Mgmt704 Management And Leadership : Assessment Answers

1. Critique the "self-reliant," "minimalist," and "strategic competence" models of presidential leadership.

2. Apply each of the three models to an American president.

Answer:

Introduction:

Presidential leadership is constituted of presidential actions, which is usually constrained by existing political system behavior of the president that is governed by constitutional institutions. Moral authority of a president increases the leadership skills as well as persuasive power dramatically leading to presidential success. For example, if Congress were persuaded by Nixon after Watergate incident to pass a bill, it would be an unsuccessful attempt due to its extent of intensive scandal in the 70s (Edwards III, 2013). Hence, ratings from public are an essential approval tool for mitigating issues by a president that is usually obtained through leadership authority and justified political actions.

Self-reliant presidency is stated as strive of a president in being self-reliant and a personal bearer of large share of governing burden. According to Nelson (2013), Franklin Roosevelt is considered to poses self-reliant presidency being an actively positive individual making strenuous efforts to understand issues increasing control over governance. Due to self-reliance, Roosevelt took advice and information from external channels outside the government. The urge to gather information and strong passion for control made Roosevelt hamper performance to some extent. According to Nelson (2013), confusion and exasperation at an operating level was also created due to Roosevelt’s creation of competitive and unstructured relation among sub ordinates. However, self-reliant presidency also highlighted decision-making ability and self-dependency made Roosevelt take a quick decision to counter attack for Pearl Harbor.

Minimalist presidency refers to identifying and assessing the problems and issues to minimal level by the president and instead relying on subordinates entirely for a solution. As stated by Nelson (2013), minimalist presidency was shown by George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, which caused improper evaluation that lead to retaliation of subordinates. As per Nye Jr (2013), decision-making and independent decisions lacked during their presidency and the presidents for an action took a consulting approach. However, the presidents were not controversial in their political actions rather helped the US to mitigate relational issues with Angola, Canada and the Middle East. Following the footsteps of Reagan, Bush’s too much dependency on subordinates however led to limited knowledge of issues causing for his failure.

Presidents Kennedy, Bush I, Clinton and For however followed a strategic competence model where they did not knew every issues rather made good choices regarding their action which led to their promotional success (Wayne, 2016). Proper balance was maintained between minimalist and self-reliant approach by the presidents. It is seen that subordinates often has their own objectives to be fulfilled and hence persuade the president to do so. Nelson (2013) commented that presidents following strategic competence gather background information before making decisions. Policy issues, which are not understood, are informed with fair brief and information. Thus, the only disadvantage of strategic competency is the lack of precision and efficiency in decisions taken.  

It can be concluded that despite having pros and cons of each presidential leadership model, it is necessary to research background information on the entire issues. Sub ordinates should be discussed regarding the issue and their opinions on the mitigating technique should be gathered. Similar to strategic competence, decision finally taken should be judged by the president’s self-reflection and insight to the issue considering existing constraints and environment.

Reference List

Edwards III, George C., and Stephen J. Wayne. Presidential leadership: Politics and policy making. Cengage Learning, 2013.

Nelson, Michael, ed. The presidency and the political system. Cq Press, 2013.

Nye Jr, Joseph S. Presidential leadership and the creation of the American era. Princeton University Press, 2013.

Wayne, Stephen J. "Review of Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era." American Review of Politics 35, no. 1 (2016): 115-116.