In the beginning of the Harvey article, it was really made clear how many different disciplines leadership studies encapsulates. I am struggling to think of many situations in which there is no leader, in school, we have professors, in clubs we have presidents, in sports, we have a captain, etc. Leadership studies is really formed by looking at a variety of other disciplines and putting together what you can learn about ethical leadership from them, which I think is really cool because it provides us the opportunity to focus on such a variety of areas.
I thought that Harvey’s seven questions were an interesting way of thinking about leadership. My main takeaway from the article was how useful it is to be charismatic (something we talked a lot about in 101) and, related to that, the importance of communication. Towards the end of the article, Harvey really stressed how important it is for leaders to be able to clearly communicate identity, where they currently stand, where they are going, etc. It is important to be able to communicate this clearly for people to trust you as a leader and believe in the group’s plan. This reminded me of charisma because so much of charisma is related to your ability to communicate on a deep, emotional level with people. A charismatic would definitely be able to communicate well and that would help them be a good leader. I saw some of these same ideas in the Bezio article when she talked about the importance of a united people and a people that like their leader. A lot of this affection for a leader will come from their ability to communicate effectively.
I wrote about a similar topic in my blog post– it is so unique that the Jepson School encapsulates so many different disciplines within one larger program known as Leadership Studies. I think this is largely why I wanted to be a part of Jepson, so I could enact change in a variety of areas. Not only can we learn what leaders were, we can learn what they will be in the future. One way is seeing how they communicate and share narratives, as we read about in Bezio and Harvey’s pieces.
It’s interesting how you say that you are struggling to think of situations where there is no leader. I completely agree, and I would even add on that in situations where there is no set leader (like a group project), one often emerges from the group. I think that that is just the nature of group settings.