Essay Sample on The Crux of Leadership: Making Wise Decisions in Difficult Situations

Introduction

There are so many leadership problems and issue that occur from day to day and most of them are at times hard to solve and come up with decisions that will do away with the issues effectively. As a result of this, the decision that a leader takes in a certain situation really matters in what will follow and the reaction of the people who are being led by this individual. A lot of wisdom and consideration of a number of issues is therefore very crucial in such a situation to avoid some pitfalls which have seen many leaders getting into resentful situations just because they executed some decisions without being keen on the outcomes and effects of these decisions.

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Exercises 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 have covered a lot to do with the application of the two contradicting paradigms of leadership decision making with relation to the arguments of Plato and Sun Tzu. This scope aims at coming up with a very critical scenario which demands the best decision to be made to avoid future problems as a leader and then relate to the ideas of the best thinker among Plato and Sun Tzu depending on the situation and how each of them argues that their paradigm can be applied.

The Case Scenario

Taking a case scenario of an American president who has been elected to office an needs to get a good assistant for himself and the person that he wants to choose is not the taste of the people and they don't support this, the president will be in a hard situation to carry out this task and get the assistant he wants. The key issue is that he thinks that this person is the best to be an assistant to him yet the people who elected this president do not support his idea and they want him to seek an alternative. This is thus a decision which is hard to make and various considerations have to be made before any action is taken because an action which is taken without the leader being keen may result to additional problems.

The proposed solution that deems best to apply in this particular situation would be listening to the voice of the people and goes by what they think is the best but not to carry out the decision for the individual gain of the president. In other words, the people of America have a good reason as to why they think that the person appointed to become the assistant of the president is not the right one (Plato & Jowett, 1998).. They all think that there will be problems if this particular individual is made the assistant and most of the advices are that they be allowed to propose the right person for the president or rather they be allowed to select the assistant themselves.

The best solution to this problem will be allowing the people to choose the person they want and think that he is the best instead of the president appointing a person they don't want. This is the best decision therefore and the reason as to why it is the best to apply and solve this problem is that the ideas of all the people as well as their opinions will have been represented well and considered important (Plato & Jowett, 1998).. It should be noted that the people of the society are the ones with the overall decision and all the power lies in their hands thus they have a right to choose the leaders they want and know that will be best for them.

Critiquing the proposed solution to the above case scenario and problem, the fiercest critic of the critical decision making paradigms especially in matters related to leadership is Plato and thus his ideas are the best to adopt in this situation. The arguments presented by this thinker are great ideas which are important in making the decisions that matter and avoiding the increase of problems in future. In this case where the leader allows the societal people to participate, it is an assurance that they will ease the role of making the decisions because their views can never be wrong or biased (Plato & Jowett, 1998).. However, if a leader chooses to make a decision in this case by them using the art of war paradigm, there will be discrimination of the people in a way and this is a risk to the wellbeing of the whole society.

Conclusion

Plato supports the opinions of the people and states that they are very crucial in any decision making process and if they are left out in decisions that concern them, then bigger problems are likely to arise. The leaders who incorporate and listen to the views of their followers have never had problems in their leadership at any given time. The solutions to problems which leaders face in their day to day operations are solely in the hands of the people and thus it is not a good idea to leave the people out in making of decisions.

Plato's ideas and thoughts have been applied in so many scenarios and succeeded in the process of making decisions which are very sensitive and critical. In the case scenario above, when the art of war is applied instead of the social participation of the people, the likelihood is that there might be issues with the leadership because the leader may make the wrong decision to choose their assistants. Plato's paradigm of decision making in leadership is a well-reasoned thought which has considered occurrence of future problems and the outcomes associated with some kinds of dictatorial decision making practices around the world.

This is unlike the way Sun Tzu presents his arguments and states that leaders can make the decision regardless of what may come out of these decisions. There should be no certain times when leaders should make decisions without caring and being concerned of any negative outcomes which may result from their decisions. Leaders are people who should always be keen in what they do because they don't have to hurt their followers through the making of wrong decisions to please themselves.

References

Plato & Jowett, B. (1998). The republic. Internet Classics Archive, MIT.

Tzu, S. (2010, April 23). Art of War. http://classics.mit.edu/Tzu/artwar.html