Case Study :Am I Really A Leader?

Improved Essays
Am I Really A Leader? The case study “Am I really a Leader?” explores Sally Helgesen as she strove to maintain authenticity in leadership. The case study leads one to discover the paramount importance of authentic and transformational leadership in the past and even in this century as those displayed by Sally. This paper will uncover how self-awareness predisposed Sally to authentic leadership, a description of the authenticity displayed by Sally, and finally the importance of Sally taking the “Mantle of Leadership” and the relationship this has to authenticity in leadership. It is clear from the case study that one’s self-awareness is an essential and indispensable factor towards practicing authentic leadership. It helps one to understand themselves, their strengths and weaknesses, their potential, their core values among other vital information. First, at the beginning, Sally had insufficient self-awareness. This is clear when she decides to take a trip to New York in the quest of becoming an author even though she had neither formal education nor training that would enable her to be a successful writer. Her quest quickly becomes disinteresting as her book failed to perform as good as she had hoped. She then discovered that her passion lay elsewhere through her writings. Throughout the travel, she also got to learn from her mistakes, recognizes her character, establishes self-awareness and uses it to her advantage. According to Northhouse (2015), self-awareness is among

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    My Leadership Philosophy Everyone has their own idea on what leadership is and what makes a good leader. I have been fortunate enough to have worked for several great leaders throughout my career and I can only hope to be half the leader that they are. As I strive to become an effective leader, I have had to reflect on my past experiences with both bad leaders and good leaders to figure out what leadership means to me. My definition of leadership is: the ability to inspire others to seek and affect change, show pride in their work no matter how big or small, and challenge themselves to be their personal best. Captain Benjamin Hawkins immediately comes to mind as a great leader who profoundly influenced me during my career.…

    • 1370 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Costco CEO Craig Jelinek personifies the leadership style of authentic leadership. Craig is a low-key, organization first, employee dedicated leader who has taken Costco to international fame as a low cost, high ethics, retailer who does not follow the same trends as other large retailers. Craig Jelinek was CNNMoney Magazines top choice for CEO of the year in 20151. Other retailers had bad years competing against on-line retail giant Amazon in 2015, Costco quietly earned 15% profits under Jelinek’s control1. Other retailers were opening early on Thanksgiving to try to cash in early on “Black Friday” sales.…

    • 398 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Becoming a leader is not just about being the one in charge, to be a positive leader is evaluating one’s self-views and acting on the perceptions others have on you. Through the ideas brought up in the chapter: Cultivate Positive Identities by Laura M. Roberts, a well rounded response is needed to strengthen the views presented. The use of personal tie-ins and statement, evidence and comment (SEC) strategies will help aid the reader in relating personal triumphs to effective leadership. In order to cultivate a positive identity in the workplace, Roberts explains that one must ensure that they focus on the way others perceive them as a leader.…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    According to Avolio, Luthans, and Walumbwa (2004), authentic leaders refers to people who “are deeply aware of how they think and behave and others perceive them as leaders capable of adjusting to their own and others' values/moral perspective, knowledge, and strengths; aware of the context in which they operate; and who are confident, hopeful, optimistic, resilient, and high on moral character” (p. 4). Furthermore, Luthans & Avolio (2003), describe authentic leadership as “root construct that could incorporate charismatic, transformational, integrity and/or ethical leadership” (p.4), however, they argued that these theories were different from each other. In addition, the key to authentic leadership includes Self-awareness, openness, transparency,…

    • 245 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    I am an RA at Northern Kentucky University. As an RA, I help students transition to college and help them understand how to live on their own away from parents. It is my duty to enforce University Housing policy- to ensure the safety of students plus maintain a positive learning environment. As an RA, I have developed a unique set of skills because I get to work with students to ensure they are receiving a full well rounded college experience while enforcing rules that some tend to break. This can be challenging because I still have to live with them unlike police; for example, they get to go home after they interact with someone so they don’t have to deal with it when their job is over.…

    • 1521 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Leadership roles of the FNP/DNP Leadership This reflection will explore the leadership roles of FNP-DNP as related to cultural competency, social justice, health care disparities and ethical decision making. Chism (2016), “Leadership implies accompaniment and compassion, and management implies control through supervision” (p. 66). Zaccagnini and White (2017), categorize five traits of the DNP/FNP leader as follows: Be a role model, create a shared vision, challenge of the status quo, enable others to act, and celebrate accomplishments.…

    • 754 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    As I went through the “Listening Continuum”, I realized that I give reflective responses most of the time. For example, during interviews or conversations with people in a higher position than me, I gravitate towards the use of “silence” and “restatement” simultaneously, and “clarification”. With friends, on the other hand, I would use reflective, middle range, and directive responses. Initially, I thought that since I understand the responses listed, I am a good listener, however, I came to realize that knowing when to use these responses was also very important. Sometimes I would accidentally offer advice that was not necessary or was silent for too long which can…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Toxic Leadership Essay

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Leaders who exhibit toxic behavior are the cause of employee burnout, emotional exhaustion, turnover intention, which negatively affect organizational citizenship behavior, employee engagement, and organizational effectiveness. Toxic leadership is associated with many negative consequences to the long-term health and welfare of employees in organizations. This qualitative study will examine whether toxic leadership practices exists in nonprofit organizations. If present, the study will explore and describe the lived experience of toxic leadership in nonprofit organizations by understanding how toxic leadership affects employee engagement, turnover intention, and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In case toxic leadership does not exist…

    • 404 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    With that being said, module two, Leadership History states that researches have not yet reached an agreement regarding if “leaders are largely born or made” (Sharp, 2015). As researchers continue to debate over leadership characteristics, a look at leadership instruments may determine what characteristics are needed to become an effective…

    • 1304 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I can still remember the day when my parents told me the phrase, “You are a leader, not a follower.” It was in kindergarden right after I told them about a few girls who were making fun of a friend of fine, and I decided to stop them and defend her. When my parents told me that phrase, it definitely stuck with me throughout my life. I think that’s a phase most kids hear time to time in their childhood. It’s that phrase that makes you question, what it a leader?…

    • 1874 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An authentic leader consider all viewpoints, including opposing viewpoints, to allow a well thought out objective decision to be made. The last key dimension of authentic leadership is Self-Awareness. Self-Awareness is the concept of knowing one self, including strengths, weaknesses, core values, emotions and limitations. An authentic leader with self-awareness can accurately describe themselves to others and knows how their actions will affect…

    • 1173 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    When thinking about leadership in a business there are many different forms of leadership that you can see in your employees. I will be focusing on two types of leaderships and how as a senior manager you would model these leaderships and find these models in future leaders. The two models of leadership that I will define are authentic and servant leadership. Then I will focus on similarities and differences between authentic and servant leadership. I will describe as a manager how I would demonstrate these two models to my employees and other managers.…

    • 1736 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The United States faces a leadership crisis as the confidence and trust in leaders has fallen to an all-time low. Only 22 percent of Americans trust our business leaders because of ethical failings and a lack in consistency in words and deeds (Darvish & Rezaei, 2011). Authentic leadership has received a heightened level of research and attention in effort to increase follower satisfaction and commitment in the workplace. Berkovich (2014) recommends a framework of dialogical pedagogy within the organization to develop and support authentic leadership. The strengths of authentic leadership include the increased ability of organizations to obtain higher commitment and performance levels.…

    • 1095 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    My Leadership Style Essay

    • 1832 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Some common themes that found with the readings The leadership challenge (Kouzes and Posner, 20017), The imposter syndrome (Hillman, 2013), The authenticity paradox (Ibarra, 2015) and Connect, then lead (Cuddy, Kohut & Neffinger, 2013) is that leadership is being authentic, finding your voice, commitment and…

    • 1832 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When it comes to values-based leadership, it is important to understand that as leaders we sometimes need to take a few steps back to self – reflect so that we can build awareness around our purpose as leaders. It’s important that with value-based leadership, we learn to collaborate with others in order to help people achieve their best. As leaders it is our obligation to show humility and gratitude. In the book, From Values To Action, Harry Kraemer is able to unpack this idea of authentic leadership and how as leaders it well within our right not to know everything and its okay to be comfortable with that as long as we know what we know and who we would need to seek out in order to understand what we don’t know. As a leader, doing the right thing as it aligns to your values is what makes leadership worth it.…

    • 1017 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays