GOVT-460 Political & Organizational Leadership, January 2021 – May 2021
The SPA Leadership Senior Capstone focuses on examining the key theoretical concerns of leadership, bureaucracy, and public affairs as well as analyzing leadership in various forms and complexities. Using historical and modern examples of leadership and its consequences, effects, and opportunities to enact positive change, the course examines how to be an effective, adaptable, and confident leader as students of the program prepare to graduate from AU and pursue their career of choice.
As a part of the course, I wrote a policy memo on the leadership challenge of navigating and leveraging opposition from powerful forces – namely, private interests. With the designated research question of “Does opposition and hostility from powerful forces threaten successful and effective leadership? If so, how can opposition be successfully navigated?”, I explored the following concerns:
- Garnering support and challenging the opposition’s resources and influence;
- Determining how to effectively move forward in the face of strong opposition;
- Maintaining optimism and perseverance within the team; and
- Finding common ground and opportunities for collaboration
The challenges were examined using the public health case studies of the tobacco and food industries and provided the context for the policy recommendation of internal programming designed to support teams in circumnavigating challenges posed by powerful forces.