The student will answer the question with a minimum of 200 words with two or more references cited. 
What do you think will be the three greatest challenges that leaders will face during the next 30 years?  How do you think these challenges will impact organizational leadership? How will you position yourself to meet these challenges?

ch11.ppt

LeadershipTraits.html.zip

VideoGodinonTribes.html.zip

Practicing Leadership: Principles and Applications

Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

Greek Philosophy
Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership
The Greeks: The Leader as Harmonizer and Teacher
Homer
Society in the Iliad, ruled by warrior nobility
To perform one’s function well, one must cultivate the appropriate arête; that is, the appropriate virtue or excellence that enables the possessor to perform well.

Pericles
Athens became an economic power via foreign trade
Aristocracy had given way to democracy, empowering many more people from many different social classes

Greek Philosophy
The political status quo at the time was a cynical society based on the primacy of power and self-interest.
Thus, the leader is that individual who is cunning enough to dupe others into entrusting him or her with power.
The ideal city constructed by Plato is an intellectual aristocracy, governed by the elite who, in contemplating the Good, have acquired the virtue of wisdom.
Plato depicted the leader as harmonizer of people, as the improver of those whom he or she leads, and as an individual of rare intellectual qualities.
Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

Plato’s Republic: Ideal Leader in the Ideal City

Greek Philosophy
Socrates
A truly wise leader leads so that those being led can develop their potential as human beings and prosper.
Metaphor—leader as physician
The physician is permitted to administer medicine to sick patients because it is only the physician who possesses the special knowledge required to administer treatment.
The leader must likewise attend to the benefit of the led.

Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

Early Christian Philosophy
St. Augustine
Incorporated Platonic ideas within the framework of the Christian religion
Thomas Aquinas
Reconciled Christian and Platonic ideas with the newly recovered works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle
The ideal monarch has the qualities derived from the divine model
The ideal leader should be the teacher of virtue, the caretaker of human needs and the moral paradigm
Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

17th Century English Philosophy
Thomas Hobbes
Human beings emerge as material bodies in motion, with a natural desire for power that, left unregulated and ungoverned, will inevitably lead to war.
Hobbes’ Laws of Nature: a set of precepts designed to counteract people’s natural tendencies towards war and to promote a peaceful civil society.
His solution for counteracting humankind’s warlike nature was to create sovereign power by a contractual agreement made by all those who live in society.
Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

17th Century English Philosophy
John Locke
Humans are capable of reason yet also susceptible to passions
Fundamental decisions about policy should be made at a broadly based level with much participation
The executive leader acts on the decisions thus made and carries these out in the interest of the community.
Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

Questions for Discussion and Review
What are some of Plato’s views on the nature of human beings and the characteristics of the ideal leader?
How did Socrates’ conceptualization of a leader differ from that of Plato?
How did Thomas Aquinas’s work contribute to our understanding of leadership? What characteristics did he attribute to the ideal leader?
What are the Laws of Nature, and how are they beneficial, according to Hobbes?
How do Hobbes and Locke differ in terms of their views on the amount of control people have over their lives?
How are the views of each of the individuals presented in this chapter reflective of the culture and historical time period in which they lived?

Chapter 11: Philosophy and Leadership

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Leadership Traits.html

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