Turn The Ship Around ! A True Story Of Turning Followers Into Leaders

In Col J. William DeMarco’s essay, Leadership Philosophy 101: Who Are You?, he states that every leader must have a direction and a personal vision. Col DeMarco calls this concept “Leadership Philosophy,” a concept which resonates through many of the assigned readings. My personal philosophy focuses on servant leadership at its core. Servant leadership is defined as “serving subordinates as much, or more, than they serve their bosses.” Servant leaders don’t stay behind desks, they address the needs of their Airmen, and take care of them like family. The commander interview highlights the critical nature of this leadership method. This paper will compare my personal philosophy with those of my commander and his past leadership crisis

This paper will briefly analyze the case study— Rebecca S. Halstead: Steadfast Leadership, and examine General Rebecca Halstead 's career history and how through her personal attributes, skills, experiences and challenges she developed into a successful leader and commander in the U.S. Army. Although General Halstead faced a number of challenges during her career, this paper will focus primarily on her leadership style and philosophy specifically with leading teams and dealing with difficult bosses.

Navy Leader Development Program (1990) suggest that "To lead you must first be able to follow: For without followers, there can be no leaders". One thing that is often overlooked concerning successful leaders is they were successful followers before they

Hull, Bill. The Disciple-Making Church: Leading a Body of Believers On the Journey of Faith. Updated ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2010.

It’s Your Ship, by Capt. D. Michael Abrashoff is good read on understanding the basics of what he calls grassroots leadership he developed while a Commander in the Navy. He takes the reader through the journey of having a cutting-edge ship handed over him, while finding his own leadership lacking his expectations. While defying conventional Navy leadership tactics, Abrashoff created “a crew of confident and inspired problem-solvers eager to take the initiative and responsibility for their actions.” He ultimately succeeded in turning the USS Benfold into the “best damn ship in the Navy” in a

Selfishness, overblown sense of worth, and indecisiveness are certain traits that seem to appear more frequently in today’s leadership due to an ineffectual advancement process. The Navy’s advancement process consist of a standardized test, Navy wide rating quotas, and evaluations which may or may not accurately reflect the person’s being. Certain aspects of these rolls and processes need to be changed to more accurately reflect those qualities that are required to be an effective leader in today’s Navy.

As Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert once stated, one of the U. S. Navy’s guiding principles is “People are the Navy’s foundation”. The United States Navy has long since recognized that command at sea is an honor and a unique privilege, one that demands confidence, self-reliance, sound judgment, and complete dedication to the wellbeing of shipmates. At every level of Naval operations, leadership, integrity and character have always been vitally important dimensions of who we are and what we do.

Finally, this paper will address how the practice of servant leadership would affect everyone from the lowest enlisted men to the most senior flag officer and everyone else in-between. Leadership goes well beyond the following definition: “Leadership is the art of influencing and directing people in such a way as to obtain their willing obedience, confidence, respect and cooperation.” In fact, when it comes right down to it, “there are no quick and easy answers to becoming an effective and efficient leader.” Leadership is difficult and enduring work. It is a lifelong process of building and molding not only your skills but also the skills of your subordinates. In a society of instant gratification, we look for the quick fix. Yet the problem is the quick fix or plug and play solution, rarely serves the long-term goals of an organization.

General Powell highlights 18 lessons learned in leadership that are applied to successful companies, and how they are applied to leadership in his presentation to the Outreach Program, and the Sears Corporate Headquarters. These approaches can be applied not only in business but life in general. I will highlight three of the lessons that have impacted my career in the military

In the book Turn the Ship Around, Captain L. David Marquet describes how he took the submarine, the USS Santa Fe, from “worst to first” in the United States fleet by transforming the leadership structure from “leader-follower” to “leader-leader.”

The topic of this leadership case study is Ernest Shackleton. This paper will identify the development of Shackleton's leadership skills, provide examples and reflections of his abilities, and relate how he played an essential role in one of history's greatest survival stories. This study of Shackleton's leadership is set loosely within the framework of the five practices of exemplary leadership set forth in The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, and will focus on the benefits produced by his management of team morale and unity (13).

1. When discussing leadership and followership, there is often a split in personal opinion when it comes to which one is more important. Leadership and followership both offer unique benefits in their own right and have supporting factors, which give them the perceived appearance of being more important. The focus for this paper will be to advocate the importance of followership over that of leadership. This will be accomplished by addressing the pros of followership to include some core skills of followership and the effects followership has on the development of a leader. The expectation of an officer however, places a high amount of emphasis on leadership more so than that of followership. Given this perceived importance of leadership as an officer, an effective leadership style will be explained and how officers develop this particular leadership style. While leadership has a distinct presence within the professional work environment, followership is considered the underlying backbone in developing an effective high performing team.

In this paper I will identify and explain the leadership concepts that I learned in this class using characters from the film Finding Nemo. To do so I will provide examples of transformative leadership and describe the impact it had on others. I will also explain how the characters acquired their leadership effectiveness by identifying experiences that were instrumental in their leadership development.

Beginning in boot camp and continuing throughout my career, I’ve seen the Coast Guard promote the leadership model to be: “You” influencing “Others” to achieve a “Goal”. With all the different ways leadership can be defined, this simplistic model which has been permanently engrained in my thinking definition still rings true for me. As such, when defining my own personal definition of leadership, I align it to this same model. More specifically, while I support the fact that leadership involves influencing others to achieve a common end I propose that is not the whole story. Leaders must not be stagnant in their vision and must lend themselves to the possibility they may have to adjust their leadership styles depending on the goal. The best leaders are the ones that understand their own personality traits as well as those traits of the people they are trying to lead.

Riggio et al.’s book, The Art of Followership: How great followers create great leaders and organizations, published by Jossey-Bass assesses the various functions, which followers can navigate in an organization through his or her rapport with a leader. The book is divided among four sections, which are defining and redirecting followership, effective followership, the pitfalls and challenges of followership, and followers and leaders-research, practice and the future (Riggio et al., 2008). These following sections in this paper will discuss and summarize two chapters, which I strongly preferred and have experienced in the military.