Leadership
UNIVERSITE LYON 2 MASTER 2 CILA 2010-2011
Assignment on Management & Leadership.
By FERNANDO CORENA
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« Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it »
Dwight Eisenhower.
I have always believed that leadership was something found somewhere between the guts and the head, that goes out through the mouth and comes in through the eyes and ears. One thing was clear to me, there are always things that needed to be done, and there is usually someone who gives the orders about what should be made, and others who do it, no matter if they are convinced or not of what they are doing.
I never thought of managerial leadership as such a complex art, I always thought it was something you simply had or not, that could not be developed.
Over the last 10 years I have had the opportunity to live in many different working environments, ranging from the public to the banking sector. However, It was not clear what makes leaders, and what differentiates each of the contexts in which they exercise different leadership practices.
What I am about to write is a short testimony about some of the most relevant working experiences during these years. And how thanks to this course, now I can distinguish how leadership is applied depending on the context in which we find ourselves and the prevailing values, in order to enable people to work together and how can people be engaged in a common purpose wich is worthwile to them.
A story of command and control.
The first thing that comes into my mind when thinking about command and control is the army. I imagine a modern warfare environment where troops are controlled remotely from a room full of screens and satellite images. I imagine a frenzy display of data, restricted to the commander who takes every decision. On the other hand, troopers execute them with a strict supervision,