Study On Gandhis Leadership Styles History Essay

Study On Gandhis Leadership Styles History Essay This essay gives an overview of various leadership types and its main focuson the situational leadership. It attempts to explain the situational leadership process with an example of Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi as a situational leader. It further explores the attributes that Mahatma Gandhi as a situational leader possesses. The essay also tries to find out various effects of situational leadership. While mentioning the positive effects of the situational leadership, it also investigates the dark side of the situational leadership. After reading the essay the readers are expected to have gained enough familiarity with this kind of leadership and at the end of the essay. Any type of organisation, country or political party runs successfully when it is piloted by a skillful and influential leader. While leaders motivate their followers, it is not the only thing leaders can do. A good leader can structure the organisation in the way he wants. He represents the culture of the organization and most importantly, it has been observed that effective leaders posses a capacity to increase the productivity of the organization. Various scholars categorize leadership styles in a different way. Lewin (1939) classifies leadership styles in three categories: Autocratic Leadership, Democratic Leadership and Delegative (Laissez-Faire) Leadership. Mohandas Gandhi was born in the western part of British-ruled India on October 2, 1869. A timid child, he was married at thirteen to a girl of the same age, Kasturbai. Following the death of his father, Gandhis family sent him to England in 1888 to study law. There, he became interested in the philosophy of nonviolence, as expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita, Hindu sacred scripture, and in Jesus Christs Sermon on the Mount in the Christian Bible. He returned to India in 1891, having passed the bar, but found little success in his attempts to practice law. Seeking a change of scenery, he accepted a position in South Africa for a year, where he assisted on a lawsuit. In South Africa, he became involved in efforts to end discrimination against the Indian minority there, which were oppressed both by the British and by the Boers, descendants of the original Dutch settlers of the region. Having intended to stay a year, he ended up remaining until 1914 (his wife and children had joined him, meanwhile, in 1896). He founded the Natal Indian Congress, which worked to further Indian interests, and commanded an Indian medical corps that fought on the British side in the Boer War (1899-1901), in which the British conquered the last independent Boer republics. After the war, Gandhis reputation as a leader grew. He became even more adamant in his personal principles, practicing sexual abstinence, renouncing modern technology, and developing satyagraha-literally, soul- force. Satyagraha was a method of non-violent resistance, often called non-cooperation, that he and his allies used to great effect against the white governments in South Africa. Their willingness to endure punishment and jail earned the admiration of people in Gandhis native India, and eventually won concessions from the Boer and British rulers. By 1914, when Gandhi left South Africa and returned to India, he was known as a holy man: people called him a Mahatma, or great soul. At this point, he was still loyal to the British Empire, but when the British cracked down on Indian civil liberties after World War I, Gandhi began to organize nonviolent protests. The Amritsar Massacre, in which British troops gunned down peaceful Indian protestors, convinced Gandhi and India of the need for self-rule, and in the early 20s Gandhi organized large-scale campaigns of non-cooperation that paralyzed the subcontinents administration-and led to his imprisonment, from 1922 to 1924. After his release, he withdrew from politics for a time, preferring to travel India, working among the peasantry. But in 1930, he wrote the Declaration of Independence of India, and then led the Salt March in protest against the British monopoly on salt. This touched off acts of civil disobedience across India, and the British were forced to invite Gandhi to London for a Round-Table Conference. Although Gandhi received a warm welcome in England, the Conference foundered on the issue of how an independent India would deal with its Muslim minority, and Gandhi withdrew from public life again. But independence could not be long delayed. The Government of India Act (1935) surrendered significant amounts of power to Indians, and the Indian National Congress clamored for more. When World War II broke out, India erupted into violence, and many nationalist leaders, including Gandhi, went to prison. After the war, the new British government wanted to get India off its hands quickly. But Muhammed Ali Jinnah, the head of the Muslim League, demanded that a separate state be created for Indias Muslims, and to Gandhis great distress, the Congress leaders and the harried British agreed. August of 1947 saw Indias attainment of independence-as well as its partition into two countries, India and Pakistan. However, neither measure served to solve Indias problems, nor the country immediately fe ll apart: Hindus and Muslims killed each other in alarming numbers while refugees fled toward the borders. Heartbroken, Gandhi tried to calm the country, but to no avail. He was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in Delhi on January 30, 1948, and India mourned the loss of its greatest hero. Gandhis leadership style is being termed as follower-centric and that took into account existing conditions before determining the strategy. Gandhi advocated having leadership styles that were dependent on the circumstances. When Gandhi was in South Africa, he launched his protests in a suit and a tie. But when he came back to India, he thought of khadi and launched non-violent protests on a greater scale; it shows that Gandhijis leadership style was situational leadership style. (http://www.sparknotes.com/biography/gandhi/summary.html) What is Leadership? Harry S. Truman, (2003) describes leadership as the ability to get men to do what they dont like to do and like it. John Gardner, (2003) describes leadership as the process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or a leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers. The reciprocal process of mobilizing, by persons with certain motives and values, various economic, political and other resources, in a context of competition and conflict, in order to realize goals independently or mutually held by both leaders and followers. (James McGregor Burns, 2003). What is Situational Leadership? Hersey and Blanchard (1988) developed a particular form of contingency theory which has become well known as situational leadership. Making the point that the appropriateness of a leadership style is a function of the situation, they focused attention on subordinate maturity as a contingent variable, by which they meant the ability and willingness of a subordinate to work without direction. Where subordinate maturity is high, a relationship-oriented style is appropriate, but where maturity is lacking a more task-oriented style will prove more effective. Situational leadership theory is one of the type of leadership theory, leadership model and leadership style that believes that different leadership style suit different situations. That is as per the situation, you should apply leadership style. Situational leadership theory assumes that the best action to be taken by a leader depends on the situation. As the situation changes, you (leader) should also quickly change the leadership style. Depending on the situation, you (leader) should adopt leadership style. A situational leadership model is also associated with situational leadership theory. The basic idea of this model is that leadership flexibility is necessary for effective leadership. It also believes that different leadership approaches are required for different situations. This model defines four leadership styles. These styles are based on how much guidance or direction the leader can give to his or her followers. Situational Leadership Model : (Ollhoff.com) The above situational leadership model is applied on the Mahatma Gandhi in order to prove that he was a situational leader. In the following passages different action, reactions and incident from the life of the Gandhi are chosen that proves him a situational leader. Leadership developed by Robert House (1971) which defines that leaders make a clear and easy path for their followers and to fulfill the goals encourage and supports them to take it. The leaders clarify the path for followers and remove the roadblocks that might stop them from attaining the goal. For laying the path for followers a leader can follow any of the given leadership behavior. First the directive leader in which the leader lets the follower know what is expected of them, schedules work to be done and give specific guidance as to how to accomplish task. When Mahatma Gandhi called up all the community who were not being treated equally and made a speech to them asking all the non Europeans to burn their passes which showed their symbol of status. By doing so he was asking government for the right to claim them as equal citizens of the empire. We can see that he was making sure the followers know what is expected from them and he gave specific guidance what and how it would be accomplished. And for scheduling he made sure there is enough public gathered so he asks his wife to encourage some female along with her. The second kind of behavior is coaching leader who tries to promote good friendly relation within the group and shows concern for the welfare of the followers. In this way during Salt march from Ahmadabad to Dandi, Gandhi had gone there quietly; it would just not have made an impact. He knew he had to create an event to make an impact and so he took his followers on a march that stirred popular imagination of the time. He had a total understanding of the human psychology and used it along with his public relation skills. By doing this Gandhi coached his followers The third kind of behavior is supportive leader who tries to promote good friendly relation within the group and shows concern for the welfare of the followers. This kind of leadership depicted takes the help of followers for day-to-day decision. Decisions include processes and task allocation. The leader facilitates decisions but the final decision is taken by the follower. The Non-cooperation movement was a significant phase of the Indian struggle for freedom from British rule. This movement, which lasted from 1920 to 1922, was led by Gandhi, and supported by the Indian National Congress. It aimed to resist British occupation of India through non-violent means. Protestors would refuse to buy British goods, adopt the use of local handicrafts, picket liquor shops, and try to uphold the values of Indian honor and integrity. The Gandhian ideals of ahisma or non-violence, and his ability to rally hundreds of thousands of common citizens towards the cause of Indian independence, were fir st seen on a large scale in this movement. Gandhiji while working for independence of India used to consult other leaders like Pandit Nehru, Gokhale, Maulana Azad who were his followers as well. The last kind of leadership behaviour according to the Path-Goal theory is achievement-oriented leader where the leader sets a challenging goal both for self improvement and work. The leader shows and expects high demonstration and has faith in the capabilities of the followers to succeed.

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  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  As I near the end of my high school career, I realize that I am not the same person who began 3 years ago as a freshman. While my teachers instilled the fundamental aspects of a well-rounded education, I learned through my own experience that education extends beyond the classroom. My activities in academics, athletics, community service and work experience, have instilled qualities in me that will prepare me for the immediate future of college and beyond.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  My unique educational environment of a school has allowed me the opportunity to form close relationships with teachers and students alike, enabling me to interact with people of various backgrounds and ages. These experiences prepared me for my encounters beyond the realm of the classroom. Within this environment, I planned my class’ junior and senior trips. These experiences provided me with an opportunity to represent my classmates while fostering communication between the faculty and students. Currently, I participate in a class called . Twice a week, and I get together to read, review his homework, talk about current events, and share our life experiences. While this seemed intimidating at first, I learned that he depended on me to help with his work. No longer was I just ‘helping out’, but I had a responsibility to to assist with his learning and be a positive role model in his life. With these recent school experiences, I have learned how communication and c...

Applying Military Strategy and Tactics to Business

Applying Military Strategy and Tactics to Business Preamble During the late 80s and early 90s, much of the predominant management philosophy  involved directly applying classical military strategy to business. Sun Tsu  was regularly quoted at  Board meetings and  on Wall Street  and books like  On War  and  Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun  were among the most popular business books available. At the time, I wasn’t a big subscriber to the idea that lessons from military conquests and failures could be readily applied to making a business successful.Perhaps it was that I couldn’t get my head around morphing one of Sun Tsu’s many principles of warfare into something that I could adopt as a leader or manager . . . â€Å"Camp in high places, facing the sun. Do not climb heights  in order to fight. So much for mountain warfare. † – Sun Tsu,  The Art of War Huh? Maybe it was that the black and white nature of warfare, with real l ife death and destruction that made it difficult for me to draw comparisons with the gray-ness of business strategy and  its inherently longer feedback loop.Or,  it could have been because  mapping strategy directly to success or failure discounts the value of the quality of implementation. As a strong believer in the power of strong management, I believe that top-notch execution often trumps good strategy. As I see it, a good strategy poorly implemented will lose to a lesser strategy that is well implemented (that ought to elicit some strong opinions . . . ). For whatever reasons I struggled with using centuries of military wisdom in conducting business in the past, my recent re-reading of excerpts from books by  a few  of the great military historians –  B.H. Liddel Hart,  Carl von Clausewitz  and, of course, Sun Tsu, among others, has got me re-thinking about the application of what armies and empires have learned about beating the crap out of the other guy . Of course, from the cheap seats, anyone  can read an excerpt from the writings by or about a great military strategist or tactician and come up with  their very own  way of applying it to their business. Napoleon’s  35th military  maxim  is: â€Å"Encampments of the same army should always be formed so as to protect each other. One might apply this maxim to business by translating it as: all of our products and services should be closely aligned and interconnected in some way, making it harder for our competition to pick off any one product or service. Sounds reasonable. Microsoft clearly does that with Office, an obviously successful implementation of this strategy. But what if I interpret this to mean that I should build walls around my current products or services, focusing my energy on defending my current position instead of expanding aggressively?It’s easy to see how this interpretation of Napoleon’s maxim could open  me up to failure as i t did when  DEC  refused to leave the  VAX  behind. Both interpretations are reasonable, but one leads to a high likelihood of success and the other to a reasonable possibility of failure. The problem, as I see it, is that even students of military history have difficulty determining what strategy or tactic to apply a priori in a military engagement, let alone while adapting it  to its business application. There are many examples in military history of a certain strategy being successful in one battle and failing miserably in another.Sure, it’s easy to be a Monday-morning quarterback, but when the data is coming at you in real time, making the right call on what military strategy to use in your business is difficult and potentially dangerous. So with the caveat of interpretation stated above, I’d like to present  my summary of winning military strategies and tactics that businesses in today’s world of diminishing sustainable differentiation can use to help make them successful . . . †¢ Speed †¢ Focus †¢ Indirect Approaches †¢ Intelligence (knowledge of what’s going on) †¢ DeceptionArguably, not nearly a complete list but, like I said earlier, it’s easy to map virtually any military strategy to any business strategy. My goal here is to present the most obvious ones (to me) and to use examples of the use of the particularly military strategy in  action and show how it applies to business. My plan is to do a separate post for each one of these strategic areas to avoid this post from becoming exceedingly long and, probably, way too boring. First up, Speed . . . Speed There are very few examples of successful military campaigns waged slowly.American Civil War General  Nathan Bedford Forrest,  one of the  first students of mobile warfare,  consistently defeated opposing Union generals even though he was almost always outnumbered and out-gunned. His strategy – speed. He is known for getting to battles days before the Union armies expected his arrival – driving men and horses virtually 24 hours a day in order to create a surprise attack. Forrest rarely lost in battle as a result of his use of speed. He called his strategy: â€Å"get there fustest [sic]  with the mostest. Roughly 75 years later, in 1939, the German Army started its sweep across Europe with its invasion of Poland. It moved so swiftly across the continent that it caught other countries ill-prepared and unable to mobilize forces or infrastructure to defend themselves. The Germans use of  blitzkrieg, orlightning war, allowed them to stay mobile and to avoid becoming entrenched in one place as all the armies in WWI had. This strategy and, of course, the preparations to implement a  strategy of speed,  made the German army vastly superior to the other armies of Europe and, ultimately, more successful in it’s initial engagements.Like armies, companies that stay flexible and m ove quickly hugely increase their likelihood of success. This is, of course, true in terms of markets – getting products and services that people really want or need to market first is almost always  a  winning strategy – but it may be even more important in terms of the culture it creates inside a company. When your employees are flexible and innovative, moving quickly to take on the next challenge, they will all be driving for success and well-prepared to quickly respond to  any surprises that arise from the competition.One of the reasons that speed works is that many companies are afraid of it and thus, don’t employ it as a strategy. It is, therefore,  likely that your competition is afraid of speed. Or, at least, more afraid of it than you are. It feels much safer to move slowly, after all. But it isn’t. Slow companies are exposed to attack from all directions and once attacked, often don’t have the ability to defend themselves, let alo ne go on the offensive. Road kill. In my experience, speed has also shown its value in another critical way – by minimizing the impact of execution errors.Any business is going to have some execution errors. If the business is plodding along, though, small mistakes in tactics can cause huge, unrecoverable problems. If the business is moving quickly, though, most execution errors become mere bumps in the road. The flexibility of the organization can absorb them and continue to move forward with small changes in strategy or tactics. This, in fact, may be the greatest advantage of employing speed as a strategy. For business, as with the military, speed is your friend – keep the pedal to the metal.Next up . . . focus. Focus During  Napoleon’s  early campaigns, virtually all of which were successful, he used a set of 78  Maxims  to guide him in battle (before he thought his armies were too big to be defeated). Maxim XXIX stated: â€Å"When you have resolved to fight a battle, collect your whole force. Dispense with nothing. A single battalion sometimes decides the day. † Napoleon believed that it was nearly impossible to  know what force, tactic or sub-strategy would determine the outcome of a specific battle.Therefore, he always focused all of his forces on the attainment of a single goal – on winning the battle at hand. The only time he split his forces was to use flanking maneuvers where part of his force would attack the enemy from another direction. Even when this tactic was used, though, all of his forces were engaged in  the  single battle at hand with the common goal of winning that particular contest. He didn’t hold men in reserve and he didn’t split his forces to fight in multiple, simultaneous engagements.The same cannot be said  for the British during the  African Campaign  in WWII   The British, who had recognized the strategic importance of Africa well ahead of the Germans, committ ed large forces and many tanks, guns  and planes to the region to make sure that it remained in their control. The Germans, although out-manned and out-gunned almost eradicated the British forces from Africa by taking advantage of a fundamental weakness in British military strategy – to hold some forces in reserve during a battle just in case they needed them later.This conservative British strategy of not committing all their energies to the task at hand  meant that  the Germans never had to engage the entire British force at any time and their inferiority of men and equipment didn’t come into play and thus, they almost wrested control of the continent from the British with many fewer resources. During the civil war,  George McClellan, first General in Chief of the Union Army, failed to convincingly defeat a much smaller and less-equipped Confederate force in many engagements.This included missing a huge opportunity to take the Confederate capital, Richmond, d uring the first year of the war and, therefore, passing up an opportunity to bring the war to a close early in its execution. McClellan almost never committed a large enough force to any engagement, choosing to leave behind many men to defend Washington (as commanded by Lincoln) and keeping  even more in reserve and disengaged from any particular battle. There are dozens of examples throughout history of armies being defeated because forces were split for one reason or another.Whether to fight a battle or war on too many fronts or  to hold forces in reserve, too little of the available resources were applied to ensure victory. Most often, it appears that the cause of these errors was ego and/or ignorance. But sometimes the error lay in simply underestimating the effort required to be successful in any one arena. With low barriers to entry in  so many market segments these days, many companies assume that they can create any new product or service without too much trouble or ex pense (let’s build our own web browser! ). Funny enough, this might be true.You may be able to address any new problem that you see potential customers having. The problem is that while you can do anything, you simply can’t do everything. Doing everything or, in fact, just doing multiple things, is the same as fighting a battle on multiple fronts – it’s not likely that you’ll succeed unless you have loads-o-resources. Most  small companies (or groups within larger ones)  don’t, of course, and end up struggling when they lose their focus  on their goal. Saying focused is particularly difficult for startups which, by their very nature, have little momentum behind what they’re doing and, thus, a lot of flexibility.Add to this the fact that the smart, hard-working people who found startups or join them near their inception are the kind of people that see opportunities all around them. A new, exciting market niche here; weak competit ion there; unfulfilled customer need somewhere else. It’s natural for this type of person in a startup environment to  have difficulty staying the course, wanting to jump at every opportunity they see. Focus not only involves trying not to bite off more than you can chew, but also not changing direction too frequently or haphazardly. In a startup, it’s especially easy to get pulled in new irections daily as sales people feed back what they’re hearing, customers demand new functionality and advisors express their beliefs about what is right and wrong. And, since many startupscan  actually turn on a dime, they often do just that. Turning on that dime may be the right thing to do. But companies or groups that do so frequently, are doomed to getting overrun by the competition. It’s hard to do things well if what your target is a moving one. This is not to say that  adjusting goals and direction should be avoided completely. It’s often necessary a nd smart to do so. Such changes have to be made thoughtfully and carefully, though.It  should  be difficult to change your focus at any time. If it were easy, you weren’t focused enough. If you choose to make a change, just make sure that everyone makes that change and is aligned with the same, unified goal. Don’t split your forces, it’ll end in your defeat. Why fight with one arm tied behind your back? Commit everyone and everything to your goal and try to minimize changes to that goal. Success is elusive enough, why compete with yourself by losing focus? Concentrate all you energy and time on your goal and, like any  consolidated, focused military effort,  you’ll optimize your chances for success.Disclaimer: I am not now nor have I ever been a military strategist. Additionally, although I’ve spent many years of my career creating, refining and attempting to lead others in the execution of business strategy, I’m sure that some (like ly, those closest to me) would also question  my abilities as a business strategist. Indirect Approaches Classic, gentlemanly military strategy called for opposing forces to line up in a field opposite one another, all participants in plain site, and then to wreak havoc on each other.This type of  direct, frontal assault is rarely used any more unless one force has an overwhelming superiority over the other. Even then, it doesn’t happen very often and when it does, it’s not without many surprises and casualties. Military leaders that historically adopted  less directly confrontational strategies or even complete indirect strategies soon found great success even when they were confronted by an enemy with superior forces. So, what does it mean to have an  indirect  strategy? In military terms, indirect strategy involves attacking an enemy on his flanks (sides) or rear – basically, where he oesn’t expect it. Hannibal, the Carthaginian military comm ander  who marched his army over the Pyrenees and Alps to attack the Roman Empire, kept the Roman army at bay (and often in retreat) on their own soil for more than a decade using indirect strategies. Among Hannibal’s many successful military strategies, he became known  for engaging the enemy with weak troops in the center of his formation and two hidden sets of strong troops that wrapped around the sides of the opposing force (flanking them), squeezing them from the sides and, sometimes the rear.While the Romans   thought they were successfully attacking the weaker force in the center, they lost the battle as they were crushed from the sides. This indirect approach took the enemy by surprise and attacked it where it was weakest. Even the mighty Roman armies could not remove Hannibal from the Empire. That is, until they started using indirect approaches themselves. Like Hannibal did in so many major battles,  Douglas MacArthur  employed a master-stroke of indirect strategy to keep the UN Forces in South Korea from being pushed off the Korean peninsula at the beginning of the Korean War.A few months after the war started, the South Korean and UN forces had been pushed to the south-eastern end of the Korean peninsula at Pusan Province. MacArthur proposed and executed an indirect attack behind the lines of the North Koreans, far north of Pusan, on Korea’s western shore. The amphibious attack surprised the North Koreans and cut the North Korean Army south of Inchon off from supplies and personnel, ultimately causing the collapse of the North Korean forces in southern Korea. As with military strategy, direct, frontal attacks against other companies in business rarely succeed.Unless your company is by far the largest in its business or has a strongly dominant sales channel, any direct attack against your competition is likely to fail. The old adage is that you need a 10:1 superiority over your competition to beat them head-to-head. My view i s that unless you’re a Microsoft (fill in your favorite large company in your favorite market here – it used to be IBM for all examples), and, in Microsoft’s case, really only in operating systems and Office-like applications, it’s probably best to focus on indirect approaches when taking on competition.So, rather than competing on features or performance, change the ground rules. Compete on price, distribution model, ease-of-use, accessibility, partnerships, integration, switching cost or similar. An example of this near and dear to my heart is the emergence of my first successful company, Viewlogic Systems (acquired by Synopsys, in 1997). One of  the co-founders  of Viewlogic was Sal Carcia, who initially led marketing and sales for the company. Sal was (and I’m sure still is) a brilliant marketing guy who had an innate sense for market dynamics and saw holes (read: opportunities)  in the market very clearly and accurately.In 1984, when we founded Viewlogic,  EDA tools (software tools for Electronic Design Automation – electronics CAD tools) were turnkey systems bundled with  big hardware. These systems were very expensive and most companies could only afford to buy one seat (one bundled unit) for every 10 to 20 engineers they employed. A ratio guaranteed to limit the productivity of the entire engineering group. Sal’s idea, which sounds so basic now, but keep in mind that PCs were new in 1981 and still pretty limited in 1984, was to bundle a complete  EDA system with a PC for $10,000 per seat. About one tenth of what a competitor’s system sold for. 10K wasn’t just a random, lower figure, it was what Sal saw as the maximum we could charge without requiring the engineering manager (the customer) to get sign-off from upper management for the purchase. So, as a result of Sal’s strategy, Viewlogic sold to the engineering manager who made more local and faster decisions while our co mpetition was selling to big corporate organizations with long sales cycle. Also, at $10K/seat. Engineering managers could equip  each their of engineers with the  EDA  tools they needed, resulting in more productive groups that then promoted the tools to the rest of the organization.In the end, most of Viewlogic’s tools were not revolutionary (some features were, of course, and we figured out how to mash a whole lotta functionality into 640KB of memory), but the packaging was a breakthrough, helping us reach a market previously unserved. As an added bonus, because of the anchor of hardware that the competition hauled with it, it couldn’t come down to fight with us in our space until it rewrote most of its software to likewise run on a PC. So, in the end, Viewlogic never tried to win by bettering the competition at what they were good at.It took an indirect strategy of fighting the competition where it was weak and unprepared and unable to defend itself. This ind irect approach was the key to Viewlogic’s initial success. Employing indirect strategies doesn’t mean that you need to change your end goal. It simply means that you need to change the way you approach the battle to achieve it. It’s much better to avoid being perceived as a threat to the big guys in the market or to  escape their attention all together than it is to pound your chest and take them on head-to-head. They’re bigger, stronger, have more resources and more customers.For the most part, they don’t need to be better than you to kick your ass. Let your ego go; be smart; attack at the intersection of where your competition is weak and customers perceive value. It’s not only about  having a better  product  or service, it’s about the whole package – support, customer satisfaction, distribution, PR . . . everything. Direct strategies usually fail in business as they do in their military application. Don’t bec ome another bump in the road for your competition, use an indirect approach to catch them off-guard and unprepared to respond to your threat. Next up . . .Intelligence. Intelligence Among Webster’s definitions for intelligence, two primary ones directly apply to both military and business matters: 1) you need to be smart or, at least, be able to think and, 2)  you need to have  knowledge of what the enemy/competition knows and thinks. Main Entry:  inA ·telA ·liA ·gence Pronunciation: in-’te-l&-j&n(t)s Function:  noun Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Latinintelligentia,  from  intelligent-, intelligens  intelligent †¢ The ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations;  also  :  the skilled use of reason.The ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one’s environment or to think abstractly as measured by objective criteria. †¢ Information concerning an enemy or possible enemy or an are a;  also  :  an agency engaged in obtaining such information. In military engagements, intelligence is often more important than the size of the force, how well it’s armed and who it is led by. A perfect example of this is in the military strategies employed by  Mao Zedong  as he led the Red Army in its 20+ year rebellion against theKuomintang  government in China.After the start of the rebellion, the Red Army, for the most part, got it’s butt kicked whenever and where-ever it engaged the vastly superior government army forces. For the most part, the Red Army was out-manned, had many fewer weapons and was isolated into parts of the country that made it difficult to get tactical advantage in widespread warfare. Recognizing  his deficiencies, Mao turned to strategies that involved actively collecting intelligence about his opponent. He had spies throughout the government who gathered information about their plans and actions.Perhaps even more importantly, h e designated soldiers dressed in civilian clothing to be stationed throughout the country to monitor the movement of the government’s troops and supplies. By gathering this information and extracting trends from it, he learned what his opponent was doing and, over time, understood what type of moves that they made in response to his own. Ultimately, having this knowledge, Mao was able to gain the upper hand and to ultimately defeat the government troops, exiling Chiang Kai-Shek to Taiwan in 1949.Prior to World War II, while most of the rest of the world was relatively ignorant to the value of keeping secrets, well . . . secret, the Germans invested heavily in cryptography. The efforts of the German government and military agencies to make sure that communications were secure resulted in the adoption of  the  Enigma Cipher machine  Ã¢â‚¬â€œ an electro-mechanical device that encoded and decoded messages. The German Navy, in particular, relied heavily on the secrecy of the ir communications and had the most complex Enigma machines and processes surrounding them.It took years for Germany’s enemies to break the Enigma. The huge value  in breaking the code was well understood, though, and a concerted effort was mounted to break  to do so  as part of the strategy to defeat the Germans. At first the Polish made headway, then the British took over the main effort. Through the work of a huge number of scientists and mathematicians, mostly stationed at the famous  Bletchley Park  in England, and a stolen Enigma machine here and there, the Allies were able to read many of the top-secret messages being sent by the Germans.Using this information, the Allies were able to change their tactics and even much of their strategy in the battle of the Atlantic. Each action took on more significance with less effort. The knowledge of  what the enemy was going to do  let the Allies stay one step ahead and to focus their efforts on the singular end goal of winning battles, without having to spread their forces out too far. Now, I’m not suggesting that you engage in any kind of industrial espionage. Merely that knowing what your competition is up to is critical to your business or, at he very least, critical to how you run your business. Spies aren’t required. You just need to be aware. Your sales channel will be able to tell what’s going on (if it’s not a completely automated channel) and anyone that engages with your customers will discover what the competition is doing if they listen well. If you’re among the group of people that claims to have no competition – WAKE UP! Every business has at least one competitor, even if it’s the choice your customer has to keep doing what they’re doing.The infinitely low barriers to entry in virtually all product or service areas these days also guarantees that you’ll have more competitors in the near future if your target market ha s any real value. There’s simply no excuse for not knowing what your current and emerging competition is up to. This knowledge not only helps you differentiate your product or service right out of the gate, but also helps you keep your costs lower because you waste less time with a more focused approach. Of course, no business that just focuses on what their competitors are doing is  going to be successful.True success can only come from using the other kind of intelligence – that which only comes  from using your head. In my experience (and I’m at least as guilty as anyone I’ve ever known) there are too-many knee-jerk reactions in business. Managers often make quick decisions  in a situation without extensive knowledge of what is really going on. In an environment where everything is moving fast, it’s a natural mistake to make. Additionally, the fear of the consequences of not answering a challenge or looking like one is in control often enc ourages half-baked reactions.Every manager needs to keep in mind the value of looking before they leap. Or, as I like to think about it – responding instead of reacting. The difference between responding and reacting is thinking – one involves it, the other doesn’t. I know, I know, this is where you’re saying to yourself: â€Å"I don’t have time for long, drawn-out planning sessions. My business is go, go, go and if I slow down, I’m dead. †Ã‚   In most cases, taking a step back, drawing some pictures on a white board, talking to a few people or getting together with your team to ponder the paths ahead only involves hours or perhaps a few days.Not  weeks and months. Of course, at times, it does take longer. In my experience, though, whatever it takes to make an informed (note that I say informed – not perfect or correct or even low-risk) decision on how to respond to the challenge that you face is worthwhile and will save you loads of time and energy later. Think about the situation, at least a little, then move. Don’t move slowly, but move deliberately. As with successful military campaigns, the more intelligence you have – both kinds – the more likely it is that you’ll set your  business on the best possible path to success.Increased knowledge of what  your competition is up to and, more importantly,  considered thought  put in to your overall strategy and to any  response  to  changes improves your likelihood of success while helping to reduce effort that might be wasted in areas unnecessary or even unrelated to the optimal path of the business Next up, the final installment in this series: Deception. Deception If you’re like me, you immediately question how  deception  can and should be applied to business.In a business context, the concept of deception seems almost immoral or, at least, against the rules – if not the legal ones, at least th e ones understood as part of business decorum, civility or fair play. Who wants to win by cheating, after all? There is little concern for  such concepts in modern warfare (historically, much of warfare was conducted under a code of ethics – aside from the Geneva Convention rules, no such code exists today), however,  where the goal is most often the physical destruction of the enemy. In battle, a commander’s trickery and deception can easily represent the difference between victory and death.There are few better examples of this than the campaigns of Confederate General  Thomas Jonathan â€Å"Stonewall† Jackson  and his army during the Civil War in the US. Stonewall Jackson is widely considered as one most gifted tactical commanders in US history. His motto: â€Å"Mystify, mislead and Surprise. † Early in the Civil War, during the infamous  Valley Campaign, Jackson found his Army outmanned, outgunned and often, surrounded. After an initial tact ical defeat in a relatively small battle, Jackson’s 17,000 troops soundly defeated the Union’s 60,000 man  Army of the Potomac.He accomplished this feat by constantly surprising the enemy, attacking its flanks, sneaking behind its lines and appearing like his forces were larger than they actually were. During the campaign, Jackson marched his troops almost 650 miles in 48 days to defeat and cause the retreat of a Union Army that outmanned him almost 4:1. Trickery and illusion were his key tactics in the Valley Campaign and he used them frequently in successive victories during the war and until his death in battle (from friendly fire) in 1863. Like Jackson before him,  Erwin Rommel  was a master of deception.Even though Rommel was primarily a tank commander – relatively easy to detect and slow-moving – he often got the upper hand on his enemies by sneaking his tanks through dense forests or via indirect routes. Rommel is  best known  for his suc cess during WWII’s  North African Campaign  where he consistently defeated the better armed and staffed British Army. His understanding of how the British tank command worked led him to implement the most important tactic to his success during the campaign – making the British believe that his forces were much greater than they were.This, in turn, caused the  British  to split their forces, leaving many tanks in reserve (they conservatively never wanted to risk  all  their tanks in battle) and gave Rommel’s smaller force a far better chance at success. The  deception turned out to be the key that initiated his victories. Rommel implemented this by making his tanks appear to be in locations where they were not. He would frequently have trucks drive in circles throughout the day in one area. The clouds of dust they kicked up would be so extreme that the British assumed that there were huge tank convoys preparing to entrench themselves for battle at t hat location.In the mean time, Rommel, would move his active tank columns at night into flanking positions around the British. Rommel’s ability to deceive the British let his smaller and weaker force win battles for years in the desert. In a business world that thrives on communication and rewards the speed and quantity of information available, it’s difficult to see how deception might be used  in a strategy leading to success. After all, anything you do to mislead your competition might mislead your customer as well.There are  a few  uses of deception, however, that are commonly used and are valuable tools in the business strategy quiver: †¢ Press releases as a defensive tool:   Most often successfully employed by medium to large companies, a me-too press release announcing that your company has or will have some product, feature or service that your competitor just launched can effectively slow your competition’s sales process down until you actu ally have it. This is especially effective if you are already the perceived market leader in that particular segment.Switching costs are, generally, high and current customers want to believe that you’ll continue to deliver the best stuff. Of course, this won’t hold your competition off forever, but it will allow you a bit of time to catch up. †¢ Appearing bigger than you are as an offensive tool:   Larger companies often prefer to purchase from established vendors. Of course, this depends on what you are selling and how much it costs, but it is generally true for anything even remotely mission critical or costing a lot.Giving the world the impression that your company is larger or better established than you are can only help you in this environment. This can be done through advertising – small companies generally do little-to-none, big companies do a lot; large, highly visible  displays at trade shows; success stories from large customers; focusing on implementation instead of just functions or features; and so forth. †¢ Taking advantage of the reactionary nature of your competition:   Companies tend to react without thinking instead of responding in a thoughtful, considered way.You can take advantage of this by misleading your competition, when appropriate, in an effort to waste their time or defocus them. In the most basic case, you can entice them to spend energy in areas that are outside your main focus, giving you more lead time when you introduce your own new product or service. Keep in mind that when you implement strategies like this, you don’t get a bye on precise execution. You still have to execute well – if you can’t execute your company’s strategy better than your competition can execute on the same strategy, no amount of deception will help you.Certainly, deception in the form of outright lying and cheating is a dead-end strategy. It might work out in the short term, but itâ€℠¢s going to get you in trouble in the long term. Defined a bit softer, though, as a method for manipulating or spinning reality (I know, I’m cutting this a bit thin, but you get the idea), it is almost as powerful a tool in business as it is in warfare and is one that can be employed to increase your opportunities for success.

Case Study of Gestalt Play Therapy Essay - 3194 Words

Gestalt therapy is a type of therapy used to deepen our awareness of ourselves. According to O’Connor and Braverman, (2009) â€Å"Gestalt implies wholeness. Gestalt can also be considered as the essence, or shape of a complete form. A theoretical opposite of structuralism, the entity constitutes more than the sum of its parts. Gestalt therapy is comprised of a complex psychological system that stresses the development of client self-awareness and personal responsibility through a process-oriented, experiential and phenomenological modality that addresses the totality of an individual in terms of senses, body, emotions and intellect.† In an active process, suppressed feelings can be explored in depth and through understanding of the how†¦show more content†¦According to Blom, (2006) â€Å"The integration of polarities is a prerequisite for a dynamic and healthy life process.† Therefore, all techniques and modalities from gestalt theory focus on dir ect experience and experimentation. From this perspective, direct experience is the only way that learning can take place. The therapist should avoid counseling and interpretation during therapy and focus on creating an atmosphere where the client can discover what is important and they can react to the information as it is important to them. The therapist is primarily a catalyst in the process of therapy. Oaklander (1994) posits that any interpretation by the therapist must be verified with the child. The primary aim of the gestalt play therapist is to help children become aware of their unique process. The focus is on the experience of the process, what children do and how they do it, which they are, what they feel and what they want. Acceptance of this leads to the realization that they can personally make choices and experiment with new behavior. Gestalt play therapy focuses on children’s direct experience in the here and now. The therapist’s goal is to facilitate the client’s awareness of their process. (Corey, 2000) In working through negative, the child can realize negative behavior patterns that may have become ingrained deeply beneath their awareness andShow MoreRelatedThe Theory, Existential And Adlerian1742 Words   |  7 PagesThis case study illustrates Ruth being the client. This provides background information about Ruth includes the presenting problem, the history of presenting problem and the psychosocial history. The key concepts, the therapeutic process, the therapeutic relationship, therapist function and roll comes from the three theories Gestalt, Existential and Adlerian. The case identifies and describe goals that would be established for Ruth using all three theories. This case study applies detailed techniquesRead MoreHumor in Gestalt Psychotherapy: Two Article Reviews2723 Words   |  11 Pagesboth international journals as humour). I will examine humor in the first article as a construct. 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