The focus of our paper initially was self-leadership. However, after researching that topic we found it to be much too vague and simply not interesting. We decided to pick a much more specific topic pertaining to leadership that would allow us to learn on our own. After some research we found an interesting topic entitled "tips from the top." The title simply indicates that we will look at leadership styles of three top CEOs of major companies and elaborate on what makes them effective and also incorporate theories taught in class.
The self-directed learning that our group wanted to focus on deals with real world examples of leadership. We wanted to see the way three CEOs lead their company into the future (by vicariously learning from examples in the real world). While observing their individual styles, we will elaborate on leadership theories taught in class with life examples, but also mention possible underlying characteristics that helped these people rise to the top. The three CEOs that we will look at are Carly Fiorina of Hewlett-Packard Co., Michael Dell of Dell Computers, and August Busch III of Anheuser Busch Co. All of these CEOs are similar in their styles, but yet they are all very different. This led us to compare and contrast these people through looking at how their leadership styles match the industry in which they are in.
Our goal of learning about each CEO's real-life leadership skills will focus primarily on the material that we covered in class, at times supporting or contradicting these theories with the three real world examples. We will also strive to learn more information about leadership that was not explicitly stated in class discussion.
Learning Strategies.
Our strategy was to look at as many information rich articles, reports, journals and websites about our topic and to tie them back to class in order to learn as much as possible. From the very beginning we gathered data on leadership and leadership by example that helped us figure out what we wanted to focus on.