My Final Paper

Throughout the course of this semester, the Concepts of Leadership class has read three important books, which focus on leadership, and its many aspects. The three books are, "On Leadership", by John W. Gardner, "Leadership Without Easy Answers," written by Ronald A. Heifetz and finally "Leadership and the Quest for Integrity," by Joseph L. Badaracco and Richard R. Ellsworth. The class has also learned about leaders from the case studies presented in class. The objective of this paper is to give a brief summary of each of the three books and then analyze Queen Elizabeth I, by applying key concepts from each of the three books to her leadership.

The book, “On Leadership”, is a clear and informative book, written by John W. Gardner. Gardner’s intention for the book is to mold future leaders. How Gardner does this is by stressing on the importance of understanding the definition of leadership, its functions and its distinctions. The author also identifies the tasks of leadership and that an effective leader is constantly involved in many tasks at the same time. An important part of the book is the fact that Gardner gives fourteen attributes that may or may not exist in all leaders. Gardner also analyzes power and gives a definition of it and the ways in which people have power. A final point to make about the book, “On Leadership,” is the notion of leadership without authority and Gardner gives a Martin Luther King as a perfect example of this theory.

“Leadership Without Easy Answers,” is a book written by Ronald A. Heifetz and he concentrates on three important questions regarding “leadership, authority, and the challenge of tackling very hard problems” (Heifetz, 1). The author believes that all leaders have value regardless of whether or not they are good or bad. The author also analyzes the structure and strategy of leadership and explains that there is a natural tendency of dominance in human beings as well as in primates, which is essential in understanding why some people tend to dominate over others and also why does dominance move towards social contract (Heifetz, 50-57).

Overall, Heifetz reveals the pros and cons of being a leader and he also provides advice on how a leader should lead. The author shares his knowledge on what a leader should do in order to maintain a level of sanity as far as the company that the leader should keep and being able to evaluate his/her performance as a leader by being objective.

Joseph L. Badaracco and Richard R. Ellsworth wrote the text, “ Leadership and the Quest For Integrity” and this book is written from a business perspective. Badaracco and Ellsworth discuss issues concerning corporations, workers and leadership. This book serves as an instrument of guidance for managers in corporations. (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 3). The authors introduce concepts that give its readers an idea of how a manager must function in the business world, as a leader. The authors identify three philosophies of leadership as political leadership, directive leadership and values-driven leadership. In the explanations of each type of leadership, the authors point out the philosophy of each one and then the philosophy in action (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 7). The authors make an effort to examine “five of the most important dilemmas that managers face” (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 7), which include, tensions between general and specific approaches to problems (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 7), “top down and bottom-up influence on important decisions,… substance and process,… confrontation and compromise,… tangibles and intangibles” (Badaracco, Ellsworth,8). The authors give an insightful analysis of the necessity of integrity being a major component of leadership.

This book presents detailed guidelines for a leader’s actions in certain situations and how they should handle problems that they may face whether they are in a business environment or not.

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This portion of the paper will apply the major concepts from the three previously mentioned books to the case study of leadership on Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth I, was a woman whose authority and right to power had been challenged from the very beginning of her reign as queen. As queen, the concerns and problems of her country were in her hands and she had to make the best decisions that could help her people and she proved to be the greatest leader of England. One important fact about the Queen is that as a result of her father’s actions and mistakes, as well as her sister Mary I, she had to repair the damage already done to her country and somehow unify England. According to Gardner, people should “not confuse leadership with status” (Gardner, 2). This can apply to Queen Elizabeth I because although she had status as an official leader and ruler of England, her leadership was distinct from that. She proved to be not only an official ruler but a good leader as well, in the actions and decisions that she undertook. Gardner in “On Leadership” talks about the idea of leaders being good leaders in the time that they emerged as leaders and that “All too often when we think of our historic leaders, we eliminate all the contradictions that make individuals distinctive…we further violate reality by lifting them out of their historical contexts” (Gardner, 5). This is to say that although Queen Elizabeth I is considered a great leader, Gardner would say that she was a great leader in her own time and that does not necessarily mean that she would have been a great leader in another time and setting. In his book, Gardner discusses the tasks of leadership and a majority of them can be applied to Queen Elizabeth ‘s leadership. The first entitled, “Envisioning Goals” is stated by Gardner as when “Leaders perform the function of goal setting in diverse ways. Some assert a vision of what the group (organization, community, nation) can be at its best” (Gardner, 11). Elizabeth I did this by setting out to rebuild England and get it out of the stage of poverty that it was in at the time, also to “preserve domestic peace while maintaining the independence of the Church of England” (Hartwick, 4), and finally to manage opposition from France, Spain and the United Netherlands. Another task that Elizabeth set out to accomplish and she did is “Motivating”. Gardner states that leaders “unlock or channel existing motives…Any group has a great tangle of motives…Effective leaders tap those that serve the purposes of collective action in pursuit of shared goals…”(Gardner, 14). An example of this is when Queen Elizabeth “sent troops to Low Countries to assist Dutch Protestants in their relentless struggle against Catholic Spain” (Hartwick, 5). This was a collective effort to prevent Spanish opposition from invading England and taking its independence and Protestant religion as well as the Elizabeth’s power. (Hartwick, 5). Another task in which Queen Elizabeth I accomplished is “Trust”. Gardner states “Leaders can do much to preserve the necessary level of trust…the first requirement is that they have the capacity to inspire trust in themselves…leaders must work to raise the level of trust”(Gardner, 17). Elizabeth elaborates on this issue of inspiring trust in herself by indicating her right to lead England, in her speech “The State of the Nation”, in which she says, “Authority which is yielded to us and our crown consisiteth in this…considering we are by God’s grace the sovereign prince and queen, next under God, and all the people in our realm are immediately born subjects to us and our crown and to no one else” (Hartwick, 8-11). In the speech, “To the Troops of Tilbury, 1588”, Queen Elizabeth raises the level of trust among the people by stating, “I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people” (Hartwick, 11).

In Chapter five of Heifetz’s book, “Leadership Without Easy Answers”, he points out the notion of “Applying Power.” How this relates to Queen Elizabeth’s leadership is that she had formal authority, which according to Heifetz comes “the various powers of the office” (Heifetz, 101). Also Heifetz mentions “Managing the Holding Environment” and definition of a “holding environment” (Heifetz, 104) is it “consists of any relationship in which one party has the power to hold the attention of another party and facilitate adaptive work”(Heifetz, 105). Queen Elizabeth managed a holding environment through her speeches to her people. With the speeches she was able to motivate the people to support her decisions as queen and fight against the opposition of other European countries that wanted to dethrone her. In chapter ten of his book, Heifetz talks about the risks of leadership, that leaders stand above the rest and become targets. This is evident in Elizabeth’s reign as queen of England. It is because there were many countries that wanted to see her out of power and wanted to establish her cousin Mary Stuart Queen of Scots as her replacement and they tried countless times to get rid or her. As a result of this opposition to her power, Queen Elizabeth I took drastic measures to ensure her reign as queen by having Mary, Queen of the Scots, executed. This can be labeled as a form of autocratic leadership with the use of harsh autocracy.

The final book that will be applied to Queen Elizabeth’s leadership is “Leadership and the Quest For Integrity”, written by Badaracco and Ellsworth. The type of leadership that Queen Elizabeth has enacted in could be labeled as “directive leadership” (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 7). It is because she made the three assumptions that determine a directive leader which include, motivating people by “internal forces” (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 40), pushing her people “toward a stronger coherence” (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 40), and finally understanding that “coherence and substance are more important than style” (Badaracco, Ellsworth, 40). She used her speeches to convey a message of trust, hope and confidence to her people. The use of her speeches are what made her leadership more personal and it showed that the context of what she shared with her people was very important to her. She was more of an active leader as opposed to a reactive leader. She was strong in her reasoning’s and always tried to assure her followers of her decisions and actions taken, that they were for the benefit of the country and the people of England.

In conclusion, this paper seeks to use the knowledge acquired from reading the following books over the course of the semester which include, “On Leadership”, by John W. Gardner, “Leadership Without Easy Answers,” by Ronald A. Heifetz and “Leadership and the Quest For Integrity”, written by Joseph L. Badaracco and Richard L. Ellsworth. The remarkable life of Queen Elizabeth I as a ruler and leader of the English people served as a good example to apply the concepts from the above-mentioned books. It was intriguing to discover that contemporary concepts were capable of being applied to a historic leader, as Queen Elizabeth. Her struggle to maintain and to use her power was worthwhile and is a great example of a woman determined to help her country that she felt needed her.

Badaracco, Joseph L. Jr., Ellsworth, Richard R. Leadership and the Quest For Integrity. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1989.

Gardner, John W. On Leadership. New York: The Free Press, 1990.

Hartwick Classic Leadership Cases. “Elizabeth I, Queen of England”. 1985.

Heifetz, Ronald A. Leadership Without Easy Answers. Cambridge: The Belknap Press Of Harvard University, 1994.