{"id":327,"date":"2019-02-02T23:14:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T06:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/?p=327"},"modified":"2019-02-03T11:24:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T18:24:12","slug":"nonetheless-a-review-of-notes-toward-a-definition-of-values-based-leadership-by-james-otoole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/nonetheless-a-review-of-notes-toward-a-definition-of-values-based-leadership-by-james-otoole\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonetheless: A review of Notes Toward a Definition of Values-Based Leadership by James O&#8217;Toole"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While reading through the article <em>Notes Toward a Definition of Values-Based Leadership<\/em> by James O&#8217;Toole (2012) I had mostly agreed with him. Followers being motivated by their leaders, interpreting the needs of the followers, the importance of setting aside personal goals for the good of the followers, and the difficulty of defining leadership being like defining what a game is.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m going to go on a bit of a tangent with the last one. Sure you can know a game when you see one, but can you define what a game is? Is a game fun? Yes, reading is fun, is reading a game? Games are played with multiple people? What about solitaire? Sports are games, right? So, luge, boxing, and running are games? Well, games have elements of chance, then Russian roulette is a game? I could go on, but I need to get to the parts where I disagreed.<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Tool (2012) doesn\u2019t quite define what a good value-based leader is, but does provide us with some characteristics of what a good value-based leader does.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201c[\u2026] a true values-based leader is always to act on the behalf of one\u2019s followers.\u201d (p. 5)<\/li>\n<li>\u201c[\u2026] complete and predictable integrity to all their actions\u201d (p. 6)<\/li>\n<li>\u201c[\u2026] not seek to change their opponents\u201d (p. 6)<\/li>\n<li>\u201c[\u2026] put respect for their followers ahead of their own needs for fame, power and wealth\u201d (p. 7)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>One segment where I disagreed was \u201c[\u2026] the danger of defining Values-Based Leadership in terms of the characteristics of such rare individuals is that the vast majority of leaders, and potential leaders, will feel excluded\u201d (O\u2019Toole, 2012, p. 6) My initial thought was \u2018why?\u2019 Isn&#8217;t the goal to be a great leader and not to be famous but to allow their followers to achieve? Certainly, Gandhi, Lincoln, etc. were great leaders who had amazing impacts, but great impact and fame have nothing to do with quality leadership. A great value-based leader could be, a young mother helping her community. She may get a mention in the local paper, her impact may only be for the children of that area, but her leadership has the potential to be equal or perhaps greater than those mentioned. O\u2019Tool (2012), does state a little later on that these pantheons of leadership were flawed and \u201calmost all people are capable of becoming values-based leaders\u201d (p. 7) however, he doesn\u2019t address that great value-based leadership is not dependent on fame or breadth of impact.<\/p>\n<p>The second objection I had was the statement \u201c[\u2026] it is a lot easier to be a corporate values-based leader than it is to be one at the national level\u201d (O\u2019Toole, 2012). In corporations leaders always have the company value and profit being the top priority. Especially once a company becomes publicly traded, then shareholders become the ones to please the most, the followers then become more of an annoyance getting in the way of higher profits to make sure that the shareholders don&#8217;t lose faith and the CEO is then voted out. This conflicts with some of the trademarks of a value-based leader. If \u201c[s]elfless corporate leaders [\u2026] put respect for their followers ahead of their own needs for fame, power and wealth\u201d (O\u2019Toole, 2012, p. 7) then we would see these leaders making as much as their lowest paid &#8220;followers&#8221;, they would live as modest a living, in interviews, would talk of their subordinate&#8217;s contributions to the effort, would fly economy class, and quit their position should their integrity ever be compromised. At least on a national level, a leader doesn&#8217;t have to be concerned with their own livelihood or being fired by disgruntled shareholder, they can work toward helping their followers as long as they can ignore bribes, blackmail, kick-backs, and lobbyists.<\/p>\n<p>This, of course, all depends on what your definition of what a follower is. In this blog post, I\u2019ve defined followers, in a corporation, to mean employee. However, if the term follower is meant as customers then I would agree with O&#8217;Tool, lower prices, more pumpkin spiced everything, etc. certainly appeases their masses, I honestly didn&#8217;t know I &#8220;needed&#8221; pumpkin spiced cereal until I tried it. However, \u201cproduct quality, customer service, organizational excellence\u201d (O\u2019Toole, 2012) all eventually play second fiddle to profit. In fact, the only ones I believe who have the potential to be truly put \u201cproduct quality, customer service, organizational excellence\u201d (O\u2019Toole, 2012) ahead of profits are not-for-profit organizations or businesses run by monks and nuns to ensure the upkeep of their abbey\u2019s (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2019).<\/p>\n<h6>References<\/h6>\n<p>Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. (2019, January 31). From cheese to cannabis &#8211; the fascinating products made by monks | CBC Radio. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/radio\/undertheinfluence\/from-cheese-to-cannabis-the-fascinating-products-made-by-monks-1.5000122<\/p>\n<p>O\u2019Toole, J. (2012). Notes Toward a Definition of Values-Based Leadership.\u00a0<em>The Journal of Values-Based Leadership<\/em>, <em>1<\/em>(17), 44\u201353. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/2929117<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While reading through the article Notes Toward a Definition of Values-Based Leadership by James O&#8217;Toole (2012) I had mostly agreed with him. Followers being motivated by their leaders, interpreting the needs of the followers, the importance of setting aside personal goals for the good of the followers, and the difficulty of defining leadership being like [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lrnt525"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=327"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":336,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327\/revisions\/336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0058\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}