Alexander The Great Leadership

This sample essay on Alexander The Great Leadership provides important aspects of the issue and arguments for and against as well as the needed facts. Read on this essay’s introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion.

The Short Summary of the Film Alexander the Great is about a man called Alexander, king of Macedonia. The story tells us how Alexander conquers Asia, Egypt, part of India and how he becomes the legend “Alexander the Great”. The chosen leaders for this movie are Alexander and his father Phillip.

Alexander is a man with enormous dreams since his childhood and he has been called “The son of the god”. He knows and believes from the very beginning that he will create a history and become an important person for his people.

Alexander is an effective and good leader in one way, but on the other hand sometimes he seems to be an ineffective leader who only searches for power and self fulfilment. ALEXANDER -Alexander’s Ability and Traits Alexander has traits to be an effective leader in wars.

He born as a leader and knows how to get the soldiers to follow him and trust him. He takes an interpersonal role where he acts as a leader of his men and the population of the land that he conquers. Alexander is a good planner and organiser, he know his goal and have a strategy.

Essays On Alexander The Great

He has also great ambition to do the best for himself and his people. Alexander wants to be seen as a hero, he love to manage and conquer.

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He is a good negotiator, as you can see in the movie for example when he and his father conquer Greece. The traits and behaviour that Alexander has is associated with derailment is that sometimes he shows very high self-esteem and He thinks that he can manage everything because of his very individualistic nature. Also he trust anyone and anything but himself. However, he needs to learn that sometimes he also needs to listen to his people and his followers to make decisions.

Furthermore, another negative trait of Alexander is that he is very much impatient since he is so much fascinated by his ambitions that he couldn’t analyze the facts. -Alexander’s Leadership Behaviours Alexander uses different leader behaviours depending on the followers. For the soldiers, he tries to motivate and recognize them and to create a culture with values and norms. He also clarifies goals and objectives for the soldiers, so everyone knows what they need to do. Alexander is also a good team builder, to be a good soldier you need to work together as a team and he displays this must behaviour. Alexander’s In-groups and Out-groups Alexander has some in and out group member in one point of view. The in-group members are: His mother, his nearest friends such as such as Ptolemy, Hephaistion, and Cassander and his tutor, Aristotle. The out group members are the other soldiers from the places he conquered. However you can also take the point of view that Alexander tried to create a positive relationship with all of the followers and create system and network through the world, as a head leader. Soldiers need to work as a network and that’s why he needs to have positive relationships among all of the followers so they trust him. Alexander’s Leadership Styles Alexander is task oriented and uses an autocratic leadership style. On the other hand, when he has time, he used consultation with his nearest friends, mother and his tutor, Aristotle. If we look from the perspective from Ohio State University he would be a directive/autocratic leader. Alexander also use delegation the daily business to the kings of the conquer land. In our point of view he thinks that he uses the appropriate decision style but he could use more consultants and listen to the followers rather then being very task-oriented leader. -Alexander’s Sources of Power

Alexander has different sources of power. He has legitimate power because of his position king of Macedonia, reward and coercive power that he can reward or punish the soldiers depending on their behaviours and ecological power because he can decide how the organization for the soldiers and the organization should look like. He has also referent power that he has charisma and the soldiers have high loyalty. -Alexander’s Influence Tactics Alexander use different influence tactics to influence his people, legitimate power, rational persuasion, exchange tactic, personal appeals, inspirational appeal, and pressure tactic.

Alexander is also a charismatic leader; he has the charisma both from his personality, vision and the situation. And his vision is to conquer the whole world and being the strongest. PHILIP Even though Alexander is the leading character in the movie, King Philip plays a very important role as well. Philip is a good leader in his younger ages in terms of expanding the borders of the country and giving importance to science, art, philosophy…etc. Additionally, he seems to be liked and respected by his public. However, in the film we come across with his old ages, accordingly a decline of his success.

Therefore, he is facing problems related not only with divided Greece but also his health problems. -Philip’s Ability and Traits Dominance, self confidence, intelligence and internal locus of control are four personality traits for Phillip. In terms of dominance criterion, we clearly see that Philip likes to take charge of things and leading people, and he actually succeeds on this aim. He rules a broad country and commands the army. He is also highly self confident. Even if he is really sick, he believes he can go to the wars alone without taking Alexander with him.

His self confidence may come from his intelligence, since he knows that he has enough capability of achieving his goals and he believes he is superior to his rivals such as the kings of other nations or commanders of other armies. Most importantly he has clear internal locus of control. He wants all control in his hands. He even believes he should rule the whole world. Accompanied with his effective behaviors, Philip has also some traits which results in derailment. Here are some of them: We can say that Philip is somewhat neurotic. This low emotional stability may occur because of his age or the complex situations he is facing with.

He is also defensive, meaning he resists change. Another negative aspect of his behaviors is that he is not good at delegation. The monarchic nature of his power may prevent him to share responsibility with others. He is also very self- centered and he does not want to share the success with others. -Philip’s Leadership Behaviours Basically, the behaviors that Philip employs: Planning/Organizing, Motivating, Consulting, Rewarding. As a king, planning and organizing tasks are inevitable for him; and we see it from the movie in the scenes that he tries to develop strategies for his troubled country.

He believes that his country should rule the world and he motivates his followers in that way. He also applies rewarding. He organizes meetings and declares the successes of soldiers who return from wars. He has some advisors around him and the famous philosopher Aristotle. He consults them and gains insights about situations around him. -Philip’s In-groups and Out-groups We identified two characters as examples of in-group members. They are Philip’s close friends/advisors and his girl friend. They clearly more influence on Philip. On the other hand, his wife Olympia seems to be an out-group member.

Philip wants to send her away since he is in love with Eurydice. He is also suspicious about her loyalty. He claims she creates gossips about him saying he has gone mad. And the queen is not happy about these conditions and she feels disappointment that Philip leaves her. -Philip’s Leadership Style Phillip uses basically two different decision making style in the movie. The most used one is autocratic decision making. As being the leader of the public and the palace Phillip makes decision alone without asking Alexander, the Queen, the soldiers and his friends.

On his own Phillip investigates the conquests, wars, and the future of Macedonia and decides what should be done. After that he tells people what he decided and what would they do. -Philip’s Sources of Power Firstly, he has position power. He has legitimate power because he is the king and the leader of the public and the palace. Since Phillip can reward people for appropriate behavior and punish them for noncompliance he has both reward and coercive power. He has great information power because he has control over access and distribution of the information.

He control over the physical environment and organization of the work so he has ecological power. Secondly, he has personal power: Due to his specialized knowledge and skills he has great expert power. -Philip’s Influence Tactics Phillip use legitimating tactics, inspirational appeal by arousing emotions, consultation -He only consults with his consultant in the palace. He never asks something to the public-, and pressure tactics including coercion, intimidation, and push behavior to influence the soldiers, the public, and the palace.

Phillip is also a charismatic leader; his charisma emerges depend on different sources such as his personality, leadership skills, followership, and the situation. Because of his charisma he has great impact on people especially on the soldiers. Followers’ Characteristics As we watched the movie again and again, we discovered unimaginable leadership characteristics of Alexander the great at each time; however, finally we understood that only good followers can make a great leader. The question in this point is “who is a good follower? A good follower is one who understands, supports, and works for the leader’s vision and challenges the leader’s decisions that are misguided or unethical. By taking this definition as the base we determine several followers that made Alexander one of the greatest leaders ever seen. These are Macedonian great generals such as Hephaestion, Permenion, Coenus, Antigonus, Polyperchon, Crateros, Perdiccas, Attalus, Philotas, Cleitus, Pausanius, and Leonnatus. Among these Permenion and Hephaestion were the most valuable and the closest, respectively, to Alexander the great.

Hephaestion grows up with Alexander and share his entire secret. Besides being a soldier, engineer and diplomat, he corresponds with the philosophers and actively supports Alexander in his attempts to integrate Greeks and Persians. Permenion, one of the most experienced warriors, is the main general in command of the army. Alexander does not make any decision without him. During the battles he can create innovative strategies and always is seem to be unbeatable. In the Gaugamela battle, while Alexander commands the right part of the army, Permenion fights in the left of the army and solely commands the entire left part.

Alexander is great with these followers, without them he is just a person who has high passion to win, to create a unique empire in Europe and Asia. When Macedonians are in India, Alexander speaks to his army and tried to persuade them to march further into India but Coenus makes him to change his opinion and return. The main reason of this return is the unwillingness of the generals. However, we never forget that without a leader followers cannot succeed. Just after the Alexander death the whole empire is divided into four parts by the followers.