Leadership Qualities - Ike: Countdown to D-Day
The film Ike: Countdown to D-Day showed many different leadership qualities through the portrayal of leaders in the allied forces leading up to D-Day. Each of these leaders combined expressed each of the ten qualities of leadership. They accomplished this not only through their words but through the actions they took. Dwight D. Eisenhower (Ike), the main portrayal in the film, like the others combined has expressed most of the qualities of leadership.
The first quality of leadership expressed by Eisenhower was that of vision. Vision by definition is the foresight a leader has to understand and know what needs require action. These needs can be good or bad but still a necessity (Manning, and Curtis, 2012). Eisenhower expressed the quality of vision when he said “I remember my first trip to Europe as a young man, and I felt blessed to be here, to see it, to touch the origins of my own country that I love so dearly. I hoped one day all young Americans will have the same opportunity” (Brown & Harmon, 2004). In this statement he is showing that he has a vision of Europe being great after the war like it was back when he was young. Another example of Eisenhower's visions can found in his follow up statements when he said, “So if some must die, it is in a worthy cause”. In this he knows that what he did as a leader had to be done even though there were sacrifices.
The next quality of leadership, ability, was not exhibited by Eisenhower. Ability is the quality of a leader to understand what is required to do so in the position (Manning, and Curtis, 2012). Early on in the film we find Churchill and Eisenhower discussing the possibility of a Supreme commander. In this discussion the two mean ...
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...r for speaking about the upcoming invasion in public. A man with no integrity might have let his old roommate go without recourse but Eisenhower exhibited the true qualities of a leader and set friendship aside to protect the men he commanded (Brown & Harmon, 2004).
In closing I find my knowledge of what a leader is being enhanced through the analysis of this film. It seems to me that the qualities of a leader are not as specific as I had previous thought them to be. A leader does not have to have all of the qualities to be a good leader nor do they have to exhibit the quality at all time. It is more of how they handle the situations posed to them and their consistency in doing so. It takes more than just a few qualities of a leader to be a great leader. It takes the right balance of humanity versus the vision like was excited by Eisenhower throughout the film.
General Eisenhower was both a situational leader and conceptual thinker who understood his organizations and knew how to influence his leaders. Eisenhower shaped his organizations’ environment by improving the command communication and transforming the culture within his organization. A situational leader understands what they are influencing and a conceptual thinker is able to shift focus based on the situation. Eisenhower was masterful at getting others to do what he wanted to accomplish. Eisenhower was an inexperience commander, but knew how to
As Warren Bennis, a scholar on the subject of leadership, once said, “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” This statement certainly holds true no matter what type of leader you look at. From cruel dictators such as Joseph Stalin, who fought and killed to stay in power, to peaceful leaders like Mohandas Gandhi, who used nonviolent tactics to emancipate India from the United Kingdom, to Jesus Christ, who started a religion and spread his message of love and forgiveness far across the globe, they all had a vision of how they wanted to change the world, for the better, or for the worse.
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Linden, R. M. (2006, November/December). Dwight Eisenhower: Portrait of a Collaborative Leader. Virginia Review, 6. Retrieved December 3, 2013
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