One quote that stuck out to me in Harvey’s work was that “A theory of leadership is dependent on a theory of social organization” (214). I think this quote weaves into the messages of both Bezio’s reading and the podcast. All three center how leadership is influences by the social structure, cultural norms, and cultural shifts of a group. Leadership relies on the way a community or group already functions in order to have any form of followership—in order to appeal to anyone to become a follower, it must align with the pre-existing values of the group, or lean into the discontentment of a group and shift its cultural norms and social structure in way that the group agrees with.

This idea of the connection between leadership and followership through social organization and popular culture relates back to the idea of invisible leadership that we previously discussed. Without common beliefs goals and interests, any form of collective event, work, or following would not be possible, and therefore there would not be any following possible for any leadership structure, hierarchical or not. Leadership depends on the community’s unity and engagement. Bezio depicts a similar sentiment to what Harvey stated above: “put simply, through the practice of leadership, popular culture helps to both reinforce and question our understanding of who “we”—both as individuals and as members of a civilization—are and what we should strive to become or accomplish as citizens, leaders and followers” (Bezio 2). Popular culture impacts our community identity, and therefore our understanding of our social structure and who/what we want to follow. While we often dismiss popular culture, as mentioned in the podcast, its underlying messages can have profound impacts on our identity.

I think this also connects to what is happening on our campus right now. The collective values and desires of the UR community have been pushed to center stage by the work of the Black Student Coalition and the many other students supporting them, both now and before. Much of what we know about the racist histories of those whose names are on the buildings of our campus can be found online, but many of us likely first heard about them as stories through word of mouth. Both the recognizable and invisible leadership happening on campus has pushed for a shift in our social organization, our local popular culture (although this idea can also be applied to our larger scale popular culture in the United States in the past year), and as a result, our leadership.

I was very interested in both the podcast and readings provided for this subject. I have never truly reflected on the power of storytelling, but more particularly the power of pop culture and the societal norms we take for granted every day.

In Bezio’s podcast, the idea of storyteller leadership explains essential moments of human development. For example, Bezio brings up Robin hood as a storytelling character that reflected societal ideologies regarding class disparities, which aided in the social revolution necessary for the success of the economic revolution in England. Examples such as these narrate the power that storytelling, and eventually pop culture, has the capability of having. Author Michael Harvey described another key component of the storytelling leadership by describing the concept of leadership itself. In Harvey’s eyes, leadership is the “Process of influencing the activities of an organized group in efforts towards goal-setting and achieving,” which I view as being personified in the example of Robin hood. The character, who stole from the rich to give to the poor, influenced (or at least aided in the influencing) the actions of the English working-class. Those actions lead to the economic revolution necessary, or the “goal-setting and achieving,” mentioned by Harvey.

Bezio’s article sums up the intersecting works of these theories by explaining that storytelling can be a way for us to accept/ grasp emotional concepts that may be harder for us to learn in real life. This connection ties well into Harvey’s extended definition of leadership, in that storytelling allows for a society to identify their own morality and issues they wish to better. Storytelling allows for the transparent social analysis necessary for a society to be truly and justly lead. Leaders must work for the people, and provide them with the tools necessary to be able to understand the version of themselves they want to become.

In a sense, I feel as though leaders are equally as responsible for helping society gain a sense of independence as they are responsible for protecting that independence. The more powerful a piece of storytelling work is, the greater power it has to lead people into a greater sense of social self-awareness. Very interesting take on leadership that I had never considered before.

I thought the podcast on history’s relationship with leadership was super interesting and is one of my favorite parts of leadership studies. I had Dr. Hayter for my 101 class and we discussed in depth many of the topics we mentioned in class like Hitler and World War II, prohibition, the Civil Rights movement with Malcom X and Rosa Parks, and how history is important because it explains why our world is the way it is today. That is the part I find the most interesting and the thing I was most interested in and surprised to learn when I started my journey through the Jepson school:  how history has shaped the context of our world today and how context is one of the most important facets of leadership. For example when Hitler rose to power, he recognized the context of current anti-Semitic sentiment all across Europe in the mid 1900s and fed off that sentiment during his rise to power. According to Dr. Hayter, he did not necessarily create a rise in those sentiments when he gained political power. We also talked a great deal about what is mentioned in the podcast, that though MLK was a great charismatic speaker he had many unnamed leaders before him who made the Civil Rights movement physically possible. This idea greatly challenges the Great Man theory since we now know he was not the sole cause of the Civil Rights movement.

I also found the Great Man Theory mentioned in the podcast more interesting now with the connections drawn by Dr. Bezio, I did not think too much about it when I first learned about it, but the theory was created at the time when solely rich, white men were considered leaders and they were the ones controlling what was recorded. I had always known this at the back of my mind but when mentioned in the podcast it all makes sense. We can tie this idea back to how representation is important in the media: since white men controlled the majority of history for so long, it gives the appearance that women and people of color contributed little to history. By beginning to change the narrative in terms of who else can be considered a leader, as well as recording so much more information these days, can be thought of as representation in the historical narrative. This representation can be equally as influential as depictions in the media, in my opinion.

I think the disparities of women in history is a really important topic that definitely isn’t talked about enough. As a WGSS minor, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the repercussions of the treatment and, oftentimes, complete disregard for women throughout history. And this extends far beyond women too, as this treatment has been the same for basically anyone who isn’t a rich, white man. Dr. Bezio talks a lot about this in the podcast so I won’t recap too much. But as far as being hyper-critical of history and the ways it has been recorded over time, that only goes so far. So much of our history as humanity has been lost in time as a result of the dominance of men. Now I could ramble on and on about this and the ways in which our history has been skewed simply by its construction, but I want to spend more time focusing on the emphasis on the “normal person.”

I don’t know if other people have had this experience, but when I was younger, I had big dreams of growing up and changing the world. I wanted to be the president, a big-name scientist, an astronaut, literally almost any big time profession that would leave my mark. But growing up, these dreams dwindled and I found myself feeling like every day I was closer and closer to failing my childhood dreams. And clearly I’ve adjusted my expectations and reconfigured my aspirations, but I still think about this a lot. This is why I found the podcast and reading so valuable. Thinking about invisible leadership and the work of many, contributions of the collective oftentimes far exceed that of one person. We place achievement onto the work or visibility of few, but making history is dependent upon all those involved. Especially in the 21st century where nearly every aspect of our lives is recorded to some degree, our collective visibility in the future as both groups and individuals will only be greater. Even if we still only remember the Great Men or people, it doesn’t seem like those who have been widely erased from history in the past will fall to the same fate.

I love history; its been one of my biggest passions since I was little. If a history degree didn’t have so few options that came along with it, I would be pursuing it right now. I mention all of this because I found this podcast extremely interesting. I had heard of historiography before, but never put too much thought into it before now. I mean of course, it makes sense: there has to be a science of the history of how we record history- It just makes sense.

The comments about Great Man theory were interesting to me. It is interesting to see how the thought of leadership and history developed from years on. It is so blatantly sexist and also purely absurd to assume that great leaders are born and cannot be made, and have to be men. But of course, since our Eurocentric history focuses on the achievements of rich, white men, of course scholars are going to buy into this theory. Its certainly wrong, but can you blame them? That information was the only information that was available to them, of course that’s all they are going to talk about it. We only talk about the “great people” of history is because that is where we have the wealth of information from. They make great change (or are perceived to) and thusly get a lot of things written about them.

I very much liked the point on how much information we have and future archaeologists will have on the “common man” from our current age of social media and constant posting about their lives. If a future researcher is able to find my Instagram, Facebook, and twitter, they will be able to piece together a pretty detailed and accurate map of my life. And since I will be long dead, that is far more fascinating to me than it is terrifying.  How will our study of human history change with the trove of information social media has made available about everyday people. What could we have learned if we had this wealth of information from prior history? I wish I knew.

As a history and leadership studies double major, I especially enjoyed listening to this podcast. I chose to pair history and leadership for what Professor Bezio said at the beginning of the episode: understanding the history behind something helps us better understand that something. I am especially interested in looking at how policy decisions transcend history impact lives today in ways that are often unrecognizable. I took justice with Professor Williamson last semester, and we spent much of the class talking about these issues. Professor Hayter’s introduction touches on RVA’s coded redistricting. Although he looks at it through the lens of restricted voting rights for Richmond’s black community, in Williamson’s class, we looked at the redistricting impacts on Richmond’s Public School system.

RPS is significantly more diverse than Richmond’s suburban public schools, has drastically lower budgets, small engagement in PTA, and reports lower test scores and graduation rates. The impacts of Richmond’s housing redistricting, which destroyed housing projects for marginalized communities and built highways to give suburban residents direct access to the city while also encouraging movement to the suburbs (where wealthier, whiter residents reside), which in turn eliminated the people left in the housing project’s walkable access to downtown helps to explain the disparities in Richmond’s public education. Furthermore, the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, which allowed for Southern politicians to continue to segregation efforts via loopholes, such as restricting public bus access, in conjunction with RVA’s housing developments reveals these disparities. As for Hayter’s argument regarding voting, this marginalization of Richmond’s black communities left the public schools voiceless in being able to make changes for themselves. The efforts of Southern politicians in Richmond to continue racism, discrimination, and oppression have long-lasting impacts that affect the same communities today. For this reason, it is incredibly important to learn about and study history in order to understand why the problems that we have today exist, and how to solve them.

I used to think of history as a series of facts and dates with some areas of argument, mostly due to my high school education convincing me that history textbooks and teachers were infallible. Since coming to college and studying work like Dr. Hayter’s, I have learned to critically analyze every piece of writing and find the argument that the author is trying to convince you of. For example, I had always learned that MLK was the main cause of desegregation with little to no help from others. I had never learned about the background work behind the movement and the extreme amount of planning and thought that it took to accomplish, which seems incredibly ignorant in retrospect. To know that so many people, especially black women, were historically ignored simply because they did not appeal to white people is extremely frustrating but easy to believe. MLK was an incredibly well-spoken, highly-regarded pastor and man, which automatically gained more of a white following than any black woman could. In this sense, he was the strategic choice for the face of the movement, but the work of other people in the movement should not be ignored as it currently is. Taken into today’s events, I wonder how the BLM movement will be remembered and historically told. Will people in 50 years know that 3 black women began the movement to protest another murderer walking free, or will they see it as a series of riots across the US? I guess that will depend on who is writing the history, but it is interesting to consider.

On a very different note, I liked that Dr. Bezio mentioned that the people of the past are not so different from the people living today. I always picture historical figures living in black and white or gray-scale worlds, like they are depicted in movies through color-grading, but this is obviously not true. There are key differences in core beliefs and daily practices, but the body and mind of an ancient Egyptian are nearly identical to my own. Maybe I’m alone in this, but I find it incredibly strange to think about it this way, and I’m not entirely sure why. I want to distance myself from historical figures because their lives seem so much different from mine, but in reality, we are mostly the same.

I found this podcast very interesting, specifically the discussion of the great man theory and invisible leadership because it reminded me of my leadership and the humanities class. It made me think about when we learned the concept of followership and how the definition has changed over time. Followership used to be thought of as an obedient act that was passive and lacked power. However now followership is thought to be more about critical non-obedience that elevates followers onto a separate and co-equal level with leaders since leadership is a collaborative process. Followers help advance leadership often by working behind the scenes to exercise upward influence that affects the change that their leaders with more hierarchical power get credit for. This reminded me of when Dr. Bezio discussed invisible leadership especially pertaining to the civil rights movement. While Dr. King and Rosa Parks may have been the face of essential parts of the movement, that does not discount the number of individuals who worked behind the scenes to plan the logistics, without which the movement would not have been possible.

I also liked the discussion on who controlled the history books because I believe we often forget that what we consider history does not capture the whole picture. White Christian men controlled the history narrative to paint themselves in a more positive light and the actions of the common people were forgotten because they were thought to be unimportant. It is important to use history to understand example scenarios of how people might react to possible situations but to not forget the bias that it was written with and does not entail everything that has happened.

One thing that stuck out to me in the podcast was the difference between the history of how a singular person came to be versus looking at how the person impacted the people around them. In the podcast, Dr. B talks about George Washington. From our high school history class, I remember that we kinda just talked about his rise and then what he did that impacted other events, but never really his leadership tactics to cause success and unsuccessful missions. Evaluating the common people’s attitudes and quality of life is the most effective when determining if someone is considered a success or failure instead of looking at how the leader could have become more wealthy or just advanced part of society.  I know the greatest good for the greatest amount of people might not be what everyone likes to believe or actually produce results in the short run, but I think as a whole will be more beneficial in the long run.

As a history nerd, I really enjoyed this podcast. Not because I was pleased by the content, it was actually extremely off-putting. We think we know so much about history but we really just don’t. We know what the people throughout history decided we should know. They decided what to write down, what to record and what stories to pass on through generations. Just like we are deciding all of those things for people in the future.

I find it interesting looking back at history classes in middle and high school and how comical (?) the content is. I remember last semester sitting in Dr. Hayter’s Justice class, often literally astounded at the things we learned, thinking about how differently I learned it before coming to college. For example, we learned about the horrors of the Holocaust every year, but we conveniently never learned about how Hitler and the Nazis were inspired by activities in America (race laws/Jim Crow, eugenic sterilizations laws/Harry Laughlin). In AP US History in 12th grade, we spent more time learning about Coolidge’s presidency than we spent on the Civil Rights Movement. I don’t know if this was just New York State’s Common Core curriculum or if we ran out of time at the end of the year, but either way it’s pretty upsetting.

The way we see history through the lens of “white christian men with money” is probably pretty significant to how we see the world, even in the present. We grew up not learning about women in history, POC  in history, poor people in history, or really any minority group in history. I like to think that this will change for future generations, but at this rate I am pretty doubtful I will see significant change in my lifetime. 🙁