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Responsible Leadership

In: Business and Management

Submitted By maxcouvreur
Words 854
Pages 4
Introduction
This essay aims to express my vision and ideas about responsible leadership, a new theory of growing importance. Indeed, previous theories about leadership lost credibility after the financial crisis in 2008. To fill in the gaps of the former theories, a new concept emerges: responsible leadership. In this essay, I first introduce the concept of leadership before expressing my vision of responsible leadership.

Leadership
In the literature, most of the definitions have common parts. Leaders are individuals able to influence and lead a group of people, by their actions, to achieve a common goal. To do so, those individuals must have a deep commitment to the goal and strive to achieve it. Moreover, they must have a personal vision of the future and inspire their partners so that their vision becomes a common goal for the group. Another characteristic of a leader is that he has persuasive skills and manages to make his/her followers trust him. He is also likely to empower people he works with. Thus, he manages to share responsibilities between team members so that the group becomes more effective. Finally, he motivates people to do their best in their respective fields and also to create a positive team spirit.
In the business world, leaders were often associated with outstanding individuals shaped to conceive a competitive advantage for the company. The role of this person was to create value for the shareholders. In other words, one of the most important sides of the leader’s personality was his ability to generate short term return on investment. Moreover, his vision was limited within the organizational boundaries of the company so that the external consequences of his decisions were taken for granted.
This business conception of leadership is nowadays criticized by the public opinion, one the most important companies’ asset. As a matter of fact,

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