Marie Ragghianti is a woman who can be depicted as a public leader displaying courage and moral leadership. Marie headed the Tennessee Board of Pardons and Paroles. She maintained the seat for only fourteen months after which she was fired on August 3, 1997, by Ray Blanton, the Governor on the accusation of numerous improprieties such as improper billing of the state and crippling the procedures of the correlations department. However, the real reason for her dismissal was the fact that she could not withstand the high levels of corruption in the office of the governor involving bribery for clemencies. She was a very courageous woman with strict moral values in leadership (Menzel, 2012).
Ragghianti displayed great courage in a number of ways. She did not give up on her fight against corruption in the governor’s office even after losing her job. Despite the fact that the governor was her senior she fearlessly went against him even with a lot of pressure from the administration. She was determined to wipe out the vice and enlisted the help of the FBI. She took the risk of testifying secretly against the administration. On the other hand, her moral leadership is depicted, when she fights for the common good and refuses to support the governor in extorting the public. Her conscience was clear regarding the accusations leveled against her and that is why she could courageously fight the vice.
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There were many pressures on Marie Ragghianti as she sought for justice. She experienced organizational opposition, as she refused to play along with the governor’s administration. She was also sacked from work. In addition, she underwent a risky venture when she decided to give her testimony to a grand jury in secrecy. Despite all these obstacles, Ragghianti was able to achieve her goal at the end, because she knew that she was fighting for the right course. She also had a clean conscience about all the accusations leveled against her. She enlisted the help of the FBI, which helped her a lot as she could not have done it alone (Menzel, 2012).
There are a number of mistakes that Ragghianti made and for which she took responsibility. The first was when she refused to resign from her job to fight the administration from outside leading to her being sacked by the governor and being charged in court for numerous crimes. She later admitted that she had not figured out the impact her boldness would have had on her life and career, but she was happy that she had won the fight for a good course (Bowerman, Wart, 2011).
There are various traits that Marie Ragghianti displayed to demonstrate servant leadership. First, it is the desire to serve people. She felt that she had to do everything to stop the extortion of citizens no matter what it costs. Second, it is the call to ensure the highest priority needs of people are taken care. She knew that eradicating corruption was a priority for most citizens for proper management of public funds. Also selling pardons to notorious criminals was a danger to public safety and, therefore, she declined to agree with the governor’s recommendations about the same. Third, it is the will to support other people’s growth as human beings. By ensuring justice was provided for all people including the criminals, she helped in making these people recognize and learn from their mistakes in order to lead better lives in the future.
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To add on, as a servant leader she ensured practices that were favorable to the least privileged in the society. She displayed this trait when she refused to allow for bribery, which involved criminals such as murderers buying their pardon. By this, she ensured that the least privileged such as the poor were not at risk from harassment by wealthy individuals in the society. This also helped the poor to achieve justice for crimes committed against them.
Awareness is another trait exhibited by the leader. She acquired enough information that showed the involvement of the governor in the crimes and this knowledge helped her to defend her case with boldness. In addition, Marie Ragghianti had the trait of foresight. She got into the mission of fighting the deep-rooted corruption in the administration with the knowledge of the great good that the success of the mission would bring to the state and the public as a whole. This made her not to turn back despite the pressures mounted upon her (Milstead, Furlong, 2006).
Various lessons have been obtained from this research. There is a need for leaders to resolve the conflict between mental creativity and instinct. This is crucial in ensuring an effective management of both resources and people for organizational as well as personal success. They need to be able to identify the reasons that may make them do the wrong thing despite being aware of what the right thing is supposed to be. This will help them to be better servant leaders with courage and moral inclination (Daft, 2010). A leader should also condemn and fight social evils so long as the results will be beneficial to the masses. This is regardless of the personal consequences such boldness may bring to their lives.
