Leadership Strategy of Obama: Leading Change in America

July 28, 2022 by Essay Writer

This paper discusses the leading and managing the change, Problem management and decision making, and consensus building and negotiation in relation to leadership skills of 46th United States president Barack Hussain Obama. Barack Obama is a true representation of an African-American leader who rose up to lead the nation in the first seat. He is the first African-American president that the United States has ever seen. There are multiple examples discussed in the paper such as immigration policy, opening up on racism, his decision-making skills during 2008 recession, which proves and makes Barack Obama as a great leader. Key words: Barack Obama, Leadership, Problem Management, Negotiation, Decision Making Leading and Managing Change (Unit 7, 8 and 9)

The 8 step process for leading change according to Dr. Kotter includes, Establishing a sense of urgency, Creating the guiding coalition, Developing a vision and strategy, Communicating the change vision, Empowering broad-based action, Generating short-term wins, Consolidating gains and producing more change, and Anchoring new approaches in the culture. The first step is Establishing the sense of change. A leader identifies the urgency of change and he/she takes actions that capture the attention of other people. Secondly, leaders explain the importance of making these changes in the organization. The leaders then empowers the coalition with the powers he/she got. This coalition directs the sources in moving towards the changes created in first step. Then the leaders creates the vision and strategy to the organization. He brings up the other employees such as managers and directors to initiate the organization’s vision and strategy. The leaders then communicate the changes and empowers the changes with all employees within the organization. This way, the organization’s vision is passed through all the employees. Empowering broad based action to remove the barriers to achieve the goals. Generating short term wins by planning a short term goals and acknowledging the short term wins will help in motivating employees to achieve for bigger goals. Consolidating the gains and producing more changes is the next step in leading the change. Anchoring the new approaches by making continuous efforts in all possible ways to ensure the change is seen through entire organization.

Here are some of the examples where Barack Obama lead the change and been a part of the change to lead the country in right direction. The affordable Care Act (4): Popularly known as Obama Care, the affordable care act was passed during Obama administration. This act helped many poor individuals to have a health coverage irrespective of the insurance they own. The acts calls for all citizens to have insurance so that the insurance companies cannot deny treatment to individuals based on pre existing condition. The president has initiated the change and lead the change to help the citizens of America for a healthy life. The 2009 Economic Stimulus Package (2): During the economic surge in 2009, introduction of new way of spending public funds spending infrastructure and health programs. With the help of very few supporters within republicans, a $787 billion package was released to jump start the American economy. Many republicans haven’t believed in it, however the president plan was successful in bringing the stimulus back and helped in bringing six million jobs to the country and thus helped in bringing back the economy.

The Auto Industry Bailout(3): When the General Motors and Chrysler are at the verge of bankruptcy in 2008, the white House was in fear that the country was going to loose one million jobs. The president believed in that helped out these companies will help in keeping the unemployment rate low. The Obama administration released $80 billion dollars to G. M. and Chrysler companies and bailed out the companies. This helped the companies streamline their operations and move their retirement funds to an independent trust. Thus, Obama was once again proved that the change he initiated and lead helped the country in maintaining the low unemployment rate.

Problem Management and Decision Making: Problem Management involves activities required to diagnose the root cause of incidents and to determine resolution to those problems. There are various decision-making models discussed in the class. Incremental Model, Polis Model, Garbage Can Model, Bargaining Model, Participative Model, and Rational Model are some of the decision-making models. Incremental models are Decisions are made in small analytical increments in response to events and circumstances where the decision-maker’s analysis is focused on familiar, better-known experiences. Polis models assumes inconsistencies in life where the political community is able to deal with less than comprehensive and reliable information. Here are some of the examples f problem management and decision-making skills of President Obama. Civil Rights for Gays and Lesbians (4): In 2008, during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama believed in a marriage between a man and a woman. Later on, demand for civil rights for gay and lesbians. Obama understood the problem and decided to make a decision.

In 2012, he came with a executive order protecting the federal employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Immigration Policy (4): In 2014, the president was criticized for overseeing two million deportations particularly from Hispanic community. The head of national council for Hispanics advocacy group in the United States, called the president as the deporter-in-chief. However, the president understood the aggressive movement and made a law to help legalizing the illegal immigrants. However, the law did not get approved in the house, however the president made a executive order to help the immigration process more flexible. This has helped many illegal immigrants to turn into legal citizens and help contributing to nation’s economy. Normalization of U. S. relations with Cuba (2): In 2014, the president has restored diplomatic relations with country Cuba and opened an embassy in the nation. The president repealed some of the rules against cash and travel and thus helping in moving towards normalized relations with Cuba. This has helped in building relationship between and Cuba and United States. The decision power of the president made this situation better and improved relations between the countries.

Consensus Building and Negotiation:

Negotiation is a method by which people settle differences. It is a process by which compromise, or agreement is reached while avoiding argument. The process of negotiation includes Preparation, Discussion, Clarification of goals, Negotiate towards a Win-Win outcome, Agreement, and Implementation of a course of action. There are times when there is a need to negotiate more informally. At such times, when a difference of opinion arises, it might not be possible or appropriate to go through the stages in a formal manner. BATNA (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) is one of the important courses of action has to be implemented to carry through the decision.

Here are some of the examples where President Obama proven his skills of negotiation and building consensus. The Appointment of Two Supreme Court Justices (4): After the death of justice Antonian Scalia in 2009, Obama decided to replace his position with more diversified personality. By that time, Obama has already appointed two chief justices. The republicans do not want to approve the president’s decision. However, president was succeeded in placing Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic and the third woman ever to serve the court.

Speaking frankly about Racism (2): it is President Obama who spoke up about racism first. This happened in 2012, when a black teenager, Trayvon Martin was killed by a neighborhood watchman. Also, in 2009 when Harvard University professor, Henry Louis Gates, was arrested for disorderly conduct. There were multiple other instances which has shown that multiple black people killed in multiple cases. However, it is President Obama who came out first to talk about this and invited leaders of Black Lives Matter movement and helped to maintain relations between minorities and police. Tax and Budget compromises (4): During 2010, the republican domination in the house forced Obama to govern according to smaller government principles. However, Obama was able to sign Budget Control Act in 2012, which a mandated $1 million in spending in defense and domestic for over ten years. This has helped in saving same amount of money and this has made congress softened the spending cuts in multiple ways.

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