COMM SCI 198: Leadership

When researching a leader, your best bet will be finding books related to your leader or credible websites.

You most likely won't be able to find scholarly articles related to the specific leader. The exception to this might be if you choose a president- there are some specific articles talking about presidential leadership styles and might mention the president you chose. Otherwise, someone extremely well-known and thoroughly researched like Martin Luther King Jr. would maybe have articles about him. Instead of searching for the name of the leader you chose, you might think about instead searching for something more broad related to them. What did you leader represent? What was your leader involved in? 

If you pick a leader who is someone personal to you- like a coach you had in high school, you won't be able to use sources for this aspect of the assignment. Talk to your instructor if this is the case for you. 

Example: MLK

 If my leader I chose was Martin Luther King Jr., I might try and do a search for "non violence AND leadership AND martin luther king" in Search@UW. You can view an example of my search results here. There were results disscussing his activism, speeches, and even an article about his specific response to the Cuban Missile crisis. The  summary of that article states,

"The paper reflects on the elements currently available for the interpretation of this piece of evidence and, with regard to the relationship between the two leaders, it argues that the way Kennedy handled the Cuban crisis may well have played a role in Dr. King’s reassessment of Kennedy’s evolving qualities of leadership - a view that King will further develop over the course of 1963 (in the most fruitful months of their cooperation) and will express after Dallas."

This could be a good talking point describing how Martin Luther King's leadership style influenced others.