How Would You Describe A Leader And Leadership Essays - Leadership

How would you Describe a Leader and Leadership A significant part of effective leadership is the close connection between the leader and the follower, which often determines the success of the leaders mission. Unfortunately, this leader-follower relationship cannot be created according to some simple formula. Young leaders of today face special challenges as they try to communicate and interact with their followers and potential followers. By exploring global perspectives, human diversity, and ethics, young leaders can take yet another step forward in their development and preparation for twenty-first century leadership. Globalization has many implications for leadership today and in the future. Global perspectives are being spread to the farthest points in the world and to the most isolated people. People of different cultures come to the United States daily to live, travel, or engage in business. Leaders must respond to this challenge of globalization so they can effectively reach out to as many people as possible. Opening themselves to the worlds changes allows leaders to compare and contrast their culture with the arts, language, beliefs, customs, philosophies, and ways of living of other people. By observing and questioning another culture, leaders can understand the origin of an individuals viewpoints and become more sensitive to the cultural needs of that individual. By continually exposing themselves to other cultures, young leaders can thoroughly develop this global perspective and devote themselves to making connections with the entire world. On a more individual level, openness to human diversity plays a role in adjusting to the changes of the future. People are discovering that even within cultures, individuals come from diverse backgrounds, have different personalities, and prefer different ways of life. Young leaders can build a stronger relationship with their followers as they enhance their own appreciation for human diversity. As people become more diverse, leaders must learn how to communicate with them as individuals if a vision is to be shared, a cohesive group to be formed, and a goal to be achieved. Despite differences in opinions, the leader and followers can work together to complement each other as they move toward the mission of the group. By exposing themselves to all kinds of situation and communicating with many types of people, young leaders can develop an appreciation of human diversity. Conflicts caused by differences among individuals personalities and cultures have created many ethical issues, and the number will only increase in this global society. Leaders may have an especially difficult time facing ethical issues as they inspire followers to their mission. Globalization, human diversity, and ethical issues can be challenging for leaders as they prepare for the next twenty years and beyond. The changing world calls for leaders who will react openly to the introduction of new cultural identities and diversities and who will face ethical issues responsibly. Developing a leadership style in response to global awareness, diversity, and ethics will give young leaders an edge as they build relationships with people from all over the world.

How to Weed - and Edit - and Work - Effectively

How to Weed - and Edit - and Work - Effectively In my newsletter last week, I wrote about weeding. The letter did not go out until Friday- a notoriously bad day to send out a newsletter- so I am expanding on the theme in a full-out blog. Weeding is an art. We all know that if you don’t weed out the roots of a plant, the plant will grow back. There are many metaphors for this phenomenon. But that’s not what I’m going to talk about today. I’m reflecting instead on the process of weeding. When I go into my garden to weed, I find I’m more effective if I choose the type of weed I’m going to pull: â€Å"Today I’m going to pull out all the grass in my garden.† â€Å"Today I’m going to pull out all the lemon balm.† When my eyes and brain are looking for one particular thing, I have a much easier time spotting it than if I were to say â€Å"I’m going to weed all types of weeds today† or â€Å"I’m going to pick tomatoes and weed as I do it.† Sometimes it can also work to weed a small area of everything that is NOT the lettuce, or the tomato, or the garlic. Again, my brain is focused on one thing, in one small space. When I’m unfocused, I miss a lot of things. Even the thought of weeding my entire garden of everything I don’t want there raises my heart rate and sends me into overwhelm. Its simply too much to do, especially when I have so many other tasks pulling for my attention! I need to take one thing at a time. Weeding is like editing. Like my experience of weeding, if I limit myself to one thing I do a better job. Looking through a document to check for periods at the end of each bullet, or to check for extra spaces, means I’m likely to catch the one thing I’m looking for. Did I overuse the word â€Å"that†? Or â€Å"just†? Or â€Å"really†? It works best to search on each of those words one at a time. Conversely, if I try to find every error, I’ll probably miss a bunch of them. [For a list of common errors to look for, see The Write Life’s 25 Editing Tips for Tightening Your Copy] Despite knowing the downsides of overcommitment in proofreading, my brain often wants to do everything at once and fix everything at once. It takes some wrangling to get myself to concentrate on one thing at a time, especially in this age of distraction. In fact, as I sat down to write this blog I went to do some research on multitasking and ended up doing something else before getting to my Google search. Then my phone rang and I took the call before finally getting back to my article. Have I lost your attention yet? Perhaps I have. I am talking about multitasking, and I have taken you along for the ride†¦ and we all know by now that our brains are not wired for multitasking! Here’s a great article, Multitasking is Killing Your Brain, that describes how multitasking lowers your work quality and productivity, harms your IQ (possibly permanently), increases stress levels, and simply exhausts you. Weeding can be an antidote to multitasking. There is practice to be had in concentrating on one thing at a time, and we could all stand to do a lot more of it. It’s time for me to get out into my garden.

BMW's Market Strategy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

BMW's Market Strategy - Essay Example As such, BMW’s market strategy will be evaluated and analyzed for optimal performance. Pros and cons of BMW’s market strategy BMW has been a leading auto manufacturing company that has maintained its niche market leadership through strategic market plans. The target segmentation and highly creative advertising have been its major elements of success. BMW has introduced different variants of its luxury cars to cater to the different segments of the market. The selective target marketing has helped it to exploit the requirements of people coming from myriad backgrounds. With the evolving times, people’s purchase behaviour underwent dramatic changes. While initially social class represented the high end BMW cars, consumers’ changing demands, vis-a-vis design variety, size, price, and style choices became the major factors in buying decisions. BMW started with 3, 5, and 7 series that only varied in size and not design. But 1980s was distinct in its populace of baby boomers, yuppies, and other fast upcoming segments of the market; the representatives of these segments had money to flaunt and expected new products and services from manufacturers. ... Shultz (2001) strongly believes that it is the end-users who now control the markets rather than the marketers. The fast changing demography of increasing pluralistic society has significantly impacted the market strategy. The socio-psychological paradigms have emerged as crucial elements that influence buying decisions. Personal choices representing people’s changing social status and family compulsions have become important issues. Indeed, according to Assael (1998), family is considered to be the most important consumption and decision making unit. A big comfortable family sedan may be required by affluent families for their family outing, or sleek and sophisticated fast paced machine may be the choice of new breed of young turks. The BMW’s decision to develop more categories within its various series was, therefore, not only necessary but also an extremely important ingredient of its strategic plans. It helped to penetrate new market and maintain its competitive adv antage in the market. Moreover, consumption pattern and lifestyle are intrinsically linked to the changing cultural paradigms in the contemporary environment of rapid globalization. Ennis (2009) argues that culture impacts the changing lifestyle of people and, consequently, influences their consumption pattern of the product. It is especially true for persons who are the main decision makers and control the finances. Furthermore, Kotler, Brown et al. (2010) assert that in the contemporary environment of globalization, brand creation and brand equity hugely facilitate in maintaining competitive leverage as the products are same. The brand provides the customer with a quality product which satisfies his or her needs and establishes a market