Visionary Leadership In Business: Biographies Of Australian CEOs And Their Perspectives

Biographies of Chief Executive Officers in Australia

Discuss about the Visionary Leadership in Business.

Leadership can be defined as the art of motivating people to do something they have never done or to go where they have never gone. Leadership can also be defined as the art of influencing people to do something you want to be done because the people you are influencing are willing and able to do it. Leadership can also be defined as influence on a person to do what the person does not want to do. It is like a power over a person because the person has some trust in the leader and will follow what the leader says because he or she believes that the leader has the right option in mind for him or her (Almog-Bareket, 2012). Leadership is an art because it is mostly inborn but it is during life experiences that a leader is forged to be the leader that he or she is. Leadership is different from management because in leadership the person makes his own decision and defines how the thing is to be done in management, however, the person has a set of rules in which he or she has to follow in order to make the work be done.

Leadership is also an art because it is a growing part of the leader, as the person continues leading others he or she gets different lessons and different views on how to tackle the problem in different ways. In this paper, leadership is described in a wider prospective including the how their work shapes the way the leader will influence the people he or she is leading in Australia (Blakeley, 2015). It will also analyze, compare and contrast the ways in which each leader is constructed as a leader by the accounts in their jobs, how leaders describe their conceptualization of leadership and how each leader conceptualizes success through their leadership. It will also evaluate how each leader’s practice of leadership impacts the success of their organization.

In the discussion below, three renowned chief executive officers have been used to try and relate how their different accounts have made them the leaders they are in their different work perspectives. These three are Samantha Mostyn, Khoa Do and Waleed Ally.

Samantha Mostyn

Samantha Mostyn has been a leader in most sectors in Australia and is a perfect example of a leader as she has had many experiences in different jobs she has handled as the dead of the departments. Mrs. Mostyn is currently the president of the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), she has held other positions such as Chief of the Defense Force’s Women’s Advisory Group, she was the first woman to be appointed AFL commission, she has also been the Deputy Chairlady of the Diversity council of Australia above many other positions she has held in Australia.

Leadership Construction by Accounts

Khao Do

Mr. Do is another leader in Australia and is a famous producer, screenwriter and also a film director. He has been nominated for the AFI Awards and also in the Academy Award. He is a community and a youth leader and worker. Mr. Do has now been appointed to the Audit and Finance Committee of the board Australian Directors Guild Award after he won the Best Direction in a Television Miniseries. Mr. Do has also had his share of leadership skills in his line of duty which is opposite from that of Mrs. Mostyn and Mr. Ally.

Walles Ally

Mr. Ally is also a very good leader in the Australian Council board. He has held different leadership positions such as, being the Ambassador for Possible Dreams International a practicing musician, this is an international company that deals with bringing up and mentoring good talent in the music industry in Australia. He is an award-winning broadcaster, author, academic and lecturer in politics at Monash University. Mr. Ally has also made his achievement in the different sectors that he has held the leadership positions and has different aspects he has learned over the years of service in the different institutions.

Therefore, from the three examples of the leaders in the different sectors of the job industry, we learn that leadership is a vast act that is seen in every person but the path that the leaders take is the path that shapes their leadership skills to the outside world. I decided to take the biography of the Chief Executive Officers in Australia because they give a clear overcast of most of the challenges faced by leaders and the perspective that leaders show in their line of duty and how they use the challenges faced to bring out better leadership skills to those who follow them.

Samantha Mostyn is regarded as one of the true leaders of the century because of her constant sustainability in whatever she did, Samantha always had one focus in mind and that is to keep the mirror up and be rigorous in each and every aspect she did. In her career’s a leader, Samantha has learned to become patient and take every person as the person is, she indicates that every person is a single being and you cannot try to put two different people to be one and the same (Watkins, Christensen, & Kraemer, 2015). However, Samantha also says that her leadership career has taught her that it is the difference in people that make the team strong. She portrays a picture that as you cannot make two people to be the same. One can use the different abilities of the different people to bring out a strong bond than the people themselves Samantha says that she like leading the group and not the people, because people can have their own agendas but the group has a common agenda that all the people must adhere to (Tajudin, Aziz, Abdullah, & Mahmood, 2016). Therefore, from Samantha’s views of how the different accounts of leadership in the organizations she has held, she has learned to take people as they are and only to try and change their perspective of thinking and not change the person as a whole.

Leadership Perspectives

Kehoe Do is known as the Great teacher in Australia, because he has done wonderful things that most did not expect a lecturer to do. Mr. Do has become a figure of hope and willfulness to the youth, especially in the Marlborough campus that he lectures. In his career as a leader both in class and on the stage as a film director, Mr. Do has learned to be patient with people and to be observant of the surrounding. Mr. Do indicates that at the time it is hard to be a leader because not every person will appreciate you. However, if one is calm and patient, the result just favors the right cause (Carson, 2001). This, he says he learned from the theater where most people will want to grasp something and move on with it quickly. Mr. Do also says that it is that patience that he learned from observing his surroundings that made him be successful because he would learn from other people’s mistakes and try not to make the mistake himself. He shows the student he teaches and the people he leads that it is better to wait and learn to do something that to rush into something that may cost you more than if you were patient (Chang, 2015).

Mr. Waleed Ally is also a good leader and his perspective of leadership is very interesting, in his aspect of leadership, Mr. Ally indicates that the best way to grow as a leader is to be the risk taker, he encourages people to take the first opportunity that comes their way but should be keen on what one is taking up that it does not bite him or her in the back at a later time. Mr. Ally says that during his career as a leader in the different sector, it is taking the first step before others that has made him successful in life (Almog-Bareket, 2012). He trusts his instincts to do something but before he follows his instincts, he scrutinizes the opportunities that he will get and then jumps into it then tries to modify his failure while in it.

Mrs. Samantha in most of her speeches indicates that leadership is not all about knowing it all, it is about knowing when one is beaten and knowing when to continue fighting. She indicates that leadership is about knowing when to go forward and with whom to go with (Cordery & Sinclair, 2013). This shows that in Mrs. Mostyn’s views of her leadership, leadership is all about precision and accuracy. It is all about caring for those whom you lead before your own selfish needs and that leadership is all about service and not being served (Syed, Bandara, & French, 2016).

Conceptualization of Success in Leadership

Mr. DO’s concepts of leadership from his perspective is that leadership is not about show off and doing things that will oppress the next person. He indicates that leadership is all about knowing what the next person needs and when he needs it (Csikszentmihalyi, 2004). He gives an example of being there to guide the next person in times of need and also being ready to criticize the wrong doing of the person next to you, because as leadership is not all about being confined in a small are but being able to maneuver and touch the life of everyone who is with you or against you (Cordery & Sinclair, 2013).

Leadership according to Mr. Ally is about leadership is that leadership is brotherhood. He indicates that despite the fact that people may carry the leader in high regards, it is the respect given by the leader to those he is leading that will give him the power and authority over them (Simha, Armstrong, & Albert, 2012). He conceptualizes that his leadership is not about being above the others but being in between them and also inside them by using the ideas he creates to make the people he leads better than he first met them (Doz & Kosonen, 2010). He shows that leadership is all about making the other person better so that the person can also return the favor one day.

Success is a continuous process and attaining it would just be the beginning of another journey for a leader were the words that were put forward by Mrs. Mostyn. Mrs. Mostyn believes that as a leader’s success is when you lead someone to do something you want to be done by the person and he or she does the work willingly and to the best of their ability (Dunne, Aaron, & Geho, 2016). If one is leading a team to create a certain product and all the members of the group come together to do the work and they do it perfectly, then that is success according to Mrs. Mostyn. This belief in Mrs. Mostyn has helped her a great deal in leading the many organizations that she has led because each and every time she goes to a new organization with the mentally of going to learn about the organization them from what she has learned she can be able to drive the organization towards the set goals (Gardner & Laskin, 2011).

Success to Mr. Do is achieving his goal, no matter the time he will take to do it. Mr. Do believes in absolute perfection in everything he does and he also knows that perfection is unattainable (Dunne, Aaron, & Geho, 2016). So the more times one tries to be better than the previous time and he or she does it then that is success. So to him being successful is driving people to do that which they saw as impossible to their level best and even more than they would have done on their own (Cavico & Mujtaba, 2004).

To Mr. Ally success in leadership is creating the bond between people and influencing the people to live in peace and harmony. He says that leadership is not confined to a certain post but to the whole world, so if a leader impacts positively in a person’s life then the leader is successful, because leadership is all about earning the people’s trust and enabling the people to trust each other so that they can impact positively on each other’s lives (Duska, 2007).

Mr. Ally also shows that in leadership of an organization or a confined place, success is doing the work at hand to one’s level best despite the challenges. He says that it is more enjoyable to get something right after failing most times because the person who fails knows the number of times the work will go wrong if he gives the wrong opinion (Harper, 2016). He says that once a leader has reached the level of accepting disappointment and converting it into a tool that will make him do the something in a better way instead of giving up, then that is success in leadership (Simha, Armstrong, & Albert, 2012).

The three leaders, Mrs. Mostyn, Mr. Do and Mr. Ally are very similar in thinking and it is hard to contrast their ideas. This is accrued to the fact that they are all leaders in their different perspectives. They all have the interest of the people they in before their own. The comparison I ca make from all of them is that in their thinking as leaders, they need to first scrutinize and evaluate their options before they can go forward with a given task. This is because they know that the final outcome is as a result of their ideas because the people they lead to trust and follow what they say because they believe it is the right option (Rhode, 2006). They are all accountable for their action and that is the reason they need to scrutinize their options. They are able to use their failures to their advantage and that is what accomplishes them as leaders. Leaders are also solution gives, in all the three leaders it is evident that the leaders try to solve a problem that is affecting the people in the surrounding, that is why they would love if people worked together to achieve a certain goal and also help each other in times of chaos in order to bring peace (Kundu, 2016). 

The contrasting factor in these leaders according to how they view leadership and success is the fact that they all use different techniques in their leadership. Some are observant and patient such a s Mr. Do, others are risk takers and will never give up on anything they do such as Mr. Ally and some will always believe in others to the same work together in order to achieve the same goal such as Mrs. Mostyn. The reason behind this contrasting factor that leaders are original thinkers, they are innovative and that is why leaders use different aspects or techniques to arrive at the same solution.  

Mrs. Mostyn’s leadership skills have helped all the organizations that she has worked grow to be multi-corporation companies. She has also helped build powerful leaders in the organizations who are now bringing others (Mendenhall & Osland, 2012). This has impacted heavily on the human resource management of most of the companies and the people whom she has led. She is an icon of leadership in Australia at large.

Mr. Do, on the other hand, has taught students in the Marlborough university that life is all about seizing the opportunity that comes your way and using it to build others in one’s circle in order to make a better community to live in. Mr. Do has shown many people that supporting others to grow in a certain aspect also improves the life of the person who has helped them (Northouse, 2015).

In Mr. Ally’s perspective of leadership, he has had a great impact on the community using his films and leadership skills also. Mr. Ally has shown the people that he leads that the best way to live is in peace and in harmony. He has shown that it is through harmony that people become prosperous and also that people have to take risks if they feel what they do is going to be a benefit to them and those around them.

Currently, Mrs. Mostyn is currently trying to control the cultural diversity that is taking place in Australia. The culture of the Australians is fading away and she is trying to find a solution to what she can do so that the culture can be upheld even in the digital world (Christensen & Lægreid, 2013). Samantha is facing difficulties because most of the companies are trying to sell their digital ideas to the general public without looking into the impact that the ideas will cause to the public in future (Doz & Kosonen, 2010). From research in the past five years, the best advice to give her is that the best way to tackle a problem that is proving tricky is to tackle it from the top. She should try and advise the leaders in the company to regulate the selling of their ideas or rather the leaders should try to incorporate the Australian culture in the ideas so that they can merge the old and the new to come up with a better solution for both of the sides (Heath, Singh, & Ganesh). 

Conclusion

The analysis of leadership as discussed in this paper indicates that leaders are independent thinkers, risk takers and they have the ability to influence others to do thing for the benefit of the community at large. The analysis has feature three different leaders in three different sectors in their jobs. These leaders have shown tremendous improvement are termed as the great leaders of 2015. From the analysis of these leaders, a conclusion that a leader is a person who influences others to do something that they are willing and that they are not afraid that they will fail if they try. These leaders have proven to be a contributing factor not only to the organizations in which they work in but also to the community at large. 

Leaders can learn a lot from research and theories from other leaders who have been through the same problem that they are going through at the time. Learning from other people’s mistakes can be a very good way to lead. This is evident from Mr. Do who say that as a leader patience is the key to better leadership. Therefore, leaders have to be ready to be criticized and to learn from other people because not all the time will one be right.

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