Classical leadership theories

Attached is your Assignment One feedback and Grade Rubric. Note items highlighted in green are comments/clarifications, yellow indicates recommended revisions, and red indicates items recommended to delete. Be sure to see my summative comments on the last page.

Plato’s Philosophical Ideas and their Application in Business Leadership

In the book, The Republic, Plato demonstrates us several valuable lessons on leadership. The theme of leadership, especially for the modern business leader, is intensively and extensively covered in books one to ten of Plato’s The Republic. The leadership lessons on self-knowledge and ethics are vital in today’s business world than ever before (How so?). Some of the essential qualities of a good leader, as emphasized by Plato include controlled ego and self-knowledge (Bloom, 1968). He emphasized that people should be driven by ambition, and without it, leaders are not motivated to leave a legacy.(Where is this notion found in The Republic?) According to Plato, leaders who are ambitious-driven are inspired to leave a reputation that will be beneficial to others for many years to come (Did not Socrates note in the Ship of State analogy that the one’s best suited for leadership (philosophers) were not interested in leadership or power, but were more interested in the pursuit of truth?). Regarding this (unclear antecedent. Be precise. It is not clear what “this” refers to), today’s business leaders can borrow a leaf from his teaching and be ambitious in whatever interests they pursue. Ambitious business leaders build business empires or make decisions which live on for many years and benefit many (Tell how business leaders would do this. Be precise to avoid ambiguity).

Another valuable lesson from Plato’s The Republic is that a good leader is in possessiones of humility and self-knowledge (Bloom, 1968). These virtues allow such a leader to keep an open mind and make decisions aimed at benefitting the majority, not tmaking decisions which only help the leader to remain in power. Plato maintains that keeping one’s interests in control or integrating one’s self-interests with those of others is the biggest challenge in becoming a good leader (citation needed here). Good business leaders do not have to ignore their own interests, but rather check that their ego (Are there other self-interests in addition to ego to consider?) is under control and that he/she prioritizes the interests of those under him/her.

Plato also emphasizes the need for a good leader to keep an open mind and be welcominge to new ideas. Uncontrolled ego may result in self-destruction (Bloom, 1968 citation location?). This is quite (Avoid intensifiers in scholarly writing to maintain an objective voice) applicable to today’s business leader. Business leaders should know that they do not have a monopoly idea and that they should be ready to get valuable ideas from those that they lead. Everyone’s opinion should be valued.

Nagamani,

You selected Platonic notions that have tremendous potential for application in modern leadership.

However, there is a need to address several key areas to improve this paper.

 There is a significant need for idea development and specificity. That is, you identify relevant notions from The Republic that could be applied by today’s educational leader. But you do not explain how they could be applied. Modern application suggestions or examples are not provided. Instead, the discussion of Plato’s notions end with a summary or restatement of his notion. Without deeper illustration or modern examples of application, the citations act as platitudes. Simply stating that modern leaders should possess humility and self-knowledge, and seek the good of all more than selfish interests is much too general and vague to be immediately useful or applicable. More specificity is required to be meaningful.

 Be sure to provide citations for any ideas, paraphrased notions, and direct quotations. Use Stephanus numbers, Bekker numbers or page numbers to indicate the location of the quoted or paraphrased idea.

 State your thesis in paragraph one (if not your first sentence). Be clear what argument you are making. Start with the end in mind. Know the key points you want the reader to take away from your work. In this case, you want to show how two to three key leadership notions from The Republic could be applied to modern educational leadership i.e.,humility, self-knowledge, focusing on the good of all. The connections between the notions and examples must be clearly stated not just implied.

These concerns can be readily addressed and improve your future work with your diligent effort and study of the highlighted corrections. Keep working and hang in there!

ASSINMENT 2

Question:

Scenario 2: A 150 year old private Christian (mostly liberal arts) university is on the verge of closing its doors. XYZ University’s President, Dr. Smith, has served for seven years and is a beloved alum of the university. Under his leadership, the institution has taken on massive debt and has withdrawn funds from its endowment at unsustainable levels to supplement the operating budget. President Smith has fostered a climate of unhealthy competition among his leadership team of six vice presidents – fierce hatred and competition existing among those officers. Each administrative department within the university is self-contained, with practically no interaction with the other departments. It has an endowment of 150 million dollars and an annual operating cost of 60 million dollars. It has a student enrollment of 2,000 undergrads and 1,500 graduate students, but enrollment has shown signs of stagnation and pockets of small declines over the past five years. Additionally, institutional markers for success have continued to decline which include, average ACT scores, average high school GPA, and university retention rates. The lack of growth has resulted in an increasing number of students who need developmental education courses. However, the Vice President for Academic Affairs has resisted the need to create a new developmental education program and instead, has asked each academic department to absorb this responsibility. Over the past six years, President Smith has embarked on a building campaign that has added seven new buildings, three of which are residence halls, three are math, science, and technical training buildings (STEM) with state of the art technology, and one is a new athletic facility. The residence halls are not at capacity and the enrollment of STEM majors has been slow to grow even with the new facilities and added faculty. Faculty morale in STEM related departments is high, but low among the rest of the faculty. Only the STEM faculty have received pay raises in the past five years. Older faculty and administrative staff members are upset at the starting pay for new hires as well as the number of adjuncts needed to teach the growing number of technical training classes. The Board of Trustees is split regarding the future of the institution. • A group within the Board of Trustees is wishing to close the doors of the school and turn the campus into an auxiliary of larger, nearby state school. • Another faction is fighting the president over his plans to build more and is pushing for fiscal responsibility. • A third faction wants to keep the doors open by doubling the enrollment and increasing the power of the school’s vice president to serve as a check against the president.