Author Archives: juan.guzman

Chapter 2 of Benins’ “On Becoming A Leader” is a great introduction to the essential ingredients of a leader. During the chapter, many of the famous political leaders of the 20th century are referenced in either a positive or negative way. For example former President Bill Clinton is referenced as the Comeback kid, while LBJ is said to have created a great war instead of a Great Society.

In this chapter, Bennis included quotes based on the values of a leader. According to Scientist Mathilde Krim “a value system, beliefs, are important so you know where you stand, but they must be your own value, not someone else’s”. Newspaper Executive Gloria Anderson said “I think we long for people who will stand up for what they believe, even if we don’t agree with them, because we have confidence in such people”.

Values drive a leader in the right direction, whatever that direction may be. Leadership is extremely important during challenging times, therefore values are of the up most importance during challenging times. Without values there is no certainty and challenging times cannot be escaped without having certainty.  So, perhaps it is not a crisis of leadership, but a crisis of values.

Many political leaders today don’t seem to have many values, they are simply interested in staying in power. As long as society keeps breeding political leaders without values, we will continue to have a crisis of leadership.

This past weeks reading assignment and discussion were pretty interesting. In regards to Northouse, the chapter on skills approach has taught me how to evaluate a leader objectively and how they can improve. Robert Katz stated that a leader must have technical skill, human skill and conceptual skill to be successful. The level of importance varies for technical skills and conceptual skills depending on a manager’s role, but human skill is always extremely important. This is a very interesting observation, because not all successful leaders have great human skill.

There are leaders who completely disregard the people around them and still “make it to the top”. This is apparent in business and community. Does human skill make you a better leader? Of course it does, but it may not be relevant to all leaders.

During class discussion this part Thursday, the class talked about mastering the context. Bennis does a great job of highlighting a lack of leadership today. On the other hand, Bennis seems to have this irrational notion that the U.S. will always be on top.

Although the U.S. will remain a big player for years to come, I’m not certain it will dominate in the 21st century like it has for the past 200 years.