The Plank Center For Leadership

First published in 1987, The Leadership Challenge is a guide for becoming leader. The book received many awards and its above two million copies are internationally sold. The book teaches principles of leadership that apply whether the leader is running a sports team or a fortune 500 organization. The book includes stories and examples of many leaders from micro to macro level (Founders and Authors, 2013). The basic leadership principles can be adopted by anyone to challenge status quo and increase leader productivity multifold. The book tells about the flow and hierarchy of values too (Machedo, 2013). One can use the guide without an instructor to develop leadership traits.

There are many ways to define leadership, but perhaps the most laconic as well as accurate definition is presented in Peter G. Northouse's Leadership: Theory and Practice book (Northouse, 2013, p.5): "Leadership is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal". Individuals, engaged in leadership, use influence to solve challenges, which the groups under their leadership face, in order to succeed in their common goals.

Andersen, JA & Hansson, PH 2011,"At the end of the road? On differences between women and men in leadership behaviour", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, vol. 32 no. 5 pp. 428 – 441

I really enjoyed our reading this week. I following are my thoughts on “The Ontario Leadership Framework (OLF) 2012”:

Being nominated for the Joanne Woodard Leadership Award has been one of the highlights of my semester thus far. I am truly honored to be nominated for an award that is a demonstration of my ability to lead ethically, serve as a role model, and use my influence to advance African and African American culture on campus. Having held different positions in various campus community centers, my goal is for my leadership style to reflect the missions of the African American Cultural Center, Multicultural Student Affairs, and the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity.

Addressing organizational needs, problems and strengths begins with leadership. Ensuring needs, problems and strengths are appropriately measured, analyzed and, where appropriate diverted, begins with great leaders. Great leadership is about “ferocious resolve, an almost stoic determination to do whatever needs to be done to make the company great.” (Collins, 2001). Success for the leadership capstone project can be defined many ways; implementing a solution to resolve the problem as well as acknowledging the limitations of the study and identifying areas of focus for future research. Success for this leadership project is due in part to the results and findings of the study; however, the fundamental key to its success centers around leadership.

In the Leadership Challenge, 4th edition, it is Kouzes & Posner (2007) intention to present a road map for individuals to follow on their leadership journey. The authors stress that “leadership is not a gene and it’s not an inheritance.” Leadership they assert is “an identifiable set of skills and abilities that are available to all of us” (p. 23). They make clear that the “great person” theory of leadership is “plain wrong.” Leaders are our everyday heroes who do extraordinary things on a regular basis (p. 23).

A State Representative, Randy Richards, organized a press conference coveting to sway a proposal for a bill to a avert state agencies and other health care providers from offering prenatal care to undocumented immigrants and billing the cost to Medicaid (Sharp, 2011, p. 72). In the press conference, he accuses undocumented immigrants from coming to the United States to take advantage of the Medicaid system by taking services away from the American Citizens who pay into the system with their taxes. When the floor was opened to the press to ask question or to elaborate on the proposal for the bill his answer were very vague or he eluded the question by saying, “…That is not the point…” (Sharp, 2011, p. 72). The Executive Director of the Health Care Authority, Mike Foley, decides to hold a press conference later that day to clear the air with factual information and providing laws stating, health care cannot be denied to anyone in search of preventative or medical attention. He articulates prenatal care for illegal women cost less than a $1000.00 and when the child is born, they become a natural American Citizen and how they deny service to an American. If these preventative services were denied during the pregnancy and the child is born with a serious medical condition it will cost the state over $130,000.00 (Sharp, 2011, p. 73) to treat the child for the rest of their life. Randy Richards, the representative, became infuriated and took great offense that Mike Foley, the

Public relations, also referred to a PR, represent an essential component of business, in which the business interacts through various modes such as promotions, initiatives, and so forth with its customer base, as well as, the potential new customers. Subsequently, according to Davis (2009), this interaction permits the business, as well as, the public to intermingle in such a way to disseminate information to the public, which possesses a newsworthy nature via media sources such as a trade magazine or journal, the traditional radio or television networks, the newspaper, or the internet. Hence, an effectual public relations program has the potential to not only maximize, as well as increase sales, but also, enhance profitability by establishing a competitive advantage with relation to business contenders. Therefore, an effective PR campaign accomplishes this goal by creating greater visibility for the business, its products, and augmenting the credibility of the business, while, attempting to neutralize potential crises, as they arise. Thus, public relation programs represent an invaluable tool utilized by businesses such as the Olive Garden Restaurant.

The following is a rhetorical evaluation of the Public Relations tactics employed by Paul Frank Industries after the fall out of a media relations event that showcased Native American heritage in a way that was perceived as offensive to the Native American culture. Ethics should be at the heart of all PR programs and should lend itself to foster both trust and loyalty with an organizations stakeholders and publics. Frank Industries reacted calmly, employed best practices, and secured better relations with the Native American publics, however, the following will demonstrate where they missed it and how they can improve programs in the future.

Before this class, I had a very primitive and vague definition of leadership. Not only did I define it as per my views and ideologies, but I also said that each individual has their own definition of leadership. My initial belief was that leadership does not have a clear cut definition, but there were well defined leadership traits which made an individual. I also initially believed that personal traits did not translate into leadership traits with no strong correlation. After going through the various modules this class offered, it is safe to say that I have significantly redefined leadership and underwent a strong personal assessment. This paper talks what I took back from each of the class activities, assignments and how my self-assessment compares to the perception of others.

For this assessment, the industry is defined as the handful of top business schools within the world that provide elite MBA degrees to Executives.

A large amount of credit is given to Bass 's transformational leadership theory identifies four aspects of

The Excellence Theory is a public relations theory that “specifies how public relations makes organizations more effective, how it is organized and managed when it contributes most to organizational effectiveness, the conditions in organisations and their environments that make organizations more effective, and how the monetary value of public relations can be determined” (L. Grunig, J Grunig & Dodier, 2002). The theory resulted from a study about the best practice in public relations, which was headed by James E. Grunig and funded by the Foundation of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in 1985.

Only recently being recognized as a discipline in itself, modern day professional public relations practices can trace its roots to the early 1900s where the first public relations firm, the Publicity Bureau, was founded in Boston. In 1923, Austrian-American public relations pioneer, Edward Bernays, identified three fundamental concepts of public relations. In 1984, American theorists, Grunig and Hunt, conceptualized the now-famous four models of public relations and the excellence theory that were generally adopted by public relation agencies across the globe. With so many significant milestones and theories of public relations established in the United States, it stands to reason that public relation practices would naturally adopt a western perspective.