Principles and Practices of Effective Leadership Critical Thinking Mod 4 : Leadership Resources - Essay Example

In order to be an effective leader everyone needs to utilize some of the resources that may help in the grooming of personality as well as provide an insight into the way things could be managed effectively. This paper attempts to explore some effective resources that can be utilized for developing and executing an effective leadership. In order to be an effective leader, an individual needs to ascertain the difference between management and leadership and for this purpose the book written by Rosenberg (2009) is my first chosen resource.

This book provides and insight into the basic difference between the managers and the leader, which is that a leader is a person who leads and provides the path instead of supervising individuals (Rosenberg, 2009, p. 40-41). In order to have a more grasp of the concept, I chose the book by Pride, Hughes and Kapoor (2008). This book not only enlists the desirable traits of the leaders that can be utilized for management as well as enlist the values that leaders use as tools to achieve their targets and objectives (Pride, Hughes, & Kapoor, 2008, p. 247-248). The third resource that I found helpful in learning about leadership is the book by Kimble, Hildreth & Bourdon (2008).

This book provides a description of how the leadership is considered within a community. This book will be helpful in understanding the views and opinions of community of being a leader thus enabling in coping with the expectations and perception of people while leading them. While seeking more knowledge regarding the effective leadership, I came along the proceedings of the International Scientific Conference conducted in 2011. It provided an insight on the individual personality, like demographics, behavioral traits, skills and abilities that may help in the prediction of the effectiveness of leadership (International Scientific Conference on Industrial Systems, 2011, p. 417-418) In order to have a critical analysis of the leadership, I studied the book by Andre (2009).

In this book, the movement of the scholars’ attention from the leadership trait towards leader’s behavior has been discussed. And thus it helped in the assessment of what behaviors lead to an effective leadership (Andre, 2009, p. 311-312) In order to lead people, a leader must have the capacity to motivate them. So, to have a through overview of motivation and the techniques which might help in keeping individuals motivated, I came across three books. The book by Swansburg (1996) provided me the insight into the concept (Swansburg, 1996, p. 442-443). But the further in depth analysis was provided in the book by Forgas, Williams, & Laham, 2005.

Now that the concept is quite extensively covered in these two resources, in order to explore motivation can be translated into workers; I studied the book by Roussel, Swansburg, & Swansburg, 2006. Since motivation is more often characterized as the trait of an efficient leader, therefore studying the work of Manning and Curtis (2003) provided me the insight into the characteristic of being self motivated. To have a further glance of the persona of a leader, I came across the work of Malloch & Porter-O’Grady.

They have provided a detailed description of the way a leader recognizes his identity, needs and must have a strong