Leadership is a very ancient notion having been used by people long before Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle started debating about its main points. Yet, it has preserved its significance and power through all these years. People are talking about it while teaching children, organizing their lives, running a business and so on, because its importance is hard to ignore.
If you have to write a leadership dissertation, you are very lucky because the process itself will provide you with many insights on the topic that you would have never obtained on your own.
But keep in mind that writing about leadership is not that easy – for many people it is a very vague notion. They have a general (and frequently wrong) idea of how it looks like and might not get at the heart of it if you just explain it in words. That’s why it’s always best to use examples, and free online access to the very best of them makes it hard to turn down the idea.
We’ve built up a list of real-life leadership cases that will help you to illustrate your statements in a dissertation. You can find them all on the Internet to learn more if some of the examples become handy for your writing.
Southwest Airlines
Shortly after 9/11 hit the American and global news, the airlines on the territory of the US were obliged to stop flights in all directions. As a result, the passengers and crew members couldn’t reach their destinations and had to stay scattered around the US. But Southwest handled the situation very efficiently – high management encouraged the Southwest staff to take passengers out to different entertainment facilities to pass the time.
But that is not all. After the 9/11 crisis, many airlines were forced to do downsizing. James Parker, the Southwest CEO, on the contrary, kept all the jobs and introduced a profit-sharing program. This way he created a powerful team that helped the company to go through the crisis.
Toyota
In 2014 Toyota had to recall more than 2 million cars because they had problems with brakes. The public went furious together with the media. And what did the CEO do? Jim Lentz organized an open interview for consumers and former employees. He answered all the questions without any filtering or prioritizing though many of them were hard and provocative.
Costco
Jim Sinegal is the former Costco CEO whose legend is popular within newly-minted leaders. His salary didn’t exceed $350 000 while other CEO were (and are) paid millions. At the expense of his low compensation, he paid employees much higher salary than an average wholesale worker got, providing a very low personnel turnover.
Kronos
In 2015 the Kronos CEO introduced the policy of unlimited vacations. Though many people were against it, the profit of 2016 spoke strongly for it. What is more, the percent of people satisfied with their working place grew by 3 points, and the turnover dropped by 1%.
There is a lot of examples out there that can help you illustrate different leadership techniques as well as its qualities. So, don’t waste a chance to make your dissertation more interesting!