Pathways, Signs and Symbols Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Pathways, Signs and Symbols - Essay Example The origin of symbols is still unknown but it is well connected with the tribes and small communities of the past. â€Å"Ndebele Tribe,† as they are mainly known for their decorative symbols, beadwork, crafts and paintings, that â€Å"hails from South Africa and is divided into four different groups of which two, Ndzunda and Manala live in Pretoria and Mpumalanga area of South Africa† (Lalioti 1) They are known for their colorful geometric symbols and designs and their distinctive use of colors and striking designs has made them popular around the world. The wall paintings by Ndebele portray â€Å"triangular and v-shaped designs† with distinct color (Lalioti 1). As the tribe started getting more exposure to urban style they started using synthetic paints and also including city scenes on their paintings. Ndebele symbols and art form do not contain any mystical content. Their women are very creative and use â€Å"their fingers to create† symbols and designs . The main occasion of painting and renewing their houses is on the â€Å"male initiation or wela† (Lalioti 3). The completion of paintings comes with family celebrations and get together. They intend to create these designs just to please the eyes. Their quality of artwork is exceptional as every design includes straight geometric designs. An interesting fact is that they paint all the designs with free hand without any rulers and the help of any shapes. Similarly, it is entirely the responsibility of women to make designs for walls. Their choice of colors and design patterns symbolizes their individuality and creativeness and makes them stand apart. Ndebele women paint both the interiors and exteriors of their houses. Most of the patterns they use are repeated but with variations in colors and designs. According to the reference most of the pictures have black outline and are done on white surface. Every section or pattern is filled with different colors before it gets repe ated in the next design. Their connection to the urban society is evident in their paintings. The designs could be a little complicated for the first time viewers. But the understanding makes it clearer when one finds the geometric shapes. The contemporary artists of this tribe usually make use of a wide range of bright colors like yellow, red and green. They use natural colors and few earth colors but their connection with urban society helped them to use synthetic colors as well to create better effect. When discussing art and symbol, Giorgio de Chirico deserves special mention. Born in Greece, he is known for his classic and symbolic representation of art work. He is the pioneer of the â€Å"Metaphysical Movement† and was known for his strange style of paintings. He painted the cityscapes not with much movement but with a creepy atmosphere. The streets were often shown as eerie and haunted. Critics have mentioned his art work as dream writings. The themes of most of his pa intings were focused on melancholia, done by depicting pictures of clocks. In his images he conveys feelings of power and freedom through trains, clocks, towers, arcades and shadows. The walls and towers of the paintings give a sense of power for the viewer. The most familiar thing in de Chirico’s painting was the â€Å"train† which is believed to have a link to his â€Å"childhood train set† and also reminiscent of his father was an engineer in

Growing Importance of the Global Economy Essay Example for Free

Growing Importance of the Global Economy Essay How has the growing importance of the global economy affected your organization’s competitiveness? The global financial crisis continues to be a severe shock to most enterprises. The initial economic downturn, the worst since the Great Depression, has affected almost all sectors of the economy. Everyone and every organization that has felt the pain. The company I work for serve the basic insurance needs of the fast-growing but largely under-served American middle income market. While many insurers have moved up-market, we are firmly committed to helping working families and retirees get basic protection through long-term care, life and supplemental health insurance products, as well as annuities How has your organization responded to this? My company offer consumer’s choice in how they buy insurance products. They can buy direct from Colonial Penn, which has special expertise in direct sales. They can purchase products across the kitchen table through career agents from Bankers Life and Casualty Company, independent agents of our Washington National Insurance Company unit or through its Performance Matters Associates marketing arm, both of which also offer voluntary benefit products to employees at the workplace. What recommendations would you make for your organization to improve its strategic decision-making? I would have consolidated and integrated all operations under a single resource with the goal of delivering improved customer service even as we reduced costs. A streamlined application and straight-through processing system has shortened customer and agent turn-around times and lowered application costs. 2013 CNO Financial Group, Inc. http//www.cnoinc.com

Self assessments in leadership

Self assessments in leadership This assignment comprised of five essays based on the completion of self-assessments on (1) Self-Confidence, (2) Leader-Member Exchange, (3) Trust in Leadership, (4) Job Affect, and (5) Motivation to Lead. Self Confidence. The purpose of this assessment is to assess a leaders generalized self-efficacy. There are many reasons a leader needs self-confidence because being a leader is a very difficult job. According to Pierce and Newstrom (2008), leaders must know their worth and trust themselves without letting their ego, or image get in the way. To accomplish this, leaders must have self-confidence by acting confidently and acknowledge their fears, and avoid thinking in terms of perfection and imperfection. The leadership self-assessment is to determine leadership styles and effectiveness. Many factors were taken into consideration in this self-assessment that allowed for positive and realistic perception when evaluating leadership abilities. This self-assessment was characterized by personal attributes such as assertiveness, optimism, enthusiasm, affection, pride, independence, trust, and the ability to handle criticism and emotional maturity. The score on this self-assessment ranged from 1 through 7, with one indicating the statement is strongly disagreed, and 7 indicating that the statement is in strong agreement. An overall score of 6 or greater indicates a strong sense of self-efficacy with the highest score being a 7. There were seventeen questions on this self-assessment. On the question of making plans work, a score of seven out of a total score of 7 was achieved by this author. When faced with difficult situations, a score of 4 was achieved out of a total of 7 on this question. On this self-assessment this author achieved an overall score of 5.3 which is close to the high of six that is set for this assessment. According to the criteria set for this assessment and in interpreting the scores, it was identified that the one area that needs improvement is with handling difficult situations. This area can be improved by building on self-confidence. According to Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991) self-confidence plays an important role in decision making and in gaining trust. There are two main things that contribute to self-confidence that can help, and they are self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Self-efficacy is gained when mastering skills and achieving goals that matter in the skilled areas. By learning and working hard in a particular area, success will be achieved. This is the type of confidence that leads people to accept difficult challenges, and persist in the face of setbacks. This overlaps with the idea of self-esteem, which in a more general sense takes place when coping with whats going on in a persons life, and the right to be happy. In part, this comes from a feeling that the people around us approve of us, which we may or may not be able to control. It also comes from the sense that we are behaving virtuously, and are competent at what we do, and that we can compete successfully. The action plan that is being set to address needed growth, to improve on this situation, is to take stock of the present, address and focus on the future. A commitment to starting this action plan and staying with it must be achieved so that the needed growth can be realized. In preparing for this journey, a look at what have already been achieved is necessary. To accomplish this, listing the ten best things that was achieved in an achievement log is needed. Among some of the things that should be noted in the achievement log are such things as whether a key role in an important team project was accomplished; whether an achievement was reached in producing the best sales figures in a period; whether something that made a key difference in someone elses life took place, or whether delivery of a project that meant a lot for the company was accomplished. These are some of the things that should be listed. This list should then be reviewed often and time should be spent each week enjoyi ng the success that was achieved, so that improvements will be built to further the growth of this success. Another technique that should be used to address needed growth is to use the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis. The SWOT analysis can be used to take a look at strengths and weaknesses, and from this, consider the opportunities and threats that are being faced. This will lead to thinking about whats important, and what direction to take. Once this is accomplished, goals must be set which must be measured by success. By hitting on the targeted goals that are set, and coupled with self-confidence, key factors in enhancing growth areas will eventually be achieved. The leadership self-assessment is very helpful in identifying areas that are needed for improvement since these areas directly relate to leadership growth. Interpreting the scores provide an awareness of a leaders worth because every leader must know their worth and trust them without letting their ego or image get in the way. This is one area that needs improvement because recognizing a leaders strengths will help to compensate for any weaknesses. The need to have the capacity to distinguish between perceived skills, and what the job requires are important as well. The findings from the self-assessment will help in recognizing areas that need improvement to enhance a leaders ability which will lead to becoming an outstanding leader. This will result in sound decision making, planning, organizing, directing, and controlling by the leader. Leader-Member Exchange This self-assessment is to assess the leader-member exchange relationship. Seven statements were provided that required the follower in a group to think of a situation for which there is a leader and indicate the degree to which there is agreement, or disagreement. The purpose of this assessment is to determine trust in leadership and team performance. There are three aspects of leadership that are explored in this assessment, fairness, trust, and ethical behavior. A score of 6 or greater indicates that there is a high quality leader-member exchange relationship with the leader. A low score of two or less suggests that there is a low quality leader-member exchange relationship with the leader. On this self-assessment this author scored 6.5 out of a total of 7. The score that was achieved on this self-assessment suggests that this author, the follower, has a high-quality leader-member exchange relationship with the leader. This score has connected to key concepts that are presented in the text. For example, recent evidence conducted by Wayne, Shore, Linden, 1997, suggests that followers who experience a high quality leader-member evidence exchange relationship may help their leader by carrying out their required role activities and by engaging in good citizenship behaviors. The follower will go beyond their expected role requirements in exchange for the benefits provided by the leader in the exchange process. The action plan that is set to address needed growth areas is to seek out probing questions, such as what makes a follower unique in the organization, and identify any accomplishments that will make the follower proud of. Reflecting on the most important work-related values, and figuring out values that are met, and those that are not met, will help improve needed growth areas. Probing questions that should be taken into consideration such as whether working with people, data, things, or ideas are satisfying, will help in identifying which mixture would be most satisfying for a follower and why when building growth areas. Since performance reviews are based on past performance, and connected to a supervisors view on an employee, reflecting on the last performance review will help in improving on growth areas that need to be strengthened. To enhance on growth areas, asking good probing questions, and avoiding ones that give only yes, or no answers will assist. This will allow the best way to gain a deeper understanding of what really matters to an employer. Practical application to individual leadership growth: The self-assessment focused on the leader-follower relationship. It introduces the concepts of fairness, trust, and ethical behavior. The self-assessment also focused on leadership as a relationship between leader and follower and extends the leader-member exchange theory to consider issues of organizational justice. The findings on this self-assessment, based on the cores, showed whether trust affects team performance, and whether trust in leadership mediates the relationship between past and future team performance. A score of 6.5 shows that this author has a high quality leader-member exchange relationship with the leader. The lesson learned from taking this self-assessment shows that part of leadership is observational learning done by the subordinates, and it is important that ethical values and conduct are demonstrated at all times. This will help with leadership growth because overall, leaders are expected to be honest, considerate of followers, fair in decisions, and make decisions based on ethics; but none of these aspects constitute ethical leadership by themselves. Gaining experience working in a highly ethical organization can help contribute to ethical leadership characteristics that are carried with the leader from one organization to another. This will be applied in any job that calls for leadership qualities. Trust in Leadership: The purpose of this self-assessment is to evaluate trust in leadership and team performance. Trust can be defined as an expectation or belief that one can rely on another persons actions and words that the person has good intentions. Trust in leadership is meaningful because the leader typically has the most formal power on the team, causing others to be vulnerable to him or her. The self-assessment was based on a score of 1 through 7 with one reflecting that there is strong disagreement with the statement and seven indicating strong agreement. A score of six and above reflects a high level of trust in leadership and team performance. There were nine questions. The overall score on this self-assessment was an 8.2 reflecting that most team members trust and respect their leader. This author scored an 8. The interpretation of this self-assessment score shows that there is a high level of trust in leadership and team performance. This self-assessment provides an awareness that trust in leadership is important. This awareness allows the team to be willing to accept the leaders activities, goals, and decisions, and working hard to achieve them will be their ultimate goal. This self-assessment is connected to key concepts presented in the text because trust in leadership has a positive effect on team performance. Trust in leadership mediates the relationship between past team performance and future team performance. Trust in leadership allows the team members to suspend their questions, doubts, and personal motives and instead throw themselves into working toward team goals. Specific plan of action that needs to be addressed is to identify and enhance growth areas by ascertaining ones present position. This growth area can be enhanced by using a variety of tools including interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, and data that are already available inside the organization. Once the data is collected, it can be used as a benchmark from which to establish short-term, and long-term goals, and objectives for relationship, trust, and team performance. The score, interpretation, and action plan on this self-assessment will be used to enhance and improve leadership skills because as a leader, one of the main priorities is to get the job done, whatever the job is. The findings on this self-assessment will be used to make things happen by knowing what the objectives are and having a plan of action on how to achieve them. This can be done by building a team committed to achieving the objectives and helping each team member give their best efforts. A leader must know their strengths and weaknesses, so that they can build the best team around them. 4. Job Affect: The job affect evaluation is designed to measure mood at work. The purpose of this assessment is to determine how people felt at work, while on the job during the past week. Mood at work, as assessed here is a state-based condition. Therefore, as a state-based condition, people can express different moods, depending upon the state to which they are exposed. On the other hand, mood can be relatively stable across emotional states and across time. Achieving a sore of four and greater on this assessment implies a high level of affect and a score of two or less imply a low level of affect. This authors overall score was a four. The job affect assessment is designed to measure mood at work and to decipher how people felt at work while on the job during the past week. Since this evaluation is a state based condition, people can express different moods, depending upon their state to which they are exposed. Mood can be relatively stable across emotional situations and across time. According to Pierce and Newstrom (2007), leaders who have strong positive affect are characterized as possessing an air of confidence, competency, and optimism. Leaders with strong positive affect transfer their energy to others and to be characterized as leaders of cohesive, productive work groups. The action plan to address needed growth areas specifically comes from confidence. Leaders are more likely to be assertive, decisive, and emotionally stable if they have self confidence. Confidence in self plays an important role in decision-making and in gaining others trust. To enhance growth areas, leaders need to have cognitive ability to formulate suitable strategies, solve problems, and make correct decisions. Effective leaders must have great knowledge about the company, industry, and technical matters. Industry knowledge and aspects of self-confidence can be developed through experience and training. Improvement of traits corresponding to leadership will be implemented. Traits such as drive that leads to achieve more, become ambitious, show and energy, tenacity and initiative are all qualities that need to be developed and nurtured to be a successful leader. Interpreting and evaluating the scores on this job affect self-assessment will help and can be used to improve leadership growth in such areas as traits, skills, and behavior. Since effective leadership is essential in increasing organizational performance, leadership success in todays competitive environment requires the combination of leadership traits, skills and behavior, and the understanding of how these elements interact in the leaders role. Leadership development is not universal; instead, leadership development programs must be tailored to each organization. These findings can be used to invest in leadership training and development that will enhance the competencies and capabilities of existing leaders, ensure leaders have the ability to effectively resolve competitive and economic challenges, and help leaders inspire and engage the organization and its management team to enhance overall business performance. 5. Motivation to Lead This self-assessment focuses on motivation to lead. According to Kirpatick and Locke (1991), leadership motivation involves the desire to influence and lead others, and is often equated with the need for power. People with high leadership motivation think a lot about influencing other people, winning an argument, or being the greater authority. Many people prefer to be in a leadership rather than subordinate role, and this assessment will help leaders know whether they have the ability to be a good leader. Achieving a score of 6 and above for each of the three motivations-to lead dimensions indicates a strong motivation to lead based on that factor. A sore of two or less indicates a weak motivation to lead based on the specified factor. The highest score is a 7 and the lowest a one. On this assessment, this author scored a 4.6 on the affective identify-based motivation to lead. On the non-calculative-based motivation to lead a score of 4 was achieved and a score of 4.8 was obtained on social normative based motivation to lead. An average score of 4.5 was achieved indicating that this author has the traits necessary to become a leader. According to Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991), leadership traits are important preconditions giving an individual the potential to be an effective leader. Traits are an important part of the picture, although each trait accounted for a small portion of the criterion variance. Leadership is proactive rather than passive in nature and while a leaders traits are important tools, the traits must fit the situation. Specific action plan needed to address growth areas in motivating a leader, and key traits that need strengthening were identified in this self-evaluation. Traits such as drive, desire to lead, honesty/integrity, self-confidence, cognitive ability, and knowledge of the business are important traits that need to be strengthened. Other possible characteristics of effective leaders that should be considered for improvement will be charisma, creativity, originality, flexibility, and adaptiveness. Industry knowledge and aspects of self-confidence can be developed through experience and training. Honesty does not require skill-building because it is a virtue that one achieves or rejects by choice. According to Kirkpatrick and Locke (1991), regardless if leaders are born or made or some combination of both, it is clear that leaders are not like other people. Leaders do not have to be great men, or intellectual geniuses. While a leaders traits are important tools, the traits must fit the situation, for instance a strong relationship between intelligence and leadership exists because a person does not emerge as a leader simply by possessing key leadership traits. Confidence in the self plays an important role in decision-making. By gaining others trust and developing self-confidence, leaders are more likely to be assertive, decisive, and emotionally stable. Effective leaders must be proactive. They must make choices and take action that will lead to change instead of reacting to events or waiting for things to happen. They must show a high level of initiative. .

Free Essays on Invisible Man: Invisibility :: Invisible Man Essays

Invisibility in Invisible Man Invisibility is usually taken to the extreme effect of truly being transparent, unseen by anyone and is often depicted in society as the hero, going behind the enemy's back to complete his mission. In Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man this view of invisibility is turned around so that a man is in plain sight of everyone but do to a lack of observation nobody recognizes what he accomplishes. After beginning the novel as a man who stays quietly out of the way by doing what he is told, he is forced to leave and mold his "power" into another use. This change puts him now into a position into which he most relates to societies concept of invisibility, one who fights for fairer rights with still no one taking notice of him. Our nameless hero takes us on a journey that extends both concepts of an invisible pacifist and aggressor. The first "form" of our main character that we see is an anxious college student who only wishes to please his superiors and do as they ask. Seemingly the perfect student, an incident occurs with a College Board member and involves the passive use of our narrator's invisibility which infuriates the school's principal. The disagreement that followed included this statement " Power doesn't have to show off. Power is confident, self-assuring, self-starting and self-stopping, self-warming and self-justifying. When you have it you know it" which is stated by the school's Principal Dr. Bledsoe (Ellison 143). The first portion of the quote is Bledoe's idea of invisibility and what the narrator will eventually learn which is that having power and invisibility can coincide with each other. The continuation of the quote just continues to further extend on how one can be "invisible" and successful as long as they have these basic ideas like self-assurance and self-justification. This di scussion with Bledsoe opens the narrator's eyes to the real world and shows that being right doesn't mean you have power and without power you are nobody and remain invisible. A changing point in the main character's eyes occurs when his moral uprightness takes a turn and he sees that in order to succeed you may need to give up morals for support. After making an impassioned speech in front of a crowd, he is offered a job by communists to do the same for them but turns it down.

Villains of the Christian Bible

In the first half of the ancient epic of Beowulf, the eponymous protagonist portrays the traditional and conventional ideals of a morally righteous hero: good, seemingly fearless, bold and daring, loyal to his nation, strong in body and spirit, and willing to become a martyr for justice. As a king in the latter portions of the epic, Beowulf is also ideal. Beowulf is a great warrior himself, and thus could be respected without reservations by his greatest soldiers. Beowulf’s reputation as a warrior preserved the peace in his own country.Most importantly, Beowulf is a hero-king, willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of his country (as he did in his fight with the dragon). He was also one to avenge unjust deaths. He is willing to risk himself for what he believes to be moral, good, and just. Part of Beowulf’s heroism also lies in his adherence to his moral code, which is strongly tied to his religious convictions. However, Beowulf’s morals and values might not s eem as such from a modern perspective, because Beowulf’s morals and values are strongly tied to the mixed Christian and pagan ideals of the time.There are many references to religion (and thus morality) in the epic. It has strong Christian elements, such as the description of Grendel’s mother as having descended from Cain, one of the early villains of the Christian Bible. However, the epic also has a generous helping of pagan concepts. Beowulf frequently calls upon God, but also speaks of Wyrd, the â€Å"ruler of all. † Pagan practices, such as cremation and drinking of blood, are also depicted. From a modern perspective, Beowulf is a pagan tale with some Christian aspects.

Should Teenagers Be Tried as Adults

* Should teenagers be tried as adults? Opinions differ. Some people argue that teenagers don't know what they are doing when they commit a crime and are still too young to comprehend what is right and wrong. I totally disagree. I am old enough to know that committing a crime is wrong and that if I commit one, I will be punished. Anyone who says teens can't tell right from wrong is either too old to remember what being a teenager is like or they are a teenager who has committed a crime and don't want to be tried as an adult. In either case, they are wrong. All teens know that killing is wrong, yet they do it anyway and get away with a light sentence because of their age. Even if a teen didn't know it was wrong, it doesn't mean it's right. They should still be punished. If they aren't, they will think that crimes are okay and continue to commit them. Teens today don't fear the law because they don't think they will get caught. And if they do, they know they have a good chance of getting off because they are tried as teens and not adults. We have to get tougher on crime. There should be a law that everyone over eleven years old will be tried as adults. That way more teens would be discouraged from committing crimes. They would know that murder would get them a very long sentence instead of staying in juvenile hall until they are eighteen. If we want to cut down on teen crime, we have to have tougher laws. ? * I don't think there is any excuse for committing a crime. * i think it depends on the crimes stances. hat if a kid kills their physically abusive parents in those cases there should be special treatment. However crimes of passion and maybe drugs should they should be tried as adults. * Since we're talking about murder cases, I believe that teens should be tried as adults. If not, they are most likely going to repeat the crime knowing that they won't get in any serious trouble. For example, I know people who have stolen things of mine because they figured they were only 10 and there was no one who would really pun ish them if they were caught. Now, at 13 they are still stealing because they think it's okay. Now if you're a teenager, you know that murder is wrong (unless it's in self-defense) so there is no excuse for doing so. * A rising number of juveniles under the age of 18 are not only being charged for crimes as adults, but are serving in adult jails and even serving life sentences. Every state has some mechanism in place that allows juveniles charged with certain crimes to be tried in criminal court as adults. Thousands of children annually are even being â€Å"automatically† transferred to adult criminal court. Much of the change in the laws over the past few decades making it easier to try youths as adults has been in part due to the increase in juvenile crime and public outrage over particularly violent crimes and repeat juvenile offenders. The most common increases in juvenile crime have been noted with respect to gang violence, school shootings, increases in drugs in youth neighborhoods, and even increases in bullying among peers.