Muhammad by karen armstrong Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Muhammad by karen armstrong - Essay Example Hira outside Mecca where he frequented for meditation. He claimed to have been called to rebuke the pagans of Mecca who worshiped idols and engaged in unclean superstitions and rituals (Armstrong, p. 24). It is noteworthy that when he was growing up as an orphan with his uncle Abu Talib, he was a person of integrity in his business dealings and was truthful. It is said that in Mecca, he was known as Sadiq and Ameen meaning true and trusty respectively. The Quran also gives credit to his upright character by saying that in him there is a perfect example for people to follow in their conduct. The prophet had been sent to reform the pagans in Mecca who had no regard for even the most basic of human rights. They engaged in disputes and long battles over small matters. They did not treat women well and hated the birth of female children to the extent that they would kill or bury them alive. The poor people were voiceless and were exploited through loans that required payment of high interests. There was torture and killing of slaves with no consequence. The Prophet despised slavery. Abuse of human rights, social injustice and worship of the idols in homes and in the house of God built by Abraham, Kabah were the order of the day in Meca. Despite watching helplessly as all this was going on, he refused to bow down to the idols (Armstrong, p. 41). He married Khadijah, an affluent businesswoman for whom he had worked for some time. He was 25 when he married her, something that made him financial stability. He helped free Zaid ibn Harithah, a slave from Khadijah’s house, and adopted him. He paid for an African slave named Bilal and had him freed. Bilal remained with Mohammed for the next 22 years until he died. During all this time, Bilal would eat and dined with the Prophet and was given the role of the Muazzin meaning caller for prayers (Armstrong, p. 57). He always taught forgiveness and compassion. After his return from exile in Medina, he came back

Coaching Leadership Development Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Coaching Leadership Development - Essay Example It may be an informal or a formal process, an informal being one in which a person with greater experience guides the one with lesser experience. Statistics in UK show that 90% companies use coaching and 51% of them consider it to be necessary and crucial for the leadership development process. These skills are often developed and adopted by managers who would influence the organization. (Wooden & Jamison, 2005) A new era brings about rapid changes in the market place and thus organizations and therefore leadership skills have acquired greater importance in the dynamic workplace. Those who employ coaching as a leadership have a greater understanding of themselves usually, since it not only allows them to grow in terms of leading the organization but also to understand their own personality and areas of strengths and weaknesses and work on themselves. (Smith, 1999) Executive coaching is one of the components of coaching that seems to be effective and a good investment of time and mone y. Competencies that are developed prove to be long term and effective and further inferences can easily be deduced as to what needs to be done to further enhance the competencies. (Dessler, 2012) Also organizations are engaging in downsizing and they have a flatter structure than before since the world is moving to a place where hierarchical structures are considered less effective and lesser manpower is required in organizations. Therefore even though it has its benefits, however, senior managers would be removed more easily and growth opportunities are better but if new managers cannot fill in the shoes of the previous managers and lack the leadership qualities then the entire organization will show a downward trend. Coaching can help build these abilities. (Warrenfeltz,... This paper approves that there are certain alternative approaches such as leadership action teams. This requires being put in situations with teams to perform in situations which are above their current capability and one person is the leader who will guide the team to success or failure and basically guide the team through the entire situation. This is a new method that has achieved a lot of success because the workplace is dynamic and situations keep changing and leaders always have to be ready. There may not necessarily be time to coach them to reaching their goals, and so learning by doing or action learning is useful in situations where the organization is pressed for time and money and the managers have a great deal of workload already. This essay makes a conclusion that a last leadership development tool that is important is the multi-rater feedback method or a 360 degree feedback method. Feedback is always an effective tool for improvement, since you are always guided and critiqued as to where you are going wrong and where you are going right, and you can go in that direction accordingly. However, feedback from different sources is even more effective as you get an overall perspective of your standing, not just from your mentor, or your coach, or your employees, but from all of the aforementioned. This helps to improve performance. However, this feedback needs to be continuous if it is to be effective. Also, one can never be sure if they encompass the entire organization’s perspective in their 360 degree appraisal and one which is free from bias because everyone has a different way of looking at things and not necessarily the correct one.