Leadership Defined - Coursework Example

Leadership Leadership is the ability to guide, mentor, grow, and establish records. Doing what has been done by others in the past is more like management as the pattern has already been established. Leadership is more about pushing the envelope as innovation and creativity are the factors that drive toward success in the present age. A current leader who embodies this definition of leadership is Admiral Michelle Howard. Admiral Michelle Howard received “the secretary of the Navy/Navy League Captain Winifred Collins award in May 1987” (America’s Navy, 2014) while serving on board Lexington, an award granted to only one woman officer in a whole year for displayed outstanding leadership skills.

In 1999, she commanded a Naval ship as the first African American woman and was also the first woman from this race to reach three stars in any military branch (Dill, 2014). While deployed as commander of a Counter-Piracy Taskforce, Admiral Michelle Howard spearheaded Captain Phillips’s rescue from the pirates in Somalia in just three days. This year, she became the first woman in the history of the US Navy spanning 236 years to be promoted to the second highest position in the US Navy, the Vice Chief of Naval Operations as well as to four-star admiral (Dill, 2014).

“I didn’t know it was possible to grow up to be anything more than a one-star…[Today’s sailors] have never known a life when there hasn’t been a woman admiral, women three-stars, women in command of ships, women in command of destroyers” (Howard cited in Schneider, 2014). References:America’s Navy. (2014, July 3). 7/1/2014 – Present: ADMIRAL MICHELLE HOWARD. Retrieved from http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/navybio.asp?bioID=394. Dill, K. (2014, July 1). Leadership Lessons From Admiral Michelle Howard, The Highest Ranking Woman In Naval History. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/kathryndill/2014/07/01/leadership-lessons-from-admiral-michelle-howard-the-highest-ranking-woman-in-naval-history/.

Schneider, E. (2014, July 11). A Four-Star Female Admiral Makes History for the Navy. New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/12/us/12admiral.html?_r=0.