Five Effective Leadership Qualities - Assignment Example

? Five Effective Leadership Qualities Introduction The term leadership is used to refer to the process of influencing followers in order to attain aims and objectives of an organization or a system. This definition of leadership contains certain elements that are necessary for an individual to act as a leader (Rowe, 2011, p.1). Firstly, a leader can never be recognized as a leader until he/she has certain amount of followers who are motivated to move in the direction pursued by the leader. Secondly, a leader needs to have the ability of influencing others to operate in the direction that is desirable for the betterment of the organization represented by a leader. Lastly, a leader can only be regarded as effective if he/she is able to achieve the organizational aims and objectives. In order to become an effective leader and influence others, an individual requires certain leadership qualities including the quality of being courageous, emotionally intelligent, and able to motivate others, open to challenges and a sound communicator. Body Courage is defined as an individual’s ability as well as willingness to counter fear and taking steps that may seem difficult. Courage is one of the most important qualities a leader should possess as courage is the quality that helps a leader in conducting most of his/her task. A leader is required to perform various activities such as taking risks, getting involved in unknown scenarios, communicating a positive vision of change to followers and without the quality of courage a leader cannot perform any one of these tasks. Any individual can perform tasks and make decisions that are taken on routinely basis and that comply with the culture of an organization. But a leader is one who has the courage to face unforeseen circumstances and take decisions that are novice. A leader has to show courage as a tool to motivate his/her followers because it is the followers who look up to their leaders and if they fail to spot courage in their leader, they will be de-motivated. Winston Churchill is highly regarded for being a courageous leader. He once stated that that courage is the quality due to which an individual is able to stand up and speak for him and for others and it is this quality that enables an individual to take retaliation and face criticism in a positive manner (Warrell, 2013, p.92). Churchill is highly renowned for being a person who had the quality of moral courage as he knew what should be done in a particular scenario, but due to his moral courage he chose to perform activities that are morally correct. Another key quality that individuals need to possess in order to become effective leader is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is a quality that an individual is said to possess when he/she has the ability to not only be aware of his/her own emotions, they should even be aware of emotions experienced by others and he/she should have the ability of controlling emotions and responding to the emotional issues experienced by others. In case of leadership, an emotionally intelligent leader is one who recognizes his/her own emotions and can control those emotions while making decisions and the leader even needs to be aware about the emotional issues experienced by followers in order to help solve those issues in order to motivate followers. According to a research conducting by Bommer during the period of 2005, an emotionally intelligent leader has the ability to positively change the attitudes and behaviors of other individuals. Emotional intelligence is qualities that can help leaders conduct various tasks that are required of him (Ciulla, 2008, p.88). A leader is expected to be a conflict resolver in conflicts that arise between lower level of employees and conflicts that arise within the employees who work at the same level. Emotional intelligence can help leaders identify the grievances that employees of the lower level of the organization have with the decision making level of employees and this can help the leader in negotiating with both the levels of the organization to solve the conflict. Similarly, emotional intelligence can assist leaders in figuring out training needs of employees and this can help the leader in providing and allocating training resources in an effective manner. Motivation is the drive that pushes people into operating in a certain manner in order to achieve certain objectives. A leader is required to perform the task of influencing others and in order to carry out this task; they have to use their ability to motivate their followers. A leader is an individual who has to realize the talents of their followers and employees as these talents are used by leaders to obtain optimum results for their organization. There are various elements that can help leaders in motivating their followers. These elements include both extrinsic and intrinsic elements (Hogg2007, p.382). Extrinsic elements are those when the source used to motivate an individual is located outside the forces of individuals. These sources can include outcomes that can be seen such as rewards as well as outcomes that an individual would want to avoid, such as punishments. A leader can use both punishment as well as rewards in order to influence followers to behave in a particular manner or to stop followers to behave in a particular undesirable manner. Leaders can even tap into internal motivational sources to motivate their followers; these sources are located within the followers. Leaders have no control over these sources since these sources are embedded within the employee, although a leader can influence these sources to obtain favorable outcomes. One of the major tasks that a leader has to perform is to motivate its followers to share information as this information helps in decision making process. According to Hung, internal motivational factors have the ability to persuade individuals to share information as compared to external motivational factors (Hung, 2011, p.426). An individual is regarded as one who is open to experience is an individual who does not avoid change and faces all the challenges and feedback with a positive mind set. A person who is quite open to new experiences has the ability to take up new challenges and ideas. A leader is required to figure out new ways one performing old tasks in order to attain efficiency and effectiveness and to keep the organization up to date (Kouzes, 2012, p.16). A leader is the one who is required to tap into the minds of his/her followers in order to identify new ways of performing tasks. Followers are encouraged to propose ideas if their leaders are ready to listen to them and are even ready to implement these ideas. This even means that a leader should be flexible towards different scenarios and should have the ability to listen to what others have to contribute. A leader needs to shape his/her practices according to the liking of his/her followers in order to set an example for them and in order to operate in compliance with the liking of the followers, leaders need to take feedback from followers and this feedback can help them in making changes to the way he/she operates. According to Draft, the quality of openness to experience is not quite essential to become an effective leader, but the quality is a good predictor of high performers and leaders have to be high performers to set an example for their followers (Draft, 2008, p.101). Communication skills are one of the most important qualities that a leader needs to be in order to operate in an effective manner (Northouse, 2012, p.89). Whether the leader is conducting the task of influencing and motivating others or whether a leader is involved in various roles such as conflict manager role, figurehead role, decision making role, the leader needs to be a sound communicator (Lussier, 2004, p.37). In the prior part of this writing it was stated that a leader needs to tap into the minds of their followers and motivate others by influencing intrinsic sources of motivation, in order to influence these sources a leader has to be a sound communicator. In a research conducted by Ken Blanchard on the most critical skills required to become an effective leader, he figured out that 43% of the respondents believed that communication skills were very significant to become an effective leader (Straw, 2013, p.137). Conclusion Effective leadership is a process which involves influencing others into working hard towards the attainment of organizational aims and objectives. There are various qualities that are required to become an effective leader. Different leaders have different qualities that make them effective during operations. It is not necessary that all the qualities discussed here would be embedded within an effective leader, but these qualities are some of the most important qualities that make an individual an effective leader. These qualities do not operate individually, they are dependent on each other and operate together to make a leader operate in an effective manner. An effective leader is one who is courageous, has the ability to take up new challenges, is a sound communicator, can motivate others and is emotionally intelligent. References Ciulla, J. B. (2008). Leadership at the crossroads. Westport, Conn: Praeger. Daft, R. L., & Lane, P. G. (2008). The leadership experience (4th ed.). Mason, OH: Thomson/South-Western. Hogg, M., & Tindale, S. (2007). Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Group Processes. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Hung, S.-Y., Durcikova, A., Lai, H.-M., & Lin, W.-M. (June 01, 2011). The influence of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on individuals' knowledge sharing behavior. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 69, 6, 415-427. Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2012). The leadership challenge: How to make extraordinary things happen in organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2004). Leadership: Theory, application, skill development. Mason, Ohio?: Thomson/South-Western. Northouse, P. G. (2012). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif: SAGE Publications. Rowe, W. G., & Guerrero, L. (2011). Cases in leadership. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. Straw, J. (2013). The work of leaders: How vision, alignment, and execution will change the way you lead. Warrell, M. (2013). Stop playing safe: Rethink risk : unlock the power of courage : achieve outstanding success. Milton, Qld: Wiley. Read More