what is leadership
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Self-centered leadership in “True North”: Personal Response Essay
Rundong Dai
Trinity Western University
WRTG 101: Writing and Culture
Professor Nathan Kielstra
Feb 11, 2022
Self-centered leadership in “True North”: Personal Response Essay
Unsuccessful leaders are self-centered and glory seekers who can acquire power and money, hence not responsible for any performance and well-being of followers. One approach to understanding this greed for leadership is via “Richard Grasso’s” case (George, 2015). The idea of Self-centered leadership in the article “True North” reveals to me that ineffective leadership is created through following the aspects: power and money.
Authentic leadership implies that a leader is genuine, self-aware, “real,” and inspires loyalty and trust in his followers by consistently portraying who he is as a person. Bill George, a professor of management practice and successful American businessman, in his book Authentic Leadership, published in 2003, created this idea of authentic leadership (George, 2015). Chapter 2 of “True North” tells that some leaders lose their direction because of some factors.Thus, in Chapter 2, “True North,” self-centered leadership results in ineffective leadership in various ways.
The self-centered leadership in “True North” results in ineffective leadership through greed for power. In more detail, an authentic leader leads by example via his actions that he practices the same values and behaviors he expects from the team. According to article, “Power as an external gratification element portrays leaders who are glory seekers” (George, 2015) lose their way if power and other external gratifications seduce them. Richard Grasso misused his leadership position as CEO to seek fame and prestige as his source of fulfillment. With this mind , this cause me feel disappointment because great leader can have a certain ambition, but they should also ensure that they are responsible to their followers. Leader should not ignore the ideas of his followers because of his own ambition. In my opinion, the political leadership spectrum lacks authentic leaders. Even though the political leaders claim to have integrity values, their mission is looking for fame and abuse of office for personal gain while forgetting the citizens who elected them for representation. In my experience, It reminds me of my uncle. My uncle is a deputy police chief and he really wants to be promoted to chief. So, he took some inappropriate measures to compete, and finally he failed and lost his original position. Therefore, power reveals Self-centered leadership because Some leaders’ desire for power leads to the decline of leadership efficiency.
Self-centered leadership is also revealed in the article through money. More specifically, some leaders can’t resist the temptation of money and lose their way and become the captives of money. According to article, In his 2005 speechat Columbia University, Gupta confirmed this weakness, say“ When I look at myself, yeah, I am driven by money,” (George, 2015) Considering this, this makes me pessimistic about this situation because Money is tempting, but we still need to stay awake all the time, and it can really make people lose their way. In my view, When faced with money, I think few people will be indifferent. Some people have a desire for money and want to take it as their own and put it into action. Doing so proves that they have not used their brains; Some people face money, they will think about all the consequences, so they are not moved, but use their brains. In comparison, such leaders ensure they get surrounded by sycophants who can support their unethical practices, such as money laundering (Snow et al., 2021). This trait makes leaders lose touch with reality by rejecting the truth and honest criticism (Williams et al., 2021). Therefor, money is also used to illustrate self-centered leadership because some leaders will lose their way under the temptation of money.
In conclusion, poor leadership is created via greed for power and money and consists of glory seekers. These leaders are not concerned with organizational responsibilities and the well-being of followers. Instead, they are in this leadership position to acquire money and power, which are their primary source of fulfillment.
References
George, B. (2015). Authentic leadership: Rediscovering the secrets to creating lasting value (Vol. 18). John Wiley & Sons.
Snow, N., Hickey, N., Blom, N., Mahony, L. O., & Mannix-McNamara, P. (2021). An Exploration of Leadership in Post-Primary Schools: The Emergence of Toxic Leadership. Societies, 11(2), 54.
Williams, E. N., Grande, S., Nakamura, Y. T., Pyle, L., & Shaw, G. (2021). The development and practice of authentic leadership: a cultural lens. European Journal of Training and Development.