Leadership: Professor Warren G. Murdoch's Leadership

Leadership

Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or a set of goals. Many scholars have given different definitions of leadership: Leaders are people who do the right thing; managers are people who do things right (Professor Warren G. Bennis), Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it (Dwight D. Eisenhower).

While there is no perfect definition for leadership, the word "leadership" can bring to mind a variety of images (Mindtools, articles, newLDR_41). For example:

• A political leader, pursuing a passionate, personal cause.

• An explorer, cutting a path through the jungle for the rest of his group to follow.

• An executive, developing her

According to one of his early biographers, Murdoch was a "a normal, red-blooded college student who had many friends, chased girls, went on the usual drinking binges, engaged in slapdash horseplay, tried at sports and never had enough money, no doubt due to his gambling." Murdoch's fun-loving youthful ways came to an abrupt end when his father suddenly passed away in 1952, leaving his son the owner of his Adelaide newspapers, the News and the Sunday Mail. After preparing himself with a brief apprenticeship under Lord Beaverbrook at the Daily Express in London, in 1953, a 22-year-old Murdoch returned to Australia to take up the reins of his father's papers.

Leadership Ethos- Murdoch's leadership style played an important role in News Corp's overall success. He had taken the company where it is now but at the same time he had lost the opportunity to create commitment among his employees sharing his vision and engaging them in the process. "For the leader who wishes to increase legitimate power, a long term commitment is required. Trust in relationships, which is the foundation of legitimate power, cannot be fabricated ad hoc." (Covey, 1999