Lee Iacocca Essay

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The life and leadership of Lee Iacocca has many successful chapters from his days in the auto industry, work with the Iacocca Institute or in his writings including books and articles such as the “Nine Cs of Leadership.” In the Nine Cs article, Lee Iacocca communicates the qualities that he thinks are important for leaders to possess. One could potentially state that Lee possesses all nine of his qualities he discusses in the “Nine Cs of Leadership” including curiosity, creativity, communicating, having character, courage, conviction, charisma, common sense and being competent (Whitney, 2007). Using Lee’s criteria of leadership traits, his three strongest are having courage, possessing common sense and being able to communicate this clearly. Courage is defined as the “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty (Merriam-Webster, 2013).” Iacocca certainly doesn’t lack the courage to communicate the way that he feels about the president and congress. Throughout his illustrious career he has demonstrated greats amounts of courage to persevere in difficult situations. One great example of Lee’s courage came with his decision to join Chrysler. He reflected on this time period that “to save the company, I had to lay off some workers, sell off our European division and close several plants (Iacocca, 2013).” It takes a courageous person to take on the position of CEO for a struggling company that needs to get things turned around. After taking the job it takes strength to then make hard decisions to lay off workers and make large organizational changes. When you add that during this time Lee also asked Congress for a 1.5 billion dollar loan it is easy to see how he emulates the word courage. A common sense approach is something that Lee Iacocca Iacocca is well known for throughout his career. Merriam-Webster

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