Strategic Management- Beth Ellis

I feel that the authors of the article “Building a Leadership Brand” do agree with the ideas presented in the text on strategic leadership. The text talks about strong leaders as “needing a clear and compelling vision of where the organization should go, and being eloquent enough to communicate this vision to others within the organization” (Hill 19), while the authors present the same idea simply in different terminology when they say that a strong leader should be able to say that “we know how we want to be viewed by our target customers, and we have articulated a clear company identity based upon this” (Ulrich 5). Another example where I found that the text and the article preached in a similar manner about quality leadership feel under the idea of being well informed. The text states that “effective strategic leaders develop a network of formal and informal sources who keep them well informed about what is going on” (Hill 19). In a similar manner the article states that a good leader should “develop plans to acquire skills, knowledge, and perspective that matter to the target customer” (Ulrich 5). While the text may differ slightly from the article in terminology, both the authors of the article and the authors of the text are for the majority in agreement with what makes a strong leader.

If anything, my view of how a strategic leader should act has been reinforced from reading this article and viewing the video on Jack Welch. Welch obviously has a great wealth of knowledge in the area of leadership, so hearing him reinforce the way I previously thought that a leader should act was a great thing. I have always believed that in order to be a strong leader, one much be committed to the activity in which they are leading. I have always believed that being able to adhere to emotional qualities, understanding the moods of one's self and others plays by far the largest role in being a good leader. So, while Welch and Ulrich made some interesting points that I may not have previously thought of, the basic ideas were quite similar to ideas that I came into the course with.