Author: Caleb Warde

In this discussion Joshua B. Kaplan discusses the Electoral college and potential reforms to this seemingly broken system. He boils it down to essentially two different cases if we would like to reform the institution. He says it is “the devil we know” or something with seen and unforeseen consequences that would completely change how a president is elected for better or for worse. He then for the majority of the talk talks about potential reforms and discusses the known consequences and the questions each proposed reform asks about future elections.

In regards to leadership the electoral college is an interesting factor in how we chose leaders and subsequently view our own power as leaders within the community. the most interesting thing Dr. Kaplan discussed to me was the popular vote system, it never occured to me that politicians would literally just hit up 5 or 6 states no matter their political affiliation. I just always assumed that the campaign system would always remain the same.

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Okay so honestly this post has been one of the most intriguing to me in a while. the discussion about how technology is affecting how we lead kinda caught me off guard, it makes sense though that corporations can effectively change how a person communicates and subsequently gets information to their followers. this as McFarland points out challenges us to change our viewpoint how leaders ought to lead as well not just how we lead. the idea that we need to forget that a leader, should have all the answers or that they are always right, kinda seems scary but, makes sense over all just relying on one person for all your information is scarier than the alternative.

These readings  give me hope as well, because it just reinforces that Humans can change, not just physically but mentally.  Our ability to adapt to the needs, especially in democracy, of the culture around it to reinforce it or change it completely. This is happening as well, the mindset that everyone is a leader and should bring out the best in people is flooding higher management causing a trickle down effect through the management in businesses.

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The C.C.E. brought in 4 non-profit firms from around richmond. the firms’ representatives proceeded to talk about how and why you should not volunteer your time. kinda seem counterproductive doesn’t it? but the reasonings they gave though were very compelling arguments. The first reasoning was privacy of those being served, all to often do those volunteering forget that they are there to help others not help their public image by bolstering their instagram page. Another reason they put as “don’t be a Savior Barbie.” Expanding on this concept the representatives don’t want people who volunteer again to make themselves feel good, or again bolster their image. this is seen through who go to other places, Africa is stereotypical, to “save” those less fortunate than them. but as the representatives said, you need to think about the long term impact of your visit and how you affect the community not just while you are there. they said that your goal as a volunteer should be to make an impact to where the group no longer needs people to come in and help.

When thought about I completely agree with the representatives. the motives of a volunteer should matter. a person should never help someone to help themselves. it kinda completely defeats the whole point of helping people.

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Ingroups and outgroups. how did Humanity get to that why cant we just live as one large ingroup. it really makes no sense to me at all. I mean I get that different sects of life will congregate differently together naturally based upon interests but why on earth does it have to become hostile. it literally has no benefit to any one once the relationship becomes hostile.

I do like how the article pointed out that intercultural  interactions, however scary they may be for an aware person, should not be avoided. they are a good learning experience and should be thought of as that not a reason to yell at someone who may not know better.

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These readings really made me mad. I just don’t understand why people still have an issue with the whole idea of equality and merit based moving up within leadership it really isn’t that complicated. All you have to do is look at a candidate and realize hey they are just a person it doesn’t matter what the heck their gender is in fact it means so little in today’s workforce because of the internet people can honestly work from home more often than not, but no just because he’s a man he gets the job it’s literally the dumbest thing ever.

In regards to the article and viewing these really make me concerned for humanity as a whole. the longer and longer we go like this makes me wonder if we will ever reach a point of equality for everyone in today’s political and social climate. I’m not a pessimist but it’s almost like we need another war of sorts to spur another movement of inequality or at least some rallying momentous step forward like space colonies or something along those lines.  I just don’t get it people are people no matter who they are love and respect them for that. period.

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the article does an excellent job calling out corporations and their client based focus, and their tendencies to search for leaders instead of cultivate them within the company. this philosophy relates to the article by Zinn the perpetuation of “leaders” within the higher class kinda relates to tyranny being perpetuated by the higher class to increase their wealth by oppressing the lower class/ drones. This can be seen today in the Business class overall with ceo’s and board members of large corporations being either a past ceo or on the board of multiple other boards, not letting the workers advance to the same level of success.

the article then proceeds to talk about the effective styles of following and encouraging ways to get followers to become the leaders within the firms. The article pointed out a particularly interesting idea that was a leaderless group could be more productive. However I think this could lead to heightened group think for the group as someone who potentially could mind guard against the group think.

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So this podcast is incredibly interesting as i had no knowledge of the events of Jonestown. the idea that someone so charismatic and seemed to genuinely be a transformational leader can turn so toxic and crazy is wild. the correlation to Hitler seems very uncanny also, in regards to the natural charismatic becoming hooked on pretty much all the known drugs then taking a deep dark dive that kills a lot of people, shows just how powerful a leader can be if the followers participate in Groupthink, it essentially gives the Leader unlimited power to do and act however they want.

It is very sad however that he had to take  what seemed to be a very influential role in altering how civil rights came about and squander it on neigh narcissistic tendencies. it seemed like promising and genuine servant leadership with what he was doing, but the combination of drugs and the groupthink of the followers really lead to a wild spectacle of blind faith and murder. i guess the takeaway of the whole podcast is don’t drink the kool aid, especially when it is laced with cyanide.

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This play was very interesting, one could see how different types of charisma played out within the family dynamic. the older sister can be seen as the toxic charismatic. this is evidently seen through how she treats her younger siblings and their significant others, along with her own son. Where as the middle brother could possibly be seen as a neutral charismatic but more tyrannical. Trying not to take sides until absolutely necessary but leaning toward his own self interest and his familial interest. the youngest child of the group, does not seem to have very many outstanding charismatic traits but his significant other, River, does. she seems to be the only true non “evil” charismatic. she could almost be seen as a transformational leader of sorts encouraging her fiance to get healing through his family, trying to cause good for her “followers.

the play really emphasizes the ultra toxic charisma of the father as well. He played all the roles of his first two children in life as well in death becoming heroified by some of the children losing all of his bad traits. this is something completely applicable to history, we can see this namely through presidnents and how they most of the time seem like they can do no wrong, like George Washington never being able to tell a lie, or Lincoln  always being honest. this reverence causes some of the characters to become blind followers to him, i.e. his daughter being blind to his flaws.

Over all the play was amazingly preformed and all the actors executed all roles well.

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Group think is an interesting concept that I’m not sure I agree with. Maybe that is entirely because I fall into the trap every time, but I don’t believe that if the designated leader of the group has enough control of the situation, like J.F.K. seemed to have, then group think will not come to fruition as often as Janis’ article made it appear. I would almost say that group think only happens when there is not a strong enough leader to keep the situation under control, maintaining order while still giving everyone a say. In applying the idea of group-think to the movie, it appears that the military generals were the ones using the group-think methodology as they all want war. Here is where J.F.K. steps in to combat the “dastardly” ideas they were concocting to go to war.

On the flip side of this, group think is not always a bad thing. It can produce ideas that would have never been thought of by a single leader. I presume this is why leaders surround themselves with counselors and advisers to help them through difficult times. Group-think only becomes a problem when the leader does not maintain “control” of the advisers and lets them all run things at the same time.

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Okay so honestly this felt like a repeat of the last readings, just describing and giving somewhat of examples of transformational and transactional leadership. however these sets of readings did it from a secondary source point of view. it was nice to see another University of Richmond person though. I especially like Professor Couto’s idea that Burns completely removes transformational leadership from what humanity can achieve. that is an interesting concept to me because we discussed the fact that burns said transformational leader was only good never bad, however in humanity that cant be true as we can find ways to twist any thing.

I also did like  how the S.T.O. article gave a straight forward list of things like pros and cons of transactional leadership. this is nice because as we said in class today transactional leadership gets really over looked just because of the fact that it is not transformational leadership, which for some reason is viewed as the pinnacle of leadership. It just shows that humans think most things can either be one or the other, right or wrong, but the article shows that that is not the case neither type is bad leading just different.

 

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Spears points out something very interesting the idea of servant leadership is very new. This was intriguing to me as it is now a fairly widespread idea that a leader should possess Spear’s 10 characteristics of a good leader. All the characteristics are something I see that everyone should strive for, leader’s especially. But looking to leaders, at least the ones in the limelight today, I’m not sure how many of them actually embody these characteristics. It seems like Trump and Pelosi among others do not personify these characteristics but tend to lean toward how Machiavelli says to portray them: through appearance. 

Robert Greenleaf does a very good job framing the servant leader as well. He makes a great distinction by saying that a servant leader focuses on putting others needs before his own. This is a quintessential part of being a leader. To help and grow those who put them in that position. It should not be their goal to only profit from it as a leader but to be a servant leader and better the community around them.

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Machiavelli is an interesting dude. On one hand his theories on how to be an effective leader seem to be extremely controversial and wrong. But on the other hand his rules and stipulations seem like incredibly accurate and are almost proven to work if a person wants to be an effective leader. This raises an interesting question, especially because the morality of The Prince seems to not exist, is it possible to be a moral and effective leader? Machiavelli makes it seem like both which is mind boggling as we humans tend to really try and think of everything we do as black and white. 

It is also very interesting that people hate this book, or at least love to hate it. This is interesting to me because again it is really good information to have if you want to be the most effective leader possible. It makes me wonder if Lorenzo de Medici made people hate it then because he was the Prince it became so ingrained in the nobility of Italy then spread outward to other countries nobilities that laughed at how it made their position seem so dirty and cruel perpetuating the idea that The Prince was so wrong and hateable.

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The podcast was quite interesting in the approach it took to the entire Herstory section of thought and how it directly contradicts the idea of The Great man theory by Thomas Carlyle. It intrigued me how they pointed out how much of what we view as history is thanks to “crazy Victorians and their ideas about how the world works.” it was eye opening that one group of individuals, from 200ish years ago, could have so much impact on how social standards are followed, and viewed today.

It was also nice how they ladies mentioned the people’s history movement. I strongly believe that telling history/herstory form all angles is so very important as it shows us what everyone is and was thinking about a topic at a certain time, not just those with lots of money and prowess. The part where the Smithsonian writer talked about how she would write stories on the true unsung heroes of science, not just the well known ones like Marie Curie, really shows the importance of people’s history as great people tend not to get recorded unless they break all the rules.

On a side note I loved how they just kept trashing the people who acted like they knew something about women in history just due to the fact they knew about Marie Curie

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Richard III by Shakespeare as directed Richard Loncraine is highly intriguing. Richard is most definitely a narcissist and tyrant by all the definitions we talked about in class. It was weirdly impressive how his toxic charisma was able to convince so many people to follow him. When Richard’s III mother went off on Richard she seemed to be one of the only ones who noticed he was being so tyrannical. It makes you wonder what the mothers of people like Hitler felt when their children became what they were.

Then in the discussion and deconstruction by Professor Bezio of the characters within in Richard III. The idea that Richard III can equate to Trump was kinda funny to me especially in regards to the Toxic Charisma and Crooked politics. The connection is fairly obvious Trump especially when it regards to how the two conduct themselves in public. They are both charismatic but when you look closer both seem highly narcissistic. And their toxic charisma messes with the natural flow of the countries they govern

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The way Clayborne sets the background for king as a myth and legend, even though Dr. King has only been dead for a short time is really intriguing to me. He argues that this is extremely wrong to do. It reminds me of a book I am currently reading entitled Lies My Teacher Told Me By James W. Lowen. The book discusses how hero-fication of Leaders like King and George Washington white wash them to the point where in most cases their flaws are hidden, but in Kings case a large portion of who he was and how he went about the reform. It was peaceful, yes, but also forceful and his Hero-fication undermines a lot of those qualities.

 

Clayborne also suggests that King is only perceived as such a great leader because he was in the right place at the right time. He specifically notes that the Civil Rights movement had many leaders long before King took the spotlight, people like E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks, Clayborne continues down this path and openly says that the movement would have continued no matter if King had lived or not. This is a weird thought to me, but it made me realize that we as humans put almost too much faith in the great leaders of our time and giving them the credit all to them when in reality the public should get a majority of the credit for actually “moving the machine” so to speak. 

   

 

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