Sweet Leadership

Sweet Leadership

Glenn E. Whorley

LDR/531

Tim Buchanan

May 12, 2010

Sweet Leadership

Forrest Gump once said "Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get” (imdb, 1994). Apparently, Forrest was a very prophetic man because that statement is also true when applied to leaders. Leaders waver between good and bad and it is often hard to determine what is going on beneath the skin. When reaching into the leadership box of chocolates, it would be nice to have a guide on the box lid that tells what flavor each leader is. Unfortunately, this is not the case, there is no guide and the leader can easily turn out to be a chocolate covered maple cream. Listening to quoted leadership principals is one way to determine what kind of chocolate is available. Leaders use these quotes to express their vision and in turn, can be used as a box lid guide for selecting the desired pieces of chocolate.

One leadership quote popular among people with a sweet tooth comes from General Colin Powell’s 18 leadership principals. The principal that “Command is Lonely” (Powell, n.d.) is a guaranteed chocolate covered caramel in the leadership box. General Powell was correct that participative leadership will only take a team so far before the leader must make a decision. Gathering information from the team is always a good idea; but a good leader recognizes when a decision must be made, weighs the options and moves forward even if the decision is not popular with the team. Sometimes, a constricted timeline or the failure of the team to come to a consensus makes the leadership decision unpopular. Constricted timeline often do not allow a consensus decision to be made and that is when a good leader should step forward and make a decision. In this case the old Army adage applies: An imperfect decision now is better than the perfect decision too late. To change the culture in an organization leaders have to gather as much information and make the best decision...