Strategic Leadership always refers to the potential of the manager or the leader who can express the strategic vision for the firm or country depending on the leadership the leader can follow (Palladan, Abdulkadir, & Chong, 2016). A leader is the person who can motivate people and influence people for their betterment and for acquiring the vision he has for the firm or for anything else. Vladimir Putin was a former politician and has been working as a leader since then. In the year 2012, he was elected as the President of Russia and also previously held the similar position from 2000 to 2008. Putin’s leadership has lots of cracks filled with the contradictions and due to these contradictions, different evaluations of his presidency are probable. This report studies about the leadership of Putin and the struggles he went through (Fish, 2017).
The president of Russia and a well known leader was born in the year 1952 in St. Petersburg. He graduated from the Leningrad University (Grachev, 2006). He started his career as the intelligence officer in 1975. From then, there was no stopping and he rose after that. From becoming the director or FSB to joining the former President Yeltsin in 1998, his traits have been famous within the people of Russia and the world (Roberts, 2017). He was not just the president of Russia but also the President of the largest country on Planet. From his behaviors of managing the biggest country in which 70% of the total exports of the country comes from energy sources and minerals, his aim was to send only one message to the people of the world. That he just want to exhibit power. Leadership in politics stands out and it is actually one of the toughest type of leadership there is. At the time of entry when there was the rise of the presidential ship of Putin, Russia was quite ready for changing and bringing a new leader for the betterment of the country and fight with the corruption. Putin started the presidency in 2000 and gave the country the strength via making the mark in the whole country.
By watching out for the traits and the behavior of Putin, it can clearly be said that he was born to be a leader. The leadership traits that Putin possess can be seen since his childhood times. For example: He came from a poor family in which his siblings just could not survive of hunger but he did. Since Putin had nothing to lose, he got the motivation since his childhood days only. He also developed core traits while the time of KGB training he was doing and then as a civil law major in the university. He also mastered the communication skills in foreign languages by learning them as fast as he could and to communicate with the huge number of people at the same time. The traits and the qualities which he gained at the time of his training and education became the successful factors for him and helped him in his leadership style. Due to such factors, he became dominant and had controlling traits.
Putin as a leader is really dominant who believes in having a very strong vision and who can easily control his citizens and provide them a good future and strong Soviet Union. His leadership clearly defines the power his possesses and the influence he has on his people or followers. However, he is a person who believes in communism and he believes that he formed a communism by mixing the structure of Russia in a good way. He is also recognized for his problem solving skills like Chechen issue and economic growth (Carnaghan, 2012).
Putin’s behavior can easily fall into a very strict and task oriented person who is driven by his vision and the ideology he possess. The behavior always influences the management and the leadership style and also decision making. Putin always goes with the rational procedures as compared to the emotional decisions. From the behavior of Putin, it can be realized that he is a perfectionist and is a man of action (Sakwa, 2008). He proved his behavior via setting the limit of his influence on the Russian Companies, renewing tax laws and decreasing power of government which is corrupt. He is a very task and outcome oriented person. He is also a person who is very particular about his morals and judgments on his followers as well as on himself. He always expects professional behavior from the people who surround him. Hence, this makes him an authoritative leader. He has many times shown that he just cannot handle the behavior that is disloyal from the people who work with him.
The leadership which has the centralized power and decision making is known as the Autocratic Leadership style. Putin is actually the most famous example of this leadership style. It is just due to the obsessive disorder that he has and the control freak that he is (Chaguaceda, 2016). He always knew that he has a great vision for Russia and that will be achieved when he will take all this in his own hands (Fein, 2016). He has control over the toughest and the strongest decisions that he has to make in the government. With all such important decisions to take, he was not at all ready to take anyone’s opinion or insights. He is also known as the most influential, intimidating and feared leaders of all. With these fears, he was completely capable of making any kind of changes in the government (Stoner & Mcfaul, 2008). Though, he is an autocratic leader yet his visions were for a better future for Russia and he very well succeeded too in achieving his visions. This type of leadership is considered negative as there are people who do not support this type of leadership and within this leadership, people are usually found dissatisfied. On the contrary, for Putin this type of leadership worked as people around him and his followers believed in him (Michael, 2012).
Being a great leader, Putin definitely faced lots of challenges at the time of his leadership in making Russia a great visionary. Few of the most important challenges are as follows:
Above were the challenges which were related to the economy of Russia. Keeping aside these challenges which displayed the slowing of the economy, Putin also faced the challenges because of his weakening ability in protecting the core state interests and maintain the criticality of the power politics in the Nation. For the country like Russia which is always about to trace the way towards silver wedding with the political leader, Vladimir Putin expected fourth term would likely be filled with the challenges anyway. These challenges ranged from the modernizing of the economy, improving protection of citizens in social terms and tackling of the frictions with EU and US and also claiming the impetus of anti corruption protests (Wood, 2008).
In the year 2007, December, at Harvard University, the Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev appraised Putin by saying that he brought Russia out of the chaos and also said that he assured a place in the history. While at the same time, Gorbachev claimed that media suppressed and elections rules run counter to the democratic ideals he has promoted.
Again in the year 2011, there were protests done following the Russian elections, Gorbachev criticized Putin for a pending decision to look at the third term in presidential elections and at the same time advised Putin that he leaves politics (Hale, 2017).
Putin’s criticism is a widely spread matter. It is said that the Russian youth firms finance full network of governmental bloggers. Dalai Lama criticized foreign policy practices of Putin by claiming that it is responsible for isolating Russia from the whole other world. Organized Crime and Corruption project listed Putin as the person of the year in 2014. The firm recognized him as the person who promotes the most organized criminal activity (Bladel, 2008).
The most important challenge for Putin’s popularity came in the year 2000 August month. At that time he was criticized for mishandling of the Kursk Submarine Disaster. That particular criticism was huge for him. Then again the death of politkovskaya triggered criticism for Putin. He faced acquisitions that he had failed to save the nation’s independent media. Protesters criticized him and demanded the cancellation of election results. This and other government actions effected under Putin’s presidency have been criticized by many independent Russian media outlets and Western commentators as anti-democratic.
Putin has been criticized a lot of times in his career days. He still sometimes is criticized due to one or the other reasons. The major challenge that Putin went through is that the economy of the nation was going down. The economy went up while he was the serving leader of the nation but in recent days, the economy of Russia should become at least neutral and not go in loss.
Though, Vladimir is considered to be the autocratic leader, he has done a lot for Russia. Still there are things that he can change and can also change the fear that people have for him. If he changes his leadership style a little, he might be able to gain more people who believe in him. His imposing nature might be one of the reason that Russia’s economy and foreign affairs are not going as well as they need to be (News, 2018).
Conclusion
This report focuses on the leadership of the political leader names Vladimir Putin. Every leader has some qualities that are good and some that are bad. Putin has lots of qualities with which he can take Russia to greater heights and he became successful in that once. Yet there are some things in his traits and behavior due to which he is not able to completely stand on the vision that he has for Russia. This report analyses the behavior and traits of the leader as well as discuss the leadership style i.e. autocratic leadership style that he follows. He also has faced a few of the challenges in his career as a leader which are mentioned in this report. At last there are some of the criticisms that Putin has faced, are also discussed above. In the conclusion, it can be said that Putin has the capabilities and the traits that made him a great leader but he still needs to figure out some things which can make Russia greater again and reach new heights.
References
Bladel, J. V. (2008). The Dual Structure and Mentality of Vladimir Putin’s Power Coalition. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from file:///C:/Users/Nidhi%20Vyas_JPR/Downloads/http___webbrapp.ptn.foi.se_pdf_4a547a7b-b6a2-4f4d-82a5-3424deee5b70.pdf
Carnaghan, E. (2012). Popular Support for Democracy and Autocracy in Russia. Russian analytical digest , 117 (19).
Chaguaceda, A. (2016). The putin system: russian authoritarianism today. Revista Mexicana de Análisis Político y Administración Pública , 5 (1).
Fein, E. (2016). Vladimir Putin as a political leader . Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://www.europeadultdevelopment.org/uploads/6/5/0/0/6500090/fein_e.__2016_._vladimir_putin_as_a_political_leader.pdf
Fish, S. M. (2017). What is Putinism? Journal of Democracy , 28 (4).
Grachev, M. V. (2006). Russian Organizational Leadership: Lessons from the Globe Study. International Journal of Leadership Studies , 1 (2), 67-79 .
Hale, H. E. (2017). Russian Patronal Politics Beyond Putin. American Academy of Arts & Sciences , 146 (2).
Michael, G. (2012). The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin, by Gessen, Masha. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies , 25 (3).
News, G. (2018). Five Economic Challenges Facing Putin. Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://gulfnews.com/news/europe/russia/five-economic-challenges-facing-putin-1.2190822
Palladan, A. A., Abdulkadir, K. B., & Chong, Y. W. (2016). The Effect of Strategic Leadership, Organization Innovativeness, Information Technology Capability on Effective Strategy Implementation: A Study of Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria. Journal of Business and Management , 18 (9), 109-115.
Rivera, D. W., & Rivera, S. W. (2009). Yeltsin, Putin, and Clinton: Presidential Leadership and Russian Democratization in Comparative Perspective. Perspectives on Politics , 7 (3).
Roberts, K. (2017). Understanding Putin: The politics of identity and geopolitics in Russian foreign policy discourse. International Journal , 72 (1), 28-55.
Sakwa, R. (2008). Putin’s Leadership: Character and Consequences. Europe Aisa Studies , 60 (6), Putin’s Leadership: Character and Consequences.
Stoner, K., & Mcfaul, M. (2008). The Myth of the Authoritarian Model. How Putin’s Crackdown Holds Russia Back. Foreign affairs , 87 (1).
Wood, A. (2008). Putin and Russia in 2018–24. What Next? Retrieved September 26, 2018, from https://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/publications/research/2018-03-15-putin-russia-wood-final.pdf
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