Oprah Winfreys Six Pillars for Leadership - Personal Statement Example

Running head: Oprah Winfrey’s Six Pillars for Leadership Oprah Winfrey’s Six Pillars for Leadership of Submission Total Number of Words: 1,753 Introduction Oprah Winfrey is one of the most powerful personalities in the world. During the 20th century, she is a part of the top 100 most influential people and the worlds only Black billionaire. In 2005, Oprah became the first black person who was listed as Business Weeks 35th Most Generous Philanthropists (BusinessWeek, 2009). She was also listed as the 235th richest American and the 37th most giving person (Koehn & Helms, 2005; Sellers, 2006). For this study, some of Oprah’s inherent secrets for success will be unveiled by analyzing her character-driven leadership style. Through the application of the six pillars of character, this paper will prove that a critical part of Oprah’s success is due to her spectacular ethical character-driven leadership. Thesis Statement “The Ethical Character-driven Leadership of Oprah is the basic foundation to Her Success”. Oprah’s Inherent Secrets for Success According to Johnson (2008), character is the inherent complex of attributes that determines a persons moral and ethical actions and reactions. In fact, character is the most basic qualities that make a leader competitive. There are a lot of ways that can enable us to understand factors that makes a leader a competitive one. Normally, the leadership skill of a person who is very influential is based on six pillars known as: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) caring; (4) responsibility; (5) fairness; and (6) citizenship (Lussier, 2003). Ability to Communicate Well to the Public The six pillars that support character-driven leadership, trustworthiness, care and respect for others were noticeable in the early stages of Oprah’s career. For instance: Oprah’s communication style demonstrates courage to open up and connect with others. During the past few years, she has been very consistent with her communication style. This quality enabled her to build impeccable reputation and trust to the general public (Sellers, 2006). Oprah is an expert in communicating her ideas to her target audiences. Because of her ability to verbally speak out her thoughts, her target audiences could easily relate to Oprah especially with the topics she chooses to discuss in her talk show. Oprah usually based her talk show topics from her own personal experiences. For this reason, it is very easy and natural for her to open-up topics about her personal struggles in life. For instance: She could openly talk about issues related to physical or mental abuse, weight gain problems, racial discrimination, and how it is like to be in a broken home. This makes her able to perform a valuable service around the globe (Koehn & Helms, 2005; Sellers, 2006). Importance of Trustworthiness and Respect Oprah demonstrates trustworthiness with high level of dedication, enthusiasm and passion in almost anything she does. Oprah is not limited to being a talk show icon. For many years, she is exposed to a lot of television shows and movies. The first film that Oprah was involved with was “The Color Purple” – a movie about Sofia who is a young woman who was abused because of poverty. Her success in portraying the life of Sofia made her won her nominations for Academy and Golden Globe awards. Since then, she was known as a promising celebrity person. Eventually, she became a role model for women in every walk of life. As a unique individual, she uses her chosen career in developing new opportunities that will allow her to lead the people by being a good example. There were also a lot of instances wherein she would ‘reward’ people who has an unselfish behavior like the act of willingly sacrificing for others. (Koehn & Helms, 2005; Sellers, 2006) Through her own personal action, Oprah has consistently demonstrated trustworthiness and respect to other people. Being Fair to other People Regardless of Age, Gender and Status in Life Oprah has mastered and supported the art of character-driven leadership. In anything she does, she see to it that she practices the act of being fair not only to her audiences but also to her employees. Oprah adopted participative leadership which emphasizes a shared approach to power and decision making. In one of her interview, she stated that “It’s all about attracting good people. I’ve always tried to surround myself not only with people who are smart but with people who are smarter in ways I am not” (Sellers, 2006). In 1986, Oprah established the Harpo, Inc. Back then, she operated the business together with her lawyer Jeffrey Jacobs and few staffs using a small formal business structure (Sellers, 2006). During the first year, Oprah was the first to arrive each day. She personally reviewed the scripts, taped two shows, talked with the audience members, personally signed every key corporate check and edited content for her publishing venture “O, The Oprah Magazine”. She was personally engaged in every aspect of the business (Sellers, 2006). When it became clear that more people were needed to run the business, Oprah created a team to run her company and gave each division a great deal of autonomy. Each department head were given a considerable amount of autonomy to execute their goals (Sellers, 2006). Oprah simply provided them with the feeling of empowerment which allowed the team to have the four experiences of empowerment: (1) potency; (2) meaningfulness; (3) autonomy; and (5) impact (Johnson, 2008). Since everyone shares power in decision-making process, the business became even more successful than it was in the past. Consensus leaders encourage group discussion and decision-making based on the general opinion of the group. (Johnson, 2008) In line with this matter, Oprah encourages input from her colleagues and staff before she makes an important decision about work. The producers and other staff members are considered the key elements in presenting and choosing new topic for show and magazine content. It is required that each idea given by the staff members is aligned with Harpo’s mission. This enabled Oprah to easily transform the way people see themselves, uplift her staff’s confidence, enlighten and encourage her staff to participate more and to entertain them at the same time. (Koehn & Helms, 2005; Sellers, 2006) Since then, Oprah’s company has maintained a 10-15% turnover rate, while her top executive team has an average tenure of eleven years (Sellers). Aside from enjoying a low turnover rate, Oprah managed to launch her Book Club back in September 1996. To make it easier for her to decide on the featured novel, she relied on the opinions of other people. Significance of Responsibility and Citizenship in Oprah’s Successful Leadership Skill The last two pillars of character-driven leadership have been the most challenging for Oprah. Showing responsibility and citizenship is essential for an effective ethical and character-driven leader. During the last decade, Oprah has been astonishingly dedicated to master these two qualities. Oprah has turned most of her businesses into socially responsible organization that creates higher standards of living and quality of life within the communities in which they operate. Currently, Oprah started to be able to inspire her staff, colleagues, audience, fans and politicians including other business leaders and celebrities through her large national and international scale of humanitarian work. For example: Oprah’s Angel Network was created in 1997 to pool and donate money to a wide-range of charities. “In its first seven years, the show’s audiences together with celebrities and corporate sponsors contributed close to $30 million. The donations were used to fund Habitat for Humanity homes, college scholarships, women’s shelters, youth centers and rural school construction” (Koehn & Helms, 2005). In 2000, the “Use Your Life Award” was established to recognize the efforts of volunteers. To encourage the people in doing charity work for other people, Oprah’s Angel Network is giving away more than $1 million in the form of awards and other surprises (Oprahs Angel Network, 2009). In 2004, she contributed $50 million to The Oprah Winfrey Foundation. The said amount placed her on The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of America’s top donors for the year. (Koehn & Helms, 2005) Oprah’s largest project started back in 2002. This project emphasizes on the importance of teaching leadership. Nelson Mandela and officials from the South Africa’s Ministry of Education joined Oprah as publicly announced the future site of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for young girls in South Africa. “The school will teach girls to be the best human beings they can ever be; it will train them to become the future decision-makers and leaders” (Sellers, 2006). From one perspective, the school that she opened for 152 financially below average South African girls outside Johannesburg may not appear to be significant. However, she expressed during the opening ceremony that this is just the beginning of her greatest accomplishment. She aims to make the school "the best in the world" in the sense that the educational academy is focused on molding its pupils to become capable of changing the face of the nation. Likewise, she is planning to open another secondary school for boys and girls in eastern KwaZulu-Natal province. With the students’ parents consent, all the students will be tested for HIV. She stated that "Girls who are educated are less likely to get HIV/AIDS” (Koehn & Helms 2005; Sellers, 2006). Conclusion Oprah is one of the planets most watched talk show hosts, one of Americas most successful magazine publishers, a billionaire, an Oscar-nominated actor, the most important black philanthropist in the US, and one of the most influential women in the world. According to Mr. Mandela – South Africa former president, “Oprah is a strong lady. Despite her own disadvantaged background, has become one of the benefactors of the disadvantaged throughout the world” (Sellers, 2006). Although Oprah has a lot to accomplish in life, she managed to make all the right moves in becoming one of the largest and most successful entrepreneurs in the world. As stated in Oprah’s own words, "To be a great leader, you must be of sound mind, body and spirit. …Part of leadership is having the courage to demonstrate true action” (Sellers, 2006). The secret behind Oprah’s success is her aspiration to become a distinguished ethical and spiritual leader. It is her ability to understand the power behind the use of ethical and character-drive leadership that made her able to capture not only the attention of her target audiences but also strengthens her ability to convince other people to follow her footsteps. Recently, the effort she puts in the promotion of social responsibility and humanitarian work indicate that she will continuously grow as an inspiration to other people in terms of accomplishing a common goal for the less fortunate people. *** End *** References BusinessWeek. (2009). Retrieved July 17, 2009, from The 50 Most Generous Philanthropists: http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/philanthropy_individual/ Johnson, S. (2008). The Role of Ethics. Strategy and Leadership Quarterly , 22(3). Koehn, N., & Helms, E. (2005). Oprah Winfrey. Boston: Harvard Business School. Lussier, R. (2003). Leadership: Theory Application and Skill Development. Cincinnati OH: South Western College. Oprahs Angel Network. (2009). Retrieved July 17, 2009, from Use Your Life Award Winners: http://www.oprah.com/article/angelnetwork/uyl_angel_20020524_award Sellers, P. (2006, April 22). Fortune Magazine. Retrieved July 13, 2009, from The Business of Being Oprah: http://fortune.cnn.com/2009/07/16/jpmorgan-chases-view-on-china/ Thomas, A. (2007, June 11). Christian Today. Retrieved July 13, 2009, from Oprah Opens New School in South Africa Raises HIV Awareness: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/oprah.opens.new.school.in.south.africa/9001.htm Read More