Professor Minerva Mcgonagall: An Ideal Principled Leader

Every leader starts off with a focus. Whether their ambition is political aspirations or academic, they have ideals that drive their actions forward. With people like Nelson Mandela, Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. it was to put an end to segregation, with Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and Alexander the Great it was to conquer as many lands as possible. Having ideals is what creates a leader but it does not always make them a principled leader. In the Harry Potter book series, there are many examples of leaders. Most of them are flawed but out of all of them there is only one that fits the ideal principled leader model, Professor Minerva McGonagall.

Profile of a Principled Leader An Ideal Principled Leader makes difficult choices,

Her name is Dolores Umbridge and her goal was to undermine the current staff at the school to gain control. As a teacher, Professor McGonagall could have lost her job if she stepped out of line during Umbridge’s reign. This gives her the difficult choice of choosing between the job she has had for almost four decades or standing up for what is right (Rowling, 2003). In this instance, she shows her integrity by figuring out a way to rebel while still doing everything she can to protect her students. Simply leaving the school would leave her students vulnerable and openly fighting back would get her fired and have the same effect. Instead she was strategic and rebelled behind the scenes. She told the school ghost how to unscrew the chandelier so it would fall (Rowling, 2003). McGonagall also refused to handle situations and would call Umbridge at every turn to handle it so Umbridge was always putting out fires and wearing herself thin (Rowling, 2003). This displayed McGonagall’s leadership because she taught her students how to stick to their values, fight for what they believe in and think their actions

An example of experience traits would be the follower’s upbringing and life experience (Rowe & Guerrero, 2016). If an employee grew up on a farm with chores, responsibility and manual labor, they would have a very different mindset than an employee that did not have to work or were given money by their parents. Teachable qualities on the other hand include reflection, code of morals and communication because these are things that can be altered with the right leadership and guidance (Rowe & Guerrero, 2016). The most efficient consultation method would first be to ask current upper management who they saw had potential in middle management. Then the next step would be to have the applicants fill out a team leadership quiz and leadership ethics questionnaire (Northouse, 2016). This would be useful because they both focus on the requirements of being a principled leader and would give the upper management more of an ideal on the potential of their candidates. The final step would be for the higher employees to mentor the lower employees. They would do this by coaching them how to have integrity, stick to areas they know and be culpable to any mistakes they may make (Rowe & Guerrero,