Mitt Romney's Presidential Push

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42540300/ns/politics-decision_2012/42542232

Mitt Romney is making his case for a second run at the White House after falling short in 2008 to gain the GOP nomination.  The leadership theory I am using to analyze this article is the Skills approach.  Romney has developed numerous skills through his years as a businessman that he thinks will be beneficial to help give the economy the jump start it needs.  As stated in the article, he has a knack for turning around things that are failing.  The skills model starts with individual attributes.  The first attribute to look at is general cognitive ability.  Romney has not gotten to this point in his life without having intelligence.  He is a businessman and has been involved with government for years.  Through his time in these affairs, he has learned some necessary and very important knowledge on how to succeed in different and sometimes challenging environments.  He displays motivation in wanting to take the White House.  After losing the GOP nomination in 2008, makes him want it just that much more.  He wants to improve the United States and do things that he feels Obama is lacking to do.  He has plans, that if elected, will jump start the government.  The final attribute is personality.  Romney has the personality that allows him to get the support and dollars of thousands, even millions of people.  People can relate to him and the policies he wants.  The next category is competencies.  The first is problem-solving skills.  As previously discussed, he sees a problem (one that just about every American sees) with the economy.  He feels that he has the problem-solving skills necessary to get us back on track.  Anyone who works in government needs to have social judgement skills.  He understands people, what they want and what they are looking for.  He needs to be able to work with people domestically and internationally to be effective and get things done.  Once again, he has been known to bring failing business back to life.  He has the knowledge to implement the appropriate systems.  While the entire economy is very different than one single business, it is certainly a nice base to have.  The final category is leadership outcomes.  In this category there is effective problem solving and performance.  Romney has proven he can solve problems in effective ways, just not at the same scale as the US economy.  His performance shows that he has done the right things and knows the right people to make an initial run at the White House.  Once the race really hearts up we will see how his performance really measures up.

Posted by: Jason Svela