Leadership in Context: An Analysis of Barrack Obama's Nomination Acceptance Speech

This study analyzes the role of leadership activities in different contexts and its impact on learning. The case of Barrack Obama's nomination acceptance speech is outlined to demonstrate the leadership activities that inspired people. The study discusses the concept of transformational leadership and the importance of communication skills in achieving a leadership position. The author reflects on their personal leadership skills and the need to enhance their charisma and communication skills. The study concludes that successful leadership requires a balance of attributes and behavioral factors.

Running head: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
Students ID
Name of the University
Authors Note

1LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
Introduction
In the present world, leadership is the sole necessity of every successful business.
According to my perception, an organisation or a country can sustain its competitive growth
through the extensive use of leadership activities. In this context, it has been observed that
positive leadership styles have received a significant popularity and assistance over the
passing years. In this regards, the study aims to argue the role of leadership activities in
different context and its impact on learning. Based on the concept of leadership we have
chosen to outline the case of Barrack Obama nomination acceptance speech to demonstrate
the leadership activities that inspired people.
Discussion’
For my personal input and learning, I told my group that instead of questioning
widely about the successfulness of Barrack Obama, it is necessary to ask a question to the
society members about the doings of Obama. After carrying out the analysis, we were easily
able to draw a very understandable conclusion on the issue.
We have learned from the group report that the speech he made was an act of
transformational leadership that had a profound impact on the people to accept his
presidential candidature in America. After reading the entire speech, we realised that he
managed to influence people with confidence as well as assistance that transformed him into
a great leader.
However, one of our major learning of the team from the group report of Obama's
speech is that transformational leaders are completely different from other types of
leadership. The transformational leadership tends to create change and combine a number of
human factors into the charisma of visionary through the process (Boehm et al. 2015). In
addition to this, this type of leaders usually attracts and sustain the attraction of the followers.
In this context, as influenced by the view of Jacquart and Antonakis (2015), I can say that

2LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
Obama managed to influence his followers by interacting with their human side, in
combination with his body gesture, attitude and personal opinions to relate and influence the
followers.
We have learned from the unit that Obama’s speech is that made him a truly
inspirational leader, which requires a complete balance of skilled, attributes and behaviour
that is flexible with the listeners. From these, we identified that the great balance in different
factors represents positive leadership. These factors are assertiveness, charisma, enthusiasm,
humility and high amount self-confidence (Wasike 2017). The high balance of attributes and
behavioural factors enhances the likelihood of influencing others thereby increasing the
chance of relating with different followers.
However, from the following module, I have realised that as a leader I have a quality
to illustrate the goals and necessities to the group members to accomplish a specific task. In
addition to this, I have the strong ability to motivate others by positively delegating them
towards a specific task. For instance, while preparing for group unit, while I was leading the
team in doing the report, I realised that I am not only confident but also responsible in
managing work and quite enthusiastic in doing the task. However, I lacked the sense of
charisma to attract group members and assertiveness
While doing the unit, I learned that Obama displayed the trait that was consistent with
effectively leading the listeners. Moreover, he managed to successfully keep his followers
engaged by his collective vision and charismatic body gestures, constant gaze and projection
voice (Mirer and Bode 2015). These attributes in him encourage the inclusiveness through his
speech. Therefore, from these, I learned that I lack these traits entirely. For me to truly turn in
to the inspirational and motivational leader I need to have the ability to set a proper goal for
myself and then for my follows. This will be more effective when I will be able to relate to

3LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
the emotional nature of all the team members and followers (Gentry 2018). This is because; I
have learned from the unit that leaders are able to achieve more success if they have the high
balance of follower cont8ingent attributes and behavioural factors in them.
In my case, my experience of leadership while working with the group has been
paramount to me that helped me redefining my present leadership skills. I have personally
been very fortunate to get a formal opportunity to establish my skills of leadership and to be
given the opportunity to utilise my skills of leadership as well. This has given me a high
exposure to my new options and has helped me to accelerate my growth as a leader.
However, after working with my group over the Barrack Obama speech analysis, I
recognised that such opportunities are rare in their communities; this is because of
perspectives in between blacks and whites in America. As influenced by the perception of
Rahim (2017), I can assert that despite these issues, he encouraged the community members
to embrace with the progress and to stay united in order to become stronger as a nation and to
provide equal opportunity for all.
As influenced by the statement of Ng and Rivera (2018), I can assert from this, that
transformational leadership is the most appropriate type of leadership in communicating with
the audience. I need to work on my leadership capability to achieve the qualitative attributes
of transformational leadership. Similar to Obama, I need to use various types of mediums to
communicate with my vision of change such as classroom meetings or team meetings,
debate, promoting through poster, the capability of motivating speech, which is one of the
major rhetorical medium of leadership. Obama’s speech has provided me with a dynamic and
virtual exploration of resources that helped to understand the better use of transformational
leadership in practice. However, I have learned that successful leadership is not possible
simply through the utilisation of transformational leadership attributes, but it will be more
impressive when accompanied by motivating rhetoric. Therefore, influenced by the view of

4LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
Boehm et al. (2015), I can say that, communication skills are the most potential contribution
component to obtain a leadership position. As for my perception, one could argue in this
context, that even on the most basic phase of communication, a specific individual is always
striving to inspire the audience party in the way they want to articulate the message (Wang et
al. 2016).
Conclusion
In order to achieve this unique position of leadership, I have enhanced my skills in
achieving the attribute of charisma that relates to an individual’s special abilities of vision
provided with a sense of mission. Specifically, it an intellectual capability to arouse creativity
and innovation in different issues and solution to different issues. By doing so, I will be able
to encourage growth and learning of other team members. I will be able to learn all this
during my next course with my team members. I need to apply all that I have learned from
this course unit to check my progress of skills. Therefore, I can similar to Obama, leaders are
not only a person who influences people but also accepts a challenge to reduce the occurrence
of risk for their followers.

5LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
Reference list
Boehm, S.A., Dwertmann, D.J., Bruch, H. and Shamir, B., 2015. The missing link?
Investigating organizational identity strength and transformational leadership climate as
mechanisms that connect CEO charisma with firm performance. The Leadership
Quarterly, 26(2), pp.156-171.
Deinert, A., Homan, A.C., Boer, D., Voelpel, S.C. and Gutermann, D., 2015.
Transformational leadership sub-dimensions and their link to leaders' personality and
performance. The Leadership Quarterly, 26(6), pp.1095-1120.
Gentry, B., 2018. Inspirational Leaders, Personal Narrative, and Youth Identity. In Why
Youth Vote (pp. 49-76). Springer, Cham.
Jacquart, P. and Antonakis, J., 2015. When does charisma matter for top-level leaders? Effect
of attributional ambiguity. Academy of Management Journal, 58(4), pp.1051-1074.
Miller, M.L. and Bode, L., 2015. Tweeting in defeat: How candidates concede and claim
victory in 140 characters. New Media & Society, 17(3), pp.453-469.
Ng, L.T. and Rivera, J.P.R., 2018. Exploring Transformational Leadership and Fellowship in
a Cultural Context: The Case of the Philippines. Asia-Pacific Social Science Review, 17(3),
pp.136-141.
Rahim, M.A., 2017. Obama vs. Clinton: A Study Exploring the Impact of Leadership
Language. In Diversity, Conflict, and Leadership (pp. 103-124). Routledge.
Wang, X.H.F., Kim, T.Y. and Lee, D.R., 2016. Cognitive diversity and team creativity:
Effects of team intrinsic motivation and transformational leadership. Journal of Business
Research, 69(9), pp.3231-3239.

6LEADERSHIP IN CONTEXT
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), pp.812-826.