Week 11: Leaders and Pizza

Great Leaders

The main characteristic I have always found to be had by the great leaders I have had the chance to work with is their ability to communicate effectively. They communicated well in both giving directions and listening. There is the old saying to lead by example but I have found that when somebody is explicit in what needs to be done it is more effective. The best is when a leader is explicit about what must be done and they practice what they preach. Taking a look at the list I linked to of Time's 100 Greatest Leaders reveals tons of great orators.

Communication is so important for a leader because that is how those being led know what is going on. A good leader will speak confidently and clearly so those he/she is speaking to will be instilled with a sense of "sureness." By sureness I mean they are confident in what needs to be done and understand that if they complete what is required the task or whatever they are working on will be a success. People look to leaders to be given a path to pursue. A good leader will listen to those people and pick out a path that is suitable for them. For example, I am very interested in new technology and ways in which it can be used by a common person. My boss at my current job realized at some point in our conversations and placed me on the technology team at work. Basically we are supposed to do exactly what I like doing, figure out ways to use technology. It was a good job by my boss because he put me into a position where I wanted to excel.

There are times when a leader needs to ask his followers to do something they may not be familiar with and are hesitant to take up with task. If the leader is effective he/she will have gained the respect of his followers and will have authority over them to make them at least willing to pursue the new avenues.

Pizza

The pizza store activity was a good opportunity for us students to put into place some of the things we had been learning about organizations, especially organizational culture. My group focused on making our pizza place, Pizzasaurus, seem like a cool place to go purely based on the type of atmosphere we were creating. Our organization wanted to instill in the customer a feeling of pride in going to our restaurant for pizza. In a business where pizza places are dime a dozen we knew we had to create something different that would stand out from the rest. Therefore when it came to designing Pizzasaurus we took good ideas from other companies like having dipping sauce for our pizza (Dino Sauce) and made them in our own.