to design a personal leadership model that you can use. Creating a leadership model involves four steps: (1) selecting the basic values that will provide the foundation, (2) identifying the leadership behaviors that will result from those values, (3) identifying a clear approach for creating a sense of meaning and purpose, including contributing to society, and (4) identifying the impact of one’s contributions. Each of these steps should be considering from four perspectives. First, look at each step from an individual or “I” perspective. Second, look at it from an interpersonal perspective. Third, take a look at it from an organizational perspective. Fourth, look at it from a societal perspective.

Step 1: Selecting the Values That Will Provide the Foundation

All leadership models have basic values and/or beliefs that provide the foundation for the model. They might include values such as integrity, trustworthiness, courage, spirituality, or even love. As you review each leadership model, it is important to look for and identify the values that the model proposes.

Step 2: Identifying the Leadership Behaviors That Will Result From Those Values

Once the basic values and/or beliefs that provide the foundation for the model are identified, the behaviors or norms of behavior that would illustrate these values can be defined. They might include behaviors such as meeting commitments made to others, reflecting the value of integrity; keeping promises, reflecting the value of trustworthiness; admitting mistakes publicly, reflecting the value of courage; proactively working to create a sense of meaning and belonging for people, reflecting the value of spirituality; and treating every person as a valuable human being, reflecting the value of love. As you review each leadership model, it is important to look for and identify behaviors that might reflect the selected values. In addition, it is important to define these behaviors or norms of behavior based on the organizations and situation within which you operate.

Step 3: Identifying a Clear Approach for Creating a Sense of Meaning and Purpose Including Contributing to Society

Once the values, beliefs, and norms of behavior have been defined, you can also identify how they can contribute to the greater good and have a sense of meaning and purpose. Contributions can take place through the organization you work for, organizations you join within the community, or your individual actions. These contributions might include selecting a career teaching children in disadvantaged communities, working only for companies that support social responsibility and sustainability, working to get organizations to support social responsibility and sustainability, working in nonprofit organizations, or playing a leadership role in your community or church.

Step 4: Identifying the Impact of One’s Contributions

Once you identify approaches for contributing to the greater good, it is time to identify the effects of these approaches. The effects can include those on the leader, the organization, the stakeholders, the community, and society. Effects can include reductions in pollution; increases in the number of students who go to college; employee satisfaction, including having a sense of worth and meaning; or even increases in financial performance and wealth.

Visualize the Model

The purpose of developing a personal model of leadership is to have a tool that you can use in your everyday life. To make this leadership model easy to use, it is important to create a visual version of the model. This visualization could be as simple as a triangle with four levels in it, each representing the outputs from the four steps above. A personal journal or even an essay on the components selected can support and explain this simple visual of your personal leadership model.

Conclusion

Creating a personal leadership model requires a systematic and holistic approach. At the same time, it requires creativity and passion. The process of creating a personal model involves continuously exploring and analyzing various leadership models. Some you might want to integrate into your model, others you will not want to include in it. As you explore each model, you can design a visual model for your use.

Your views on leadership may change over time, so your personal leadership model should be a living and evolving document. Strive to make your document relevant, clear and teachable, knowing that effective leaders look for ways to share their leadership ideas with team members, colleagues, and those they lead.

References

None

Leadership Lessons From Abraham Lincoln

Read “Leadership Lessons From Abraham Lincoln,” by Coutu, from Harvard Business Review(2009).

Leadership Lessons from Abraham Lincoln.

Images

Source:Harvard Business Review. Apr2009, Vol. 87 Issue 4, p43-47. 5p. 2 Color Photographs.Document Type:InterviewSubject Terms:*HISTORIANS
*LEADERSHIP
AUTHORS — Interviews
WOMEN historians — Interviews
EMOTIONAL intelligenceGeographic Terms:UNITED StatesNAICS/Industry Codes:711510 Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers
711513 Independent writers and authorsPeople:GOODWIN, Doris Kearns, 1943- — Interviews
LINCOLN, Abraham, 1809-1865
LINCOLN, Abraham, 1809-1865 — InfluenceAbstract:In January 2008, CBS anchor Katie Couric asked then-candidate Barack Obama what single book, apart from the Bible, he would bring with him to the White House. He cited Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s account of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War. It was a signal that Obama intended to model his leadership during the current crisis on the style of his presidential predecessor from Illinois. By bringing heavyweight politicians who are themselves past and future presidential contenders into his cabinet, Obama has indeed reprised Lincoln’s strategy of creating a team composed of his most able rivals. If the new U.S. president can learn from Lincoln so, too, can business executives now grappling with similar questions of how to lead in turbulent times. To draw out the lessons of Lincoln’s administration, HBR senior editor Diane Coutu interviewed Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose other books include No Ordinary Time (about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their era), The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. In their wide-ranging conversation, Goodwin discusses the advantages of forming an executive committee of strong-willed, forthright individuals who won’t insulate a leader from uncomfortable but important dissent. She describes how Lincoln managed a group of people who were capable of taking over the top job — and sometimes plotting to do so. She sheds light on Lincoln’s magic, which she says was not so much a matter of charisma as of emotional intelligence. And she takes the historian’s long view on the current economic crisis and the opportunities for political and business leaders alike to take advantage of these extraordinary times. INSET: IDEA IN BRIEF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact [email protected]. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)Full Text Word Count:2804ISSN:0017-8012Accession Number:37021612Publisher Logo:Images:

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Section:Different Voice

A CONVERSATION WITH HISTORIAN DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN

IN JANUARY 2008, CBS anchor Katie Couric asked Barack Obama which one book he would take with him to the White House, apart from the Bible. The eventual winner of the presidential election singled out Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 best-selling account of President Abraham Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War.

In the months following his election victory, President Obama has made it clear that he is modeling his leadership on the style of his presidential predecessor from Illinois. By bringing heavyweight politicians who are themselves past and future presidential contenders into his cabinet, Obama has reprised Lincoln’s strategy of creating a team composed of his most able rivals, people who are unafraid to take issue with him and are confident of their own leadership abilities.

If the new U.S. president can learn from Abraham Lincoln so too can business leaders who are grappling now with similar questions of how to lead in turbulent times. To find out what the lessons from Lincoln are, HBR senior editor Diane Coutu interviewed Team of Rivals author Goodwin, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose other books include No Ordinary Time (about Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and their era), The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream.

In the course of a wide-ranging, two-hour conversation, Goodwin described the qualities that made it possible for Lincoln to “bring disgruntled opponents together to create the most unusual cabinet in history,” offered some advice to the new president as he confronts the current economic crisis, and expressed her belief that the United States will weather this storm as it has weathered worse before. What follows is an abridged and edited version of the interview.

What lessons can President Barack Obama and other leaders take away from studying Abraham Lincoln’s presidency?

There are several, but the first one President Obama focused on in discussions during the election campaign concerns the way Lincoln surrounded himself with people, including his rivals, who had strong egos and high ambitions; who felt free to question his authority; and who were unafraid to argue with him.

For example, Lincoln brought Salmon Chase into his cabinet as treasury secretary and kept him there for three years, knowing full well that Chase craved the presidency with every fiber of his being and knowing that Chase was undermining him all the time with cabinet members, Congress, and the rest of the country. So long as he was doing a good job at his post, that was more important than personal feelings. Obama is obviously trying to do the same thing by choosing his chief rival, Hillary Clinton, to be secretary of state; by picking rival Joe Biden as his vice president; and by including powerful Republicans in his cabinet like Robert Gates and Ray LaHood.

But you have to remember, the idea is not just to put your rivals in power — the point is that you must choose the best and most able people in the country, for the good of the country. Lincoln came to power when the nation was in peril, and he had the intelligence, and the self-confidence, to know that he needed the best people by his side, people who were leaders in their own right and who were very aware of their own strengths. That’s an important insight whether you’re the leader of a country or the CEO of a company.

What’s the downside of creating a team of rivals?

If you are as inclusive a leader as Lincoln was, or as President Obama seems to be, then the danger is that you’re constantly talking and arguing about things late into the night without reaching a consensus. It can be paralyzing. So you have to be prepared to vote on decisions, and if a vote results in a stalemate, then you have to make the decision yourself and be ready to tell the team, “Like it or not, here’s what we’re doing.”

For example, for months Lincoln let his cabinet debate about if and when slavery should be abolished. Finally, though, he made up his mind to issue his historic Emancipation Proclamation to free the slaves. He brought the cabinet together and told them he no longer needed their thoughts on the main issue — but that he would listen to their suggestions about how best to implement his decision and its timing. So even though some members still did not support Lincoln’s decision, they felt they’d been heard. And they had been. When one cabinet member suggested that Lincoln wait for a victory on the field to issue the proclamation, Lincoln took his advice.

You’ve written biographies of three other American presidents. What, in your opinion, are the essential qualities of a successful leader?

I can’t emphasize strongly enough the fact that you’ve got to surround yourself with people who can argue with you and question your assumptions. It particularly helps if you can bring in people whose temperaments differ from your own.

When Lincoln brought Edwin Stanton into the cabinet in 1862 as secretary of war, for example, Stanton was much tougher, much more secretive, than Lincoln, who was often too kind to subordinates and at times too open. Their opposite temperaments balanced each other out. Where Lincoln was too lenient, issuing pardons for soldiers who had run away from battle to the point of hurting military discipline, Stanton was relentless in his desire to punish cowardice. By working together, pardons were issued, but not in the numbers they had been under Lincoln alone.

You also have to be able to figure out how to share credit for your success with your inner team so that they feel a part of a mission. Basically, you want to create a reservoir of good feeling, and that involves not only acknowledging your errors but even shouldering the blame for the failures of some of your subordinates. Again and again, Lincoln took responsibility for what he did, and he shared responsibility for the mistakes of others, and so people became very loyal to him.

History also shows that it’s essential to know how to connect to the larger public, whether that’s through radio, in the case of Franklin Roosevelt, or in Lincoln’s case, through speeches that were filled with such poetry and clarity that people felt they were watching him think and that he was telling them the truth.

I would add here that one more success factor is key for great leadership, be it in business or politics, and it’s one that’s usually overlooked. As a leader you need to know how to relax so that you can replenish your energies for the struggles facing you tomorrow.

Lincoln went to the theater about a hundred times while he was in Washington. And although he suffered from a certain melancholy, he had a tremendous sense of humor and would entertain people long into the night with his stories. Franklin Roosevelt was the same way. He had this cocktail hour every evening during World War II when you just couldn’t talk about the war. He needed to remain free from thinking about the bad things for a few hours. Or he would play with his stamps. This ability to recharge your batteries in the midst of great stress and crisis is crucial for successful leadership.

More books have been written on Lincoln than on any other American president. What does Lincoln’s magic as a leader really come down to?

Well, it wasn’t anything so immediately felt as charisma. In fact, it took the country some time to warm to Lincoln; his popularity almost came from the inside out. His cabinet was the first to see something unusual about him.

Take William Seward, who originally was a rival. Some eight weeks after becoming secretary of state, Seward wrote to his wife that Lincoln was unlike anyone he’d ever known. Other members of the cabinet came to think so, too. One after another, they came to power thinking Lincoln was rather unexceptional and ended up believing that he was as near a perfect man as anyone they’d ever met.

What Lincoln had, it seems to me, was an extraordinary amount of emotional intelligence. He was able to acknowledge his errors and learn from his mistakes to a remarkable degree. He was careful to put past hurts behind him and never allowed wounds to fester. The rare example I could find of Lincoln’s being unable to forgive someone was his father. Lincoln never visited his father when he was dying, which suggests that he could not let go of the anger he felt toward the man who considered the future president’s fierce desire to learn a sign of laziness.

He had flaws, of course; every leader has flaws. Lincoln’s greatest flaw came out of his strength, which was generally liking people and not wanting to hurt them. He always wanted to give somebody a second or even a third chance.

This weakness proved disastrous with George McClellan, who was head of the Union Army for some months near the beginning of the war. Lincoln should have fired McClellan within weeks of seeing how narcissistic and insubordinate he was. In part, Lincoln didn’t because at that time he didn’t have enough confidence in his own understanding of military affairs. He was still learning about how to wage war by going to the Library of Congress and reading books on military strategy. But in the end it was his inability to hurt people that made Lincoln keep McClellan on far too long. As a result, battles were lost, and thousands of soldiers died who might have lived had Lincoln fired McClellan earlier. So it wasn’t just a small flaw.

In your biography of Lincoln, you rely heavily on the intimate letters between wives and husbands. What will historians do without such letters in the future?

It’s a big issue for historians — and for leaders who are trying to learn from history — because traditionally it’s in people’s private correspondence that you get the emotional understanding of what leaders are really feeling and doing as history is being made.

Unfortunately, Lincoln left few personal letters, but Seward would write to his wife daily to tell her what Lincoln did that day or about some of the arguments that went on in the cabinet, and those letters provide a unique insight into what Lincoln thought and felt as great decisions were being made.

Looking back, the thing that’s really impressive is that here were these leaders running the Civil War, and people like Seward still had time to meditate on the day’s events and to write these long letters to his wife at night. These were the days of no television. Leaders weren’t worried about cable news or their BlackBerrys. They weren’t multitasking; they had time to reflect. It’s a luxury many leaders just don’t have today, and that’s a real loss.

For historians, the biggest loss is going to be the time between the rise of the telephone in the 1940s and the advent of e-mail in the 1990s. There’s a 50-year period that is almost completely gone from history, unless, like Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, you taped conversations. Today, at least we have e-mails, which are in some way reviving the art of letter writing. I don’t know whether or not, 200 years from now, we’ll be able to retrieve e-mails found on old computers. But I think — or at least I hope — that if people send a long e-mail to somebody now, and they know it’s something important, they will have the foresight to print it out.

Obama took your book with him to the Oval Office. What else would you recommend he read?

Obama does seem to have a sense of history, and were I to speak with him again, I would suggest that he read about other presidents going through difficult times. I would certainly recommend Roosevelt’s fireside chats, where he explains in such simple language terribly complicated problems like the banking crisis, the economic crisis, and the war. And since Obama is interested in the moments in history when people come together to produce change from the bottom up, he also might want to look at the Progressive movement at the turn of the twentieth century — which led to curbs on the giant trusts, pure-food-and-drug legislation, railroad regulation, and conservation measures — or the civil rights movement, to learn how it created the pressure that allowed the voting rights and desegregation acts to pass.

I find it interesting, though, that Lincoln didn’t read biographies — at least you don’t hear about him reading of Washington or Jefferson, the people you would imagine he’d be very interested in. He was more impressed by their words. It’s the documents of American history — the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence — that became his inspiration. He said himself that he never had a thought that didn’t come from the Declaration of Independence. If Lincoln is Obama’s role model, then he might want to go back to those documents and study them in great detail. I think that appreciating them and their great promise is what makes you understand what hope is all about.

Do you really have such hope when everything seems to be crashing down around us?

Yes, I really do. In times of crisis, things become possible that wouldn’t be possible in ordinary times. The way the U.S. government is set up, with so many checks and balances, means that it almost takes a deep crisis to move forward. So there are only certain moments in history when great change can take place. FDR had this opportunity in the Depression; Lincoln did during the Civil War. Obama has that same great opportunity now. The challenges Americans are now facing give him a chance to pull the country together in new ways, working across party lines.

Also, history is a great reminder that, however bad things look today, they’ve been worse before, and Americans still pulled through. Today’s crisis is not as bad as the Great Depression, let alone the Civil War that Lincoln confronted. One of my favorite FDR speeches is one he made in 1942 that was very similar to Obama’s victory speech in Chicago. FDR warned his listeners that there would be many failures before the country won World War II. But he reminded them that America had faced disasters before and had come out the other side. Despite the cruel winter at Valley Forge, for example, Americans still won independence. FDR’s speech was so successful that thousands of affirming telegrams flooded into the White House.

Obviously there’s a fine line between optimism that’s simply not credible and a sense of real confidence that there’s something about the United States and its people and its system that’s going to make the country pull together and get out of this hole. Roosevelt once said something like, “The most efficient dictatorship could never compete with the free energies of a free people in a democratic system.” I think that’s right — and not just for the United States but for democracies around the world.

Of all the politicians you’ve written about — the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds, FDR, LBJ, Lincoln, and now Theodore Roosevelt — whom would you choose to spend an evening with?

Lincoln, without question. It took me 10 years to write his biography, and he was a very amiable companion all those years.

If I did get to meet him, though, I wouldn’t ask him what I, as a historian, know I’m supposed to ask him — about what he would have done to bring the country together after the Civil War, had he lived. I’d ask him to tell me stories. Everyone remarked upon his extraordinary sense of humor, and he was widely admired as a storyteller. He said himself that a good story is better than a drop of whiskey. I’d just sit at the kitchen table with him and have him tell me one story after another, for then he would truly come to life again.

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By Diane Coutu, HBR senior editor

IDEA IN BRIEF

• Abraham Lincoln’s genius was to manage the ambitions and egos of his rivals to form a team that could confront the challenges of civil war.

• His ability to create a team of rivals was rooted in an extraordinary level of emotional intelligence. He learned from his mistakes, he shared responsibility for the mistakes of others, and he did not hold grudges.

• Lincoln’s experience, like that of other presidents in times of emergency, gives hope that the United States and other democracies will weather the current crisis.

Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact [email protected]

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