PAD515: Leadership and Conflict Resolution
Professor Timothy Smith
May 17, 2015

Public Leader Overview
Leadership is defined by Richard Daft as an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend real changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes. High performance teams excel because their shared purpose, mission, and or goals are all aligned. Daft states that “leadership involves influence, it occurs among people, those people intentionally desire significant changes, and the changes reflect purposes shared by leaders and followers. Many leaders possess characteristics and or traits that researchers believe affect their leadership impact (Daft. 2011). The two leadership theories that would be explored in this paper are democratic and autocratic leadership theories. An autocratic leader centralizes his authority, he controls rewards and his power is based in his position. A democratic leader in turns delegates authority encourages participation and trusts his subordinates for the completion of tasks.
Michelle Obama has been the insatiable supporter of Barack Obama behind the scenes. She juggles between being the wife of U.S. president Barack Obama, mother of two, the 44th first lady of the states, lawyer, community activist and social rights advocate. Michelle sees part of her leadership role as being a good example to others across the country and that is how she continues to inspire her fellow American citizens as well the wider world. What makes Michelle a strong leader? She has always held a high level of self-respect and respect for others, seen through her use of words such as decency, integrity, dignity and pride in her speeches. This also explains why despite her political stance as a Democrat, she recognizes and respects the different opinions of the Republicans. Not only does she serve as a role model to young people, particularly young African American women, she also reaches out communities beyond, evident through her commitment to ending childhood obesity and supporting military families. Her leadership style is that of a democratic leader, she engages people in her team and seeks consensus. As a public leader, her style of leadership brings people together to solve social problems for the greater good and for the benefit of all.
Another well-known leader is former President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt whose face became an addition to Mount Rushmore for his leadership contributions. Roosevelt was not just the President, but an outstanding military leader still mentioned and highly regarded today. Throughout his tenure in holding offices prior to the Presidency as New York City Police Chief, Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Vice-President of the United States; which contributed to his authoritative nature. President Roosevelt, though authoritative was regarded as someone with strong commanding presence, also for his ability to make quick decisions. However, his authoritative nature was not an exploitative, abusive and/or combative as is usually thought of when mentioning autocratic leadership theory. Roosevelt’s personal character and well natured traits enabled him to inspire people and make them more willing to follow, as evident in his speech at the Battle of San Juan Hill. He had futuristic goals for the nation he was leading which inspired others. He implemented plans to have the United States recognized as a world power (Strock. 2014).
Public Leader Comparison and Contrast
The Public Leader for instance can be best described by two leadership theories. First, Behavioral leadership theories, is that which describes individuals who by their behavior and actions attract other to follow their lead. Depending on their leadership style, such leaders may or not possess leadership qualities that may manifest by their external behaviors and can affect the productivity of others. The inability of research to solely define effective