Understanding Leadership Qualities - Essay Example

Leadership Quiz Leadership Qualities There are three more common qualities of leadership are integrity, job knowledge and people-building skills.Leaders use different ways to leverage their strengths in the workplace. As a leader, I rely very much on actions to achieve the desired results. This is an indication that my leadership style is within the Dominance Dimension where leaders concentrate on action and control to achieve desired results. To enhance my personal leadership skills, I engage in frequent assessment of my strengths and involve other people during the decision making process. The ideas suggested by different people within the organization are usually structured to facilitate faster accomplishment of tasks. In case of conflicting ideas, I prefer dealing with each idea at a time by assessing the situation and selecting an appropriate leadership role that can handle these ideas in an effective manner. There are many challenges in an intercultural environment. Any leader who exercises his leadership skills within a culturally diverse environment should be in a position to recognize the presence of cultural variables. By doing so, one can understand the influence of these variables on communication and determine an appropriate strategy that should be adopted to enhance improved communication. As a leader, I believe that there is great need to identify ways that can maximize or improve intercultural communication strengths, and reduce potential difficulties. I also experience a lot of challenge when dealing with issues that relate to gender differences. However, I feel that this challenge can be addressed by clarifying diversity and having well defined roles for all members in the organization. To improve my leadership competencies and effectiveness, I believe that there is great need to be a risk-taker. By doing so, I will be in a position to make bold decisions and execute them in the right way. It is also important to be self-disciplined and know how to act appropriately in different situations. Quiz 2. Transformational Leadership & the Leader’s Leader The definition of transformational leadership is a kind of leadership that stimulates and inspires followers to achieve extraordinary goals and objectives, as the leader himself develops his leadership capacity. In other words, the impetus of leadership is twofold; one is achieving extraordinary task and development of a leader. This kind of leadership differs from other theories of leadership that are transactional in nature. In transactional leadership, leaders attain the desired outcome through social exchange which is not the case with transformational leadership. Hence, in this type of leadership, the leader relies totally on his leadership prowess rather than using social exchange which enables him to lead others. Transformational leadership is about thinking and understanding the problem in an organization. It is also about thinking, understanding and setting the goals for employees which are challenging but can be achieved through persistent hard work and effort. This is important because without the challenging goals, employees or workers would not be motivated to extend their full effort to work. This achievement of challenging goals helps the leader to develop his leadership qualities and makes him better equipped to achieve hard tasks. Transformational leadership facilitates and redefines people’s vision and mission. It also renews people’s commitment and restructures their systems to accomplish a certain goal. Thus, it is a mutual relationship that stimulates and elevates follower to become leaders. In addition, it may also convert leaders to become moral agents. Transformational leadership should therefore be grounded on moral foundations. Transformational leadership has been renowned for fostering capacity development to bring higher personal level of commitment among followers in relation to the organizational objectives. For transformational leadership to take place, leaders must elevate and broaden interests for their employees. It may also occur after acceptance and awareness of purpose and mission for the specific group has been generated. The leaders may also stir his or her employees and look beyond self interests to cater for the group. Mutual capacity and commitment help in leading greater productivity and additional efforts. The major components of transformational leadership include intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration, inspirational motivation and idealized influence. All of these components play an important part in the work place which is ridden by problems such as employee dissatisfaction, poor performance and low morale. In this case, as the honorable committee is aware of the problems facing the organization. Therefore, it is recommendable that the manager should use his leadership style which can have beneficial impact on the workers by helping them to feel encouraged as they work. Transformational leadership allows the people in charge to challenge the status quo and allow subordinates to innovate new ideas. This style of leadership does not only identify the problem, but also provides the alternatives which are useful in solving the problem. This is summed under the intellectual stimulation component. This type of leadership is really necessary for an organization as employees express their discomfort with their current supervisor without fear. The major complaint against the supervisor may be that he is too rigid and not ready to change. In fact, such leaders do not like people innovating and even if their effort yielded good results, he wants them to go by the rules of the book. These leads to boredom and employees start to openly criticize the way their immediate supervisor is leading them. In order to mitigate such a problem, it is rational that the HR committee adopts transformational leadership approach to help in solving the problems. This will in turn allow the workers to innovate and go about doing things in more innovative fashion which will profit the firm. This can be very handy for the entire firm in that it helps in reducing costs. The empirical research also shows that another very important aspect of the transformational leadership is the idealized influence which is simply the trust people have in their managers or leaders. Transformational leadership builds and maintains mutual trust among employees and their supervisor. In transformational leadership, workers are given more autonomy and voice in making decision concerning them. This makes them feel important since they know that their manager cares about them. This builds a harmonious relationship between employees and top management. In order to create an atmosphere of trust, the manager can give workers more autonomy, interact with them and create a situation of idealized influence eliminate misconceptions about their relationship with the management. Transformational leadership encourages employee motivation in that in situations where employee motivation is low, it affects their commitment towards work. The management should convey the vision of the firm to employees by stating what the firm aims to achieve in the future. This will tell employees how much effort they need to put in to achieve not only their personal goals, but also the goals of their department and organization as a whole. In order to achieve these goals, the supervisor should allow them to innovate and work in a way which is more productive and beneficial to the organization. Transformational leadership will also develop the leadership capacity of this supervisor, as he will achieve a target in the given timeframe. This will grow him in his leadership capacity and HR department can use him at different levels, giving him further complicated tasks which will be beneficial for the both the person and the organization. It will also be good for the HR department as they will then be saved from the time and expense of external recruitment, which can be more painful than promoting a person who is already working in the organization and knows the culture of the organization and what does the organization expects from him. The leader of the firm should ensure that the firm promotes peaceful co-existence between management and subordinates in that opportunities should be presented on equal basis without discrimination since the organization is comprised of people from diverse areas. The approach of transformational leadership calls for supervisor to show more individualized concern to his subordinates by understanding each employee of the organization. They should not show any signs of favoritism to any worker, which might enhance the conflict and worsen the situation. A good way to deal with conflicts in an organization is to treat people in way that gives them maximum satisfaction or reducing their discomfort. Therefore, the management should issue notices to all supervisors giving them clear instruction in black and white to take into account the attitude and mindset of the people or employees before taking any decision. However, this style of leadership can also have some weakness therefore, supervisors should be careful in order to make sure that disadvantages of transformational leadership do not outweigh its advantages. The major disadvantage of this type of leadership is that the leader can lose the control of workers. If the employees are allowed to innovate too much, there can be instances of discipline violations and unethical practices. This is really bad, as this puts the reputation of the organization at stake and can lead to bad name. Similarly, transformation leadership asks for individualized concern for different worker. This can create misconception and some employees may think that they are not being treated like their colleagues and this can lead to conflicts and fights among the workers working in the same department or product line. The other problem with transformational leadership is inspirational motivation. Inspirational motivation can turn into a problem when employees always look at their leader for inspiration and the leader fails to inspire them. This will be a big problem as it may lead to disruption of work since they might not strive to work. Therefore, management should be aware that the approach of transformational leadership works where there is strong vigilance and worker’s control is effective. Transformational leadership principles are important for any leader to adopt since he or she will be in a position to control the resentment of worker, make them more productive and hence improve their morale which will improve the performance of the organization. There is need to effectively control workers if this style is to be successful. This kind of leadership is preferred than Lead exchange model since it challenges managers, leaders or supervisors to be more vigilant on employees and ensure strict quality control to make sure that increased productivity is not at the cost of decreased quality. Employees should be informed regularly who their leader is. Transformational leadership tends to value subordinates unlike the lead member exchange model where subordinates are manipulated by the leader or the manager if they do not follow what they want. Quiz 3. Leadership effectiveness According to Drucker, popularity is not leadership; nor is it style or personality. Leadership is results”. To produce results a leader must demonstrate some level of competency. A leader is a person who influences a faction or group of people towards the attainment of a goal. It is important to understand the term leader by its significance in that a leader is the one who goes first and leads by example; so that others are motivated to follow, him, and not just any individual with a position of influence. Visionary leaders have the ability of focusing on their stated vision. A leader as a problem solver should have the ability to devise solutions to challenges facing his followers immediately they arise. A leader as a team builder advises his team and unites them in order to attain a common goal. To be a leader, one must have followers and these followers must have trust in their leader. His past deeds as an individual might determine his level of influence on his followers and if he is worthy of their trust. He is looked up to as an expert in the field on which he leads based on solving problems, team building, and coming up with plans and guidelines that will form the roadmap by which his followers will operate with. There are leaders who are task-oriented, goal-oriented and others are people oriented. What makes a leader is not necessarily intelligence or skills though they are threshold capabilities and are attributes that supplement quality leadership. Getting the best leader for the correct field is more art than discipline. A common denominator cuts across all good leaders and that is emotional intelligence. This differs from one leader to another and this pinpoints the idea that different situations call for different types of guidance. Without emotional intelligence, even with the best training, one will not make a great leader (Northouse, 2011). Leadership and management must go hand in hand and they complement each other. A good leader must have knowledge and skills concerning what he has been delegated to manage and on the other hand, a good manager must have great leadership capabilities in leading his team to achieve the goals and objectives that have been set. Visionary leaders have the aptitude of accessing and holding an idea yet to be manifested and have the familiarity of the inventive process, discipline, strength of will and enthusiasm to sustain that vision via the entire creative course and at the same time lead others into the materialization of that vision. Creativity is about appreciating the concepts overriding the creative process, which governs our creative deeds. Visionary leaders are able to associate the entire globe as it is and the environment that will be influenced by that vision. Quiz 4. Leadership Learders are shepherds, goes the customary considering, securing their herd from barbarous surroundings. Not thus, say the creators. Leaders who positively tend to their supporters open them to the terrible actuality of their condition and request that they mold a reaction. As opposed to giving individuals false confirmation that their best is adequate, leaders demand that individuals surpass themselves. Also as opposed to cover up clashes, leaders energy question to the surface. Most empiric studies depended upon are focused around perspectives communicated by pioneers on what makes them effective. Anyhow such "reporting toward oneself," however candid, is prone to miss basic components of which the pioneer is uninformed. A significant shortcoming in investigation of political pioneers is primary stress on conduct rather than the brain which decides conduct. This appears to be likewise the case with the investigation of business pioneers, with conduct and courses of action of the brain being stirred up. Organizations are force fields, obliging some Machiavellianism. Discourse on business pioneers appears to impart confide in the capability of most people to make themselves into in any event great political pioneers, which describes a "constructive brain science" and against elitist society, yet is not backed by deeper perspectives of liberated intelligence and of authority. most genuine of all, lost in the book is a radical possibility methodology raising the inquiry whether what made a great pioneer in the past may not fit the prerequisites of both business and political initiative later on, when fundamentally novel social, investment, geopolitical and innovative substances oblige "standard moving" pioneers of a novel sort. The contrasts between business and political initiative are vast, yet numerous issues are comparable. Imparted studies and trades of perspectives may help to development the study and change of both business and political authority, as required - all the more direly so in appreciation to political administration provided for its fairly inadmissible execution. References Northouse, P. (2011). Introduction to leadership: Concepts and practice. New York, NY: SAGE Publishers. Goffee, R. and Gareth J. Why should everyone be led by you. Harvard: Harvard Business School.200, Print Read More