Welcome to the persuasive leader. The second course in the Specialization: Leadership and Introduction. I'm the instructor, Chris Dreisbach. I've posted my biography if you want to learn more about me. But now, let's say more about the course. The previous course, the ethical leader, sets the foundation for this course. So you might want to take that course first. If not, certain parts of that course will be referred to in this one. Two elements of the previous course are especially useful in making a link to this course. First, that course proposed and explained the position that a leader must be ethical to be a leader. Thus, in a sense, ethical leader is redundant, and a putative leader who is not ethical is no leader at all. At best, such a person is a bully, a tyrant, or simply ineffective as a leader. In that course, we identified several tools in the moral toolbox, each representing a theory of the moral good. Consequentialism holds that an act is good if the consequences are good and bad if the consequences are bad. Regularianism holds that an act is morally good if it obeys the rule and morally bad if it breaks the rule. Deontology holds that an act is morally good if and only if it's done from duty. These three theories focus on conduct and we noted that it's possible for a morally bad person to achieve good consequences, obey the rules, and act from duty. Thus, we considered a fourth theory, virtue theory, which focuses on the character of the agent over the conduct and gives us a tool for deciding when to focus on consequences, when to focus on rules, and when to focus on duties. Relying on Aristotle who explains this theory well, although it pre-existed him by many years, we saw that virtue is the ability habitually to know the good and to do the good. The good at its best is perfect, and perfect means there is neither too little nor too much of what is needed. Thus, the good is the mean between the extremes of deficiency and excess. To put a finer point on this, Aristotle invokes four cardinal virtues, that is, virtues on which all other virtues hinge. These include courage, justice, temperance, and prudence. Courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness. Justice is the mean between giving someone less than his due and to giving someone more than his due. Temperance is the mean between deficient use of an available resource and excessive use of an available resource, and prudence or practical wisdom is the mean between acting on insufficient knowledge and having all of the knowledge sufficient for a prudent act but failing to act anyway. Thus, we concluded that the ethical leader is a virtuous leader and that a leader who lacks virtue, that is, who is vicious, is no leader at all. The length is forms to our present course is that we may say something similar about the persuasive leader. A leader's task is to move the followers and other stakeholders to a better position than they were before the leader lead them. This requires persuasion. Thus, the term persuasive leader is redundant in a sense since a leader who does not persuade is no leader at all. Note that our ethical requirements stands. Bullies and tyrants can persuade, too, but absent virtue, they are not leaders. Thus, per the previous course and this one, a leader who is neither ethical nor persuasive is no leader at all, and if a leader is one but not the other, the leader is in effect no leader. The second link that the previous course offers to this one is the work the previous course did in tracing the history of scholarship on and theories about leadership. We began with theories that focused on individual leaders, including in succession, their traits, their skills, and their behaviors. We switched to processes still focusing on the individual leader, then we moved to theories that acknowledged the important role followers play in the leader-followership relationship. Finally, we ended with two complementary theories of leadership: adaptive leadership and team leadership. These point us to agile leadership, which will be our starting point in this course. There we will also review adaptive leadership and team leadership in more detail. As an example of where we're heading in this course, consider two leaders and their parallel attempts at persuasion. Winston Churchill, then Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a speech he gave on June 4th, 1940, and Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine, in a speech he gave March 8th, 2022, columnist Andrew Marr, New York Times editorial on Sunday, March 27th, 2022, argues that it's reasonable to compare each speech with the other, in spite of the geographical, historical, and political differences, and that each holds up well. Marr leaves no doubt that at the moment of their speeches, both Churchill and Zelensky were authentic leaders engaging in exemplary speech. Speaking on Germany's attack on England as part of Hitler's plan for dominance of Europe, if not the world. Churchill said to the House of Commons and to radio audiences around the world, "We shall fight on the seas and the oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender." Speaking on Russia's assault on Ukraine as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin's plan for dominance of Ukraine, if not Eastern Europe. Zelensky said to the British House of Commons who had invited him to speak, "We will not give up and we will not lose. We will fight till the end at sea, in the air. We will continue fighting for our land, whatever the cost. We will fight in the forests, in the fields, on the shores, in the streets." Assuming that England's fight against German tyranny and Ukraine's fight against Russian tyranny were virtuous acts of self-defense. We may also assume that in their roles at this moment, each leader was displaying the virtues of courage, justice, and prudence. Whether they were also displaying temperance, given that any less of an effort would have been deficient is a discussion for another time. Here are two examples of persuasive leadership, which contain much of what we'll identify as we work through this course. Careful choice of words, a proper mixture of appeal to logic and appeal to emotion, a cause that is important to the followers and a promise of success. On this premise, after discussing agile leadership, is the foundation for what we want to say about the persuasive leader, this in Module 1. We'll discuss what persuasion is, Module 2; why the leader needs to be persuasive, Module 3; and how the leader should be persuasive, Module 4. We said that Churchill and Zelensky acting as virtuous leaders against the tyrannies of Hitler and Putin respectively offer examples of persuasive leadership. Let's see whether what follows bears this out.
