Gandhi's Leadership Styles

For this paper I want to characterize Gandhi’s leadership styles, analyze them and try to put into context the relevance of his leadership.

In the movie, the application of his leadership was social. Gandhi wanted to unite India towards a democracy and most importantly towards freedom. At the end, he achieves this goal and he was the main trigger for the successful completion of this goal.

I believe that Gandhi was a true leader, referring to the class definition of leader. Gandhi had a clear path and direction which was shared by a number of countrymen, he managed his performance and also measured it by goals, he certainly developed capabilities that helped him reach for his goal; he strongly relied upon his team or group of people and he clearly created values amongst the people that followed him demonstrating his own values.

He made his leadership by peaceful means and demonstrated to the entire world that he lived by his own set of values, consequently gaining the respect of his people.

In the movie we appreciated that he developed his leadership throughout the years. At the beginning he was not such a good leader, he was very intelligent but he did not possessed clear leadership attributes. He was able to mobilize people through charisma and his leadership developed and changed with experience. He was not good at handling men. An example of this situation could be when he was in the train; he demonstrated that he was not yet prepared to deal with the injustices of people towards him, when they asked him to move to second class.

Another example from the movie is when Gandhi was asked by whites to step off the sidewalk. He left his pride aside and thought in the long run rather than just acting in the short run.

He was at first committed to his ideas but passive in the way he depended upon other people; in the movie we saw that he had to be convinced over and over about his leadership capabilities.

For me a very important aspect about his leadership was that he transmitted the risk involved in his actions to all his colleagues and followers.

In my perspective Gandhi’s leadership style was the combination of coercive and authoritative leader. He used these combinations not only to work toward reform and ultimately removal of British rule in India, but also in many conflict situations between Indians only.

The clearest example of coercive style was ...

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...ce his best skills and focus them in one or two styles not in the six.

In a business context, the movie showed me that Gandhi’s leadership styles can be applied to a corporation by involving in the business process all the layers of employees to a common result. Make all employees aware that their contribution is essential to the success of the company and most importantly make them believe so. This movie is an excellent example on how a great leader must communicate efficiently with its employees in order to get results even if sometimes the leader only wants people to follow without hesitation and based on trust and other situations were you can be authoritative an get followers involved in the decisions.

Gandhi, through this movie, showed me that a great leader has to be intelligent enough to be productive and profitable using the tools or resources available instead of wasting time thinking “why” they do not have something specific; a good leader makes the best out of an awkward situation and connects everyone towards the organization goals.

An effective leader adapts changes and communicates his vision to his followers until the followers believe in that vision as their own