Subject | Administration | Pages | 1 | Style | APA |
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Question
Media analysis on leadership
You will be required to write one media analysis during the course of the semester.
o For the media analysis, you will identify an article, column, or cartoon from a newspaper, magazine, or online news source that illustrates a particular psychological concept, theory, or research finding covered in class and/or covered in the textbook (including textbook content not yet covered in class). Only still images will be accepted (no videos, podcasts, etc.).
o The assignment will help you to think about how psychology applies to day-to-day occurrences in the real world. For example, you may find an article reporting statistics on people working in a group setting who sleep, surf the Internet, or otherwise slack on the job and link this finding to the concept of social loafing. As another example, you may read about a particular training program and identify how the techniques used relate to operant conditioning, which is a type of learning. This assignment is an opportunity for you to be creative in connecting psychology to recent events.
Answer
Leadership is the process of identifying, executing, and implementing an idea into the desired change within an organization. It involves the cognitive function of developing implementable ideas (Silva, 2016). Accordingly, leadership has several elements, such as collaboration, humility, creativity, empathy, integrity, and transparency, among other sacrosanct features. Good leadership must be anchored on the above qualities to obtain the desired outcome. Besides, good leadership must strive to create a good impression of the organization in the public domain to establish or foster a perfect working relationship between the organization and the community around (Hoch et al., 2018). For instance, some organizations have had a long-lasting negative image in the public domain due to how they treat their employees, people living around the organization, and the general conduct of such organization employees. As such, good leadership must work towards changing such perceptions from negative to positive as a means of fostering a good working relationship between the organization and the community (Hoch et al., 2018). Given the above, this paper's hallmark is to evaluate leadership as a psychological concept in line with an article from a newspaper, as seen in the subsequent paragraphs.
An article in the Washington Post dated 9 October 2020 helps in evaluating the psychological concept of leadership. The article highlights the role of Donnie Shell in promoting a working relationship between athletes, law enforcement agencies, and the community. Shell, who had previously spent fifteen years as a player, joins Lamonte Wilson in the organization's role to boost the relationship between the police and the community. Historically, the police have had a negative impression on most civilians' eyes due to their excessive use of force when implementing government orders. It takes a lot of awareness creation and mobilization to restore a working relationship between the police and the community due to the long history of dented police reputation and thus requires exceptional leadership to turn around the situation into an implementable initiative.
Besides, in the article, Shell makes a case for the police and argues that contrary to what most people think that all police officers are bad, there are many good cops within the police force. He uses his persuasion, which is one of the leadership skills, to convince the public to shun the idea of blaming some few officers' mistakes on the whole police department. He further emphasizes the need for respect between the police and the community since relationships informs perceptions. Understandably, the article highlights how Shell and Lamonte use creative ideas to boost the community and the police's working relationship. They use sports and sportspeople as a pathway into the hearts of the community members to positively restore the public's lost confidence in the police, which is likely to impact the security situation in the community positively.
The other sacrosanct element of good leadership is teamwork and collaboration (Smith et al., 2016). The collaboration between Shell, Lemonte, and others, as indicated in the article, has resulted in a reputation of excellence in which the delivery of service by the police force to the public has significantly improved. The article quotes one of the stakeholders as saying that the combination of Shell and Lemonte is already producing dividends that transcend lip service and calculated action plans. Collaboration and teamwork in leadership are imperative as it allows the leaders to consult one another and evaluate the alternatives (Silva, 2016). Fundamentally, it eliminates the feeling of trying to outshine one another but pulling together towards the same direction to produce results that are geared towards the benefit of the community and its members. Moreover, teamwork also enables leaders to share their experiences and implement them on the issue at hand to obtain the desired results and outcomes for the overall good of the people they serve.
Effective leadership also entails humility. Humility implies the leader's ability to depart from his social standing and address issues affecting the community at the level of such community members (Smith et al., 2016). In the above-cited article in Washington post, the D2C founder opines that Shell's reputation in working with athletes and community members is unmatched. Having assumed the position of leadership as an executive advisor, most people in his place would have restricted their roles to office activities. However, it took humility to make Shell participate in field activities with both athletes and community members to foster a good working relationship between the two groups and the police force. Humility inspires the governed's confidence and makes them develop the feeling that the leaders are part and parcel of them, and as such, would be willing to listen to and address their plight whenever they communicate such to them (Hoch et al.,2018). As highlighted in the article, Shell's humility is likely to give out the desired result, which is to boost the working relationship between the police, athletes, and community members.
Commitment and passion are the other elements of the psychological concept of leadership. Commitment is the self-drive to achieve the desired result no matter what it takes, while passion is the love for whatever one does (Silva, 2016). In leadership, the two concepts go hand in hand as there can never be a commitment towards an initiative without passion for the same (Hoch et al., 2018). The above article cited from the Washington post demonstrates that Shell had the passion and commitment to help the community improve their working relationship with the police force. Evidently, Shell is quoted in the article as suggesting that the opportunity to help the community foster their relationship with the law enforcement agency is what appealed to or convinced him to work with D2C. Such commitments and passion are the hallmarks of effective leadership and most likely to produce the intended result for the non-governmental organization that hired Shell to work towards such end.
Lastly, experience is also a significant element of effective leadership. Those who work in professional fields where they have enough experience are bound to succeed more than those who don't. Experience gives a leader the ability to tackle arising issues and administer appropriate measures to tackle the same (Silva, 2016). Furthermore, it is not in doubt that leadership is a concept that is leaned and developed over a given duration of time. As such, experience is the best teacher when it comes to leadership (Smith et al., 2016). In the cited article from Washington post, D2C organization opted to pick Shell because of his longstanding experience as a scout with the Raiders and Chiefs and another fifteen-year experience working in the player development unit with the panthers. The founder of the non-governmental organization acknowledged that the experience that shell brings is likely to inspire the organization to greater heights.
In conclusion, this essay has evaluated leadership and most of the sacrosanct elements of effective leadership. Accordingly, leadership is the process of identifying, executing, and implementing an idea into the desired change within an organization. Some of the excellent leadership elements include collaboration, humility, creativity, empathy, integrity, and transparency, among other sacrosanct traits. Besides, this paper has also highlighted such leadership qualities in line with an article obtained from the Washington post of Shell and how his leadership qualities enabled the organization to foster a good working relationship between law enforcement agencies and the community.
References
Hoch, J. E., Bommer, W. H., Dulebohn, J. H., & Wu, D. (2018). Do ethical, authentic, and servant leadership explain variance above and beyond transformational leadership? A meta-analysis. Journal of Management, 44(2), 501-529.
Silva, A. (2016). What is leadership?. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 8(1), 1.
Smith, W. K., Lewis, M. W., & Tushman, M. L. (2016). Both/and” leadership. Harvard Business Review, 94(5), 62-70.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/hall-of-famer-donnie-shell-works-on-growing-relationships/2020/10/09/e376aaea-0a46-11eb-8719-0df159d14794_story.html