Leadership Project

 

Leadership module    Phoebe Ferguson 4B 

Moments of Leadership     Nelson Mandela   Marcel Duchamp 

 

 

   

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Contents       1. Cover page   2. Contents  3. Introduction   4. Leadership Behaviours   5. Nelson Mandela   6. ​Marcel Duchamp

           

   

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Introduction   What is leadership?   Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill that shows the ability of an individual or  organization to lead or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. Leadership is  about being able to be a strong figure who people can look up to and inspire people to follow  them. Being a leader you must be selfless to succeed, a leader needs to be confident in the  decisions they make. Being a public leader is a hard job, with their every move and decision  being scrutinised by people all over the world. There are leaders in every walk of life, Sport,  Politics, Religion and business. They might all seem very different but the all need the same  characteristics to be successful.    

Leadership behaviours   Have Conviction​ - A leader must be passionate about what they do. They should have huge  conviction to help others and to lead others for better things. They know what they want and  they have their heart set on a goal that they want to succeed within their group or team. 

Leaders with conviction create an environment of certainty for people. When a leader is absolutely convinced that they have chosen the best course of action, everyone who follows absorbs this belief along with emotional state​.

Impose context​ ​-​ A leader needs to be able to make the ideas they have clear to the public. 

They need to impose context by showing people what is important, and getting them to focus  on the important issues. The leader needs to be able to show their followers the difference  between important things and things that aren't that important. They need to establish clear  goals, and know what direction they want to go in.    

   

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  Challenge and Change ​-​ Leaders must be proactive and always looking for the next best thing.  They must not be afraid to speak up for what they believe to be right. They have to encourage  change for a better future. They need to create excitement among followers and challenge  normality. They need to surprize competitors, and push the followers not to just accept what is  there but to push the boundaries and make life better.     Generate critical mass ​- ​This is when leaders Inspire individual action. Although this is 

important, it is not enough to create large-scale change. Leaders must be able to generate  critical mass by turning knowledge into action and influencing people to channel their energy  into the appropriate activities. This allows them to be able to work together in an organised way  that will succeed. This behaviour creates human development and furthermore promotes things  to start happening.     Make Risks and Take Risks ​- Leaders sometimes have to break rules and push the boundaries.  A leader must make be able to take risks and understanding what opportunities can be created, 

and what opportunities they can make happen. Leaders have to be able to make these decisions  into working results. This allows the leader to be able to spot hidden risks that might damage  the enterprise. Be able to take advantage of potential openings, for success in the present or  future, create new more inative ways of doing things, and develop themselves and others by  putting forward new situations.               

 

   

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Nelson Mandela   ​

Nelson Mandela, is arguably the most famous African man in the world. Mandela was a man  who gave so much for his people,and would not stop till he saw results. Mandela was able to  combat racism and apartheid in South Africa which was a regular occurrence in the country  before Mandela came to office. Mandela held many positions before he became president.  Mandela stood up against racism through means of peaceful protest, in hope of racial  integration.  Nelson Mandela spent 27 years of his life in prison on Robben Island, and lived in a tiny  eight-by-seven-foot concrete cell with only a straw mat to sleep on. When he was offered  freedom in 1985, he refused, saying: “I cannot and will not give any undertaking, at a time when  I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated!” Saying this  meant Mandela was completely passionate about what he was fighting for, and he sacrificed his  life to help fight for equal rights for the rest of his people.    Mandela has always shown compassion towards everyone. Mandela has the courage to forgive  the Apartheid government that caused tremendous suffering to himself and his family but also  everyone from the same background as him. This shows that he was an exceptional leader who  wanted the best for everyone. He could have demanded that the people who murdered  thousands of innocent indigenous South Africans, be put in prison and sentenced to death but  he didn't, he chose the higher route instead. Setting up the Truth and Reconciliation  Commission, he left a legacy of forgiveness and reconciliation, not only for his people but also  for the world.   Mandela became president in 1994. Throughout his political career Mandela showed all 5  leadership traits necessary for a great leader. This is quite unusual for all the traits to be seen  within a leader. Throughout Mandela's time on Robben Island he displayed no fear. This was  extremely inspirational to other prisoners and this resulted in Mandela becoming a leader  within the prison for many of the prisoners.    Throughout Mandela’s time in power he displayed all the leadership styles that makes a good  leader. Mandela definitely showed that he had a lot of conviction to succeed and create  certainty for his followers about what he was doing and how he was leading South Africa.   Mandela also used compassion , He wanted his country to be a place of peace and unity, where  everyone is treated as equals, regardless of the colour of their skin. Mandela had to inspire  people to change their outlook on life and how they went about their day to day life. He began 

   

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this be becoming closer to his enemy. Mandela began learning about white south Africans and  their way of life. He saw this was important as he knew he would be negotiating with them in  the future. Nelson Mandela was a very strategic leader. He set many examples for his followers,  that led him to be one of the greatest leaders ever.    

 

                             

   

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Marcel Duchamp  ​

Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp was a ​French-American​ painter, sculptor, chess player, and 

writer whose work is associated with ​Cubism​, ​Dada​, and conceptual art. Duchamp is commonly  regarded, along with ​Pablo Picasso​ and ​Henri Matisse​, as one of the three artists who helped to  define the revolutionary developments in the ​plastic arts​ in the opening decades of the 20th  century. Duchamp was responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. 

Marcel Duchamp had rejected the work of many of his fellow artists as"​retinal​" art, intended  only to please the eye. Duchamp wanted to use art to serve the ​mind​.  Duchamp's early art works align with ​Post-Impressionist​ styles. He experimented with classical  techniques and subjects. When he was later asked about what had influenced him at the time,  Duchamp cited the work of ​Symbolist painter​ ​Odilon Redon​, whose approach to art was not 

outwardly anti-academic, but quietly individual. Duchamp studied art at the Académie Julian  from 1904 to 1905. During this time Duchamp drew and sold cartoons. Many of the drawings  use verbal puns, ​visual puns​, or both. Such play with words and symbols engaged his 

imagination for the rest of his life. In 1905, he began his compulsory military service with the  39th Infantry Regiment, working for a printer in Rouen. There he learned ​typography​ and  printing​ processes skills he would use in his later work. 

Duchamp displayed leadership traits in the way he went outside the box and created pieces of  art nobody had ever even thought was imaginable. His works were ignored by the public for the  greater part of his life. Until 1960 only avant-garde groups claimed that he was important,  while to “official” art circles and sophisticated critics he appeared to be merely an ​eccentric​ and  something of a failure. Marcel Duchamp had led the way to Pop art, and many of the other 

movements embraced by younger artists everywhere. Not only did he change the ​visual arts​,  but he also changed the ​mind​ of the artist.  

By challenging the notion of what is art, his first "readymades" sent shock waves across the art  world that can still be felt today. Duchamp's fascination with the mechanisms of desire and  human sexuality as well as his fondness for wordplay aligns his work with that of ​Surrealists​,  although he refused to be affiliated with any specific artistic movement. 

His refusal to follow a conventional artistic path, and the fact that he hated any type of  repetition accounts for the relatively small number of works produced in the span of his career.   Duchamp didn't necessarily show all the different leadership styles within his lifetime, but was  a leader in his own right. He wanted to show that art didn’t have to follow a conventional route.  He had so much conviction and he was so passionate about what he did. He knew exactly what 

   

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he wanted to do and didn’t let critics affect his art, or what he did. He was well able to impose  context and focused on what he felt was important. He established clearly what he wanted to  attain when creating pieces of art, everything had a meaning. He also displayed a leadership  behaviour by being proactive and always looking for the next thing. He liked a challenge and  that is why he never repeated anything. He liked to surprise all other artists and to push the  boundaries, with his art pieces. He generated critical mass by inspiring others within every walk  of life. Duchamp took risks and understood what opportunities could be made from this.    

                   

 

   

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Comparison      Although Nelson Mandela and Marcel Duchamp are very different in many ways they both have  had a huge impact on the world. They both pushed the boundaries, and created a new way of  how people value life and all that comes with it. Both Nelson Mandela and Marcel Duchamp  were leaders, though of different styles. They both grew up in different lifestyles, with different  ideas of how to achieve their goals.   A leadership trait they both have in common is that they both had such conviction. They were  both so passionate about what they do. Although they were passionate about very different  things, the same passion and conviction made their ideas so successful. No leader will ever be  successful if they aren't completely passionate about what they are working on. These two  leaders display this.   Duchamp and Mandela were also both well able to take risks and make risks. They weren't afraid  of what would be said about them. This trait is definitely an amazing trait to have. It shows us  that they wanted to make a mark on this world, and push what they believe for greater good.  They both though people that it doesn't matter what others think, if you believe then anything  is possible.    Out of the two Leaders I don't think I could pick a favourite. They were both very successful but  for completely different things. They were able to define history, and they will always be  remembered for the things they did.