Holmes Institute HC3031: Accounting and Leadership Challenges Report

This report provides an executive summary discussing leadership challenges, drawing from an interview with Raul Enrique Pena of Sonoma Leadership Systems. The introduction highlights the significance of effective leadership in addressing challenges and achieving organizational objectives. The body of the report delves into different perspectives on leadership, including the views of Raul Enrique Pena, the objectives of the Leadership Challenge program, and the potential impact of the program. The discussion section evaluates the article, focusing on the main objectives of leadership, the learnings from the leadership program, cost-benefit analysis, and future improvements. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of practicing leadership behaviors to improve leadership qualities, while acknowledging that leadership is not solely measurable, teachable, and learnable. The report also includes references to support the analysis.

Running head: ACCOUNTING
Accounting
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Authors Note:

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Executive summary:
Leadership and its challenges have been discussed since the term has been coined. Raul
Enrique Pena of Sonoma Leadership Systems in his interview has specifically emphasised that
leadership is measurable, teachable and learnable. According to the article, Leadership
Challenges a proper program on leadership can help in developing leadership qualities amongst
the employees and workers in an organization. Evaluation of the article has been made here with
the objective of understanding the important qualitative characteristics of leadership.

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Contents
Executive summary:........................................................................................................................1
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Body:................................................................................................................................................3
General:............................................................................................................................................4
Discussion:.......................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................7
References:......................................................................................................................................8

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Introduction:
There is significant challenges that an entity faces in modern competitive world. An
effective leadership at the hem of affairs in an entity can turn its fortune upside-down.
Leadership shall be such to ensure challenges are faced and overcome to achieve organizational
objectives. In this document the leadership challenges shall be discussed at significant details. It
is important to note that the article leadership challenges talks about number of qualitative
characteristics of effective leadership to achieve organizational objectives.
Body:
There has been numerous arguments on leadership attributes. Many believe that while leadership
can be measured, taught and learnable, others believe that it is something which is unique and
cannot be developed over a period of time. The article, Leadership Challenges, states the opinion
and views of Raul Enrique Pena of Sonoma Leadership Systems about leadership and how it can
be developed. The questions which the article tries to answer are as following;
I. What are the main objectives of the Leadership challenge program?
II. The potential audience of the program, i.e. the person who the program expected to
impact.
III. The different learnings from facilitation of the program in this year.
IV. The actual cost of implementing the leadership challenge curriculum program and the
return on investment.
V. The future plan to improve the program and ways to achieve success in the future.
In the article the above questions have been answered by Raul Enrique Pena however, it is
important to remember that the interview given by Raul is from Sonoma Leadership Systems.

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Hence, for him to state that leadership is measurable, teachable and learning commodity is pretty
much on the expected lines (PANAIT, 2017).
General:
As per the views expressed by Raul of Sonoma Leadership Systems there are certain behaviors
that are associated with effective leadership. According to his opinion these behaviors are
measurable, learnable and teachable. In fact over a period of time with constant practice people
are expected to achieve extraordinary things in organizational leadership as their leadership
prowess is expected to improve significantly with constant practice of the set of behaviors.
Further it is also interesting to note that the article mentions that the age, tenure, maturity,
position and ability of a person do not matter in achieving effective leadership. It would be
incorrect to believe that leadership has nothing to do with age, tenure, maturity, position and
ability of a person. In fact leadership is a suitable mix of maturity and ability of a person. These
two qualitative traits are on the other hand very much dependent on a person’s age, position and
tenure of leadership (PANAIT, 2017).
The article talks about leadership curriculum program that improves the ability of a person to
lead an organization. In fact the leadership curriculum is infinitely scalable thus, will scale
according to the requirements of any organization. Irrespective of the size of the organization
whether large or small, whether public or private, government or non-governmental, profit
oriented or non-profit oriented organization, the leadership curriculum will adjust accordingly. It
is pretty much understandable that it is a marketing strategy to promote a product rather than
discussing the needs and requirements for proper leadership.

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Discussion:
At the beginning of the document number of questions were identified that shall be researched to
effectively assess the benefits of the article, Leadership Challenges. The article nowhere
discusses the main objectives of leadership instead it gets into a discussion leadership curriculum
program. The main objectives of leadership include the following:
To achieve organizational objectives: The leadership tries to achieve organizational objectives by
using the available resources of the organization. A leader with his effective leadership will
make optimum use of the organizational resources to achieve the objectives of the organization.
Ensure proper functioning of an organization: Quality leadership will ensure that an organization
functions properly without any breakdowns. Thus, leaders must have the quality to resolve
conflicts and problems to ensure that an organizations functions without any interruption.
Ensuring coherence between different teams and departments within an organization: Ensuring
coherence between different teams and departments by coordinating their efforts is important to
the successful running of an organization. A great leader is one who will be able to coordinate
the work of different teams and departments to ensure proper coherence.
The article has nowhere mentioned the importance of above objectives for a leader to achieve in
order to ensure that the organization achieves its objectives.
The different learnings from facilitation of leadership program in different business
organizations:
An organization has certain goals and objectives to achieve. An effective leadership will help an
organization to achieve these goals and objectives. Leadership can be certainly learned provided

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there is an effective leadership program in place within an organization. Learnings from
leadership curriculum program depends on the effectiveness of the program. In this case the
Sonoma Leadership curriculum does not provide details that the people will be taught to be a
good leader.
Cost and benefit analysis of effective leadership program:
An organization when investing in any program even if that means investing in leadership
curriculum, the management must make cost benefit analysis before investing in the program.
Every leadership program shall be thoroughly analysed as to its costs to the organization and
expected benefits in the future. Generally a profit oriented organization will not invest in a
leadership curriculum program unless the expected benefits from such program exceeds the cost
of implementing such program within the organization. The leadership challenge program
curriculum of Sonoma Leadership Systems does not disclose anything about the cost and
benefits of implementing the program within an organization. For business and profit oriented
organizations benefits must exceed the cost of any program in order to get green signal of
implementation (Ergle, 2015).
The future plan to improve the program and ways to achieve success in the future:
The curriculum will be tested rigorously in the future to improve its effectiveness and benefits
for organizations. Only if the effects and benefits of the curriculum program are recorded
continuously when it is in function in different organizations then only it would be possible to
make necessary changes and amendments to the existing curriculum. With passage of time
requirements and needs of an organization changes. It is only when a program is suitable to the
existing needs and requirements of an organization that it would be effective. Hence, to be useful

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for the modern day business organizations all necessary amendments shall be made to the
existing programs (Johnsen, 2015).
The article does not provide these answers in significant details to help different stakeholders.
The questions which have been identified at the beginning of the document have been answered
in necessary details. Since there are number of weaknesses in the article, it was important to find
the answers to the questions identified at the beginning of the document (Chiu, 2010). The fact
that the article talks about the importance of continuous practice of different leadership traits
makes it realistic in many sense (Cohen, 2013). It is definitely true that practice makes
everything better and leadership is not an exception to this. In fact it has been mentioned clearly
that over a 30 years period the research has been going on to show that those who have practiced
leadership behaviour deliberately and frequently will have chances to achieve greater success as
compared to those who will not practice leadership behaviour continuously (Ang, 2012). The
continuous and frequent practices of leadership behaviour have showed number of benefits such
as increase in credibility of a leader, loyalty, improves team performance and improvement in the
workplace attitude. Leadership is certainly not a commodity however, with the use of leadership
curriculum program it is possible to improve the behaviours which are associated with
leadership. Thus, improvement in the leadership is possible by continuous and frequent practice
of leadership behaviours (A. Black, 2015).
Conclusion:
Taking into consideration discussion above about the leadership attributes and how a leadership
challenge curriculum can be used effectively it is clear that leadership qualities in employees and
executives improve if necessary behaviors are practiced daily. However, it is not correct to state
that leadership is measurable, teachable and learnable. There is no doubt that people can improve

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his leadership qualities by continuously practicing leadership behaviors however, to expect that
the program itself will create new leaders will be wrong (Archer and Cameron, 2009).

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References:
A. Black, S. (2015). Qualities of Effective Leadership in Higher Education. Open Journal of
Leadership, 04(02), pp.54-66.
Ang, E. (2012). Leadership Qualities. SSRN Electronic Journal, 2(4), pp.17-33.
Archer, D. and Cameron, A. (2009). Collaborative leadership. Amsterdam: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
Chiu, E. (2010). Essential qualities and tasks of leadership. Asia-Pacific Psychiatry, 2(4),
pp.176-176.
Cohen, C. (2013). Business Intelligence. 4th ed. London: Wiley, pp.72-104.
Ergle, D. (2015). Perceived feminine vs masculine leadership qualities in corporate
boardrooms. Management of Organizations: Systematic Research, 74, pp.41-54.
Johnsen, Å. (2015). Strategic Management Thinking and Practice in the Public Sector: A
Strategic Planning for All Seasons?. Financial Accountability & Management, 31(3), pp.243-
268.
Panait, c. (2017). Developing leadership skills. Identifying leadership qualities and
attributes. Review of the air force academy, 15(1), pp.167-172.