Leadership Behavior And Ability Of Barack Obama In Project Management

Biography of Barack Obama

Barack Hussain Obama is an American politician, member of Democratic party and first African American who served as the 44^th President of the United States of America. He was born in Hawaii and brought up in the State of Washington. From Columbian University he was graduated and worked in Chicago as community organizer. In 1988 he registered in Harvard Law School and became civil rights attorney as well as professor. He taught constitutional law in Chicago University and represented in the Illinois Senate for three times. In 2009 he won Noble Peace Prize and signed many landmark bills during his span (Dyson, 2016).

As mentioned by Ladkin (2017), the leadership style of Barack Obama is transformational. In all his projects, he has reflected different transformation leadership traits effectively. He has been a leader in a true sense as despite becoming the president he continued to help the weak communities of city of Chicago and home state Illinois which made him stateman and a leader of the highest reputation in the world. This particular leader has six most important traits in himself which can be mainly seen in the transactional leaders. First is the conviction along with perveance that creates a bond of trust among the leader and his followers. As mentioned by Heith (2015) the second is the bringing change attitude that instigated the common people of America to believe the process. Third is the togetherness that eliminates the self-interest element of the leader. Like other transformational leaders, Obama also taken various risks to reach the goals which is the fourth trait of his leadership style. Fifthly, he is a great orator and communicate his welfare initiatives among the population quote efficiently. Finally, as the trait of transformational leader, he is never satisfied with his own work and strive for doing better in every aspect of his service (Hill, 2017).

Barack Obama came into power after the Bush administration and took the advantage of his popularity. Despite he always supported the concerns of the minority rights in the society who were disadvantaged or considered to be the lower income group, he successfully gained the support of the middle-class people also. The deep-seated anger against the politics of the country in the mind of the people of the US was tactfully used by Obama (Wasike, B. (2017). This intelligent use of opportunities is the style of the transformational leader. He used his background and his message that is the audacity of hope along with the generational change in the racial attitudes for positioning himself to be the most acceptable person for being the real change in the situation of the country. His behavior as a transformational leader had been added to the behaviors of the charismatic leaders. Therefore, the effectiveness of his leadership styles has effectively helped him to execute all the projects in the country he had initiated.

The campaign slogan in the year 2008 by Obama was bringing the change to believe which gave birth of his belief and conviction (Dyson, 2016). These two elements of his leadership quality, conviction and perseverance have been originated from the belief of this leader that if anyone is following the right path, one can easily influence others and get his message across. According to Wasike (2017), this is how he took stands in different complicated issues but he proved his valid points and successfully convinced everyone to follow him. As he is a charismatic leader, he knows the job of influencing other s very well and followed logical method to gain support of the people. Thus, he could effectively applied changes without much criticism. His leadership behavior invokes permanent changes in the people and manipulated them to embrace the vision of the leader. He brought changes in the domestic and foreign affairs of the country that was largely supported by the people of his country.

Style of leadership

Another leadership behavior of Obama is related with his exceptional art of communication (Heith, 2015). This skill is not related to become great speaker but it is his skill of listening, reading and writing skills that changed the face of his country to the world politics. He knows how to convey his own messages to others regardless of their race, age, gender and tackle their queries to support his own vision. His success in the election campaign and the campaigns of his projects were purely based on the classic case of communicating virtually with all the common people of the country and gain their confidence to bring the change in very aspect of his administration.

After becoming the president of the US, Obama started to keep all the promises that he had given to his countrymen. This project Obamacare was one of the most important healthcare reforms in the United States. This is based on The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that became a law by Obama (Blank & Burau, 2013). As the aim of his initiative was to being changes in the country in a positive manner, he modified some previous health policies of the country and brought the deprived people under the healthcare system provided by the government. He intelligently did not disturb the basic structure of the act but brought partial changes in the individual insurance markets and proved it to be the cost saving drive. As pointed out by Fisher et al. (2012), this project by Obama mainly brought the major changes by including newer spending and finding through new types of taxes and curtailing Medicare advantages and rates. As mentioned before, the leadership style of Obama aimed to follow the right path so that the people can be attracted more. This project of Obama reduced health care cost and improved the quality. It slowed down overall healthcare expenses and reduced the cost of insurance premiums for the disadvantaged people of the country.

The impact of Obama’s leadership traits was effectively reflected on the success of this project. His behavior of gaining trust from his followers increased through his engaging communication style. This project is the example of the welfare mentality of the leaders as through this Obama tried to make connections with his countrymen and motivated to follow him. The project marks the classic trait of reaching the lower part of the society as he tried to appeal the majority of population. The commitment he had shared in his election campaign, through this project he showed initiative to impediment them and make connection with the majority (Lewis et al., 2013). Obama as a leader has portrayed unmatchable intelligence, authority and authenticity through this action. As an effective project leader, he has taken care of all, the stakeholders associated with this particular project.

All of the actions of Obama however have been criticized by the opposition but they failed to curb the effort of this project by referring this to be a disaster but Obama like a true transformational leader took risks for the wellbeing of is people. As pointed put by Lewis et al. (2013), along with the opposite party, the American Nurses Association, Catholic Health Association of the United States and American Psychiatric Association criticized this project for uncovering some special population from the previous health care programs. However, Obama as an efficient leader continued his duty and reached the goal ultimately.

Conclusion: 

Therefore, it can be concluded that Obama is an efficient leader in the politics of the world who not only took care of the party intertest but worked to support the wellbeing of the people of America during his period of service. He is a transformational leader who gained the support of majority of Americans for his exceptional leadership capabilities. He is a visionary, communicators, risk taker and he ultimate decision maker who always tried to follow the right path. His ability to make decisions to complete his commitments before election and welfare mentality brought immense popularity for him. This is not only limited to the country only but he had admirers across the globe. He represented the first Afro-American president in the history of America.

References: 

Blank, R. H., & Burau, V. (2013). Comparative health policy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Dyson, M. E. (2016). The Black presidency: Barack Obama and the politics of race in America. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Fisher, E. S., Shortell, S. M., Kreindler, S. A., Van Citters, A. D., & Larson, B. K. (2012). A framework for evaluating the formation, implementation, and performance of accountable care organizations. Health affairs, 31(11), 2368-2378.

Heith, D. J. (2015). Presidential Road Show: Public Leadership in an Era of Party Polarization and Media Fragmentation. Routledge.

Hill, T. E. (2017). Sanitizing the Struggle: Barack Obama, Selma, and Civil Rights Memory. Communication Quarterly, 65(3), 354-376.

Ladkin, D. (2017). Aesthetics of leadership: the example of Barack Obama. The Business & Management Collection.

Lewis, V. A., Colla, C. H., Carluzzo, K. L., Kler, S. E., & Fisher, E. S. (2013). Accountable care organizations in the United States: market and demographic factors associated with formation. Health services research, 48(6pt1), 1840-1858.

McGinnis, J. M., Stuckhardt, L., Saunders, R., & Smith, M. (Eds.). (2013). Best care at lower cost: the path to continuously learning health care in America. National Academies Press.

Wasike, B. (2017). Charismatic rhetoric, integrative complexity and the US Presidency: An analysis of the State of the Union Address (SOTU) from George Washington to Barack Obama. The Leadership Quarterly, 28(6), 812-826.