Is Strong Leadership Good

Is strong leadership good?

Leadership is a term that gets tossed around promiscuously almost every time a politician, business magnate or football manager speaks on what is required to get results. So what is leadership? Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. Strong leadership is when you are able to motivate this group of people well and be able to achieve the goal. Is strong leadership good? May look simple and obvious now, but strong leadership is not always a good thing.

There are strong leaders all around the world, from the United States’ President Obama and Martin Luther King to Burma’s dictator General Than Shwe, England’s Margaret Thatcher to Cuba’s Fidel Castro. All these are examples of strong leaders but this does not necessarily make them ‘good’. Put aside politicians and there are more examples of strong leaders, in sports there are top managers such as Sir Alex Ferguson (Manager of Manchester United) and even a gang leader can be considered as strong leader (but with a bad character). There are leaders in almost all aspects of life.

In this essay I am going to try to show you that strong leadership is good, but it can also be used for less then good reasons.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American pastor, activist and a leader in the American – African civil rights movement.   His main aim was to ensure improvements on civil rights in America. He is famous for his ‘I have a Dream’ speech in 1963 and became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.   In a time where racism was everywhere and the norm, it required a person with a tremendous amount of courage to come up and try to put an end to it all, especially with the threat of death from white supremacists all around the country, Martin Luther King, Jr. may have been assassinated 1968 but he has still...