Principles of Leadership - Literature review Example

Running Head: PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP Student name: Student number: Course title: Lecturer: Date: Principles of Leadership There are numerous ways in which leadership can be defined. According to Prosser, 2010, he defined leadership as a process in which a person influences his followers (team) to accomplish certain tasks so that they can achieve objectives of his/her team. Rothstein (2010) defined leadership as a process of motivating a group or team of people in order to achieve common objective or goal. The process of leadership can be approached in lots of ways. First, a leader can influence his team through skill application and knowledge and this so is known as process leadership. Secondly, is trait leadership where a leader uses his traits to influence a group or team to accomplish certain task. Both of these leadership processes have common characteristics which facilitate effectiveness of motivating the team. Ryback (2008) ironed out a number of leadership principles; these principles include; the first principle is a situation where a one gets to analyze his personalities and trying to improve on those attributes. This can be attained through practice; in addition, the principle is also achieved by reading inspirational books, magazines and journals. The second principle is in a case where a leader is technically proficient, when a person is said to be proficient, he will be able to learn how to deal with his subordinates without any conflict. This therefore will enable the leader to motivate his workers appropriately. International companies such as MacDonald has effective leaders who are continuously seeking responsibilities and facing challenging task such as introducing new products to the new market. Such principles are known to boost the company’s performance. Thirdly is where a leader is in a position to make sound and timely decisions for the company. A leader is always believed to be ahead of time as he is supposed to plan and give realistic decisions. The current global market which is targeted by many competing companies requires leaders who are in a position to act immediately on the necessary decision and be flexible to implement the necessary changes. Most employees tend to trust what they see and not what they hear, to effectively use this principle, the leaders should act as good examples to the subordinates of the company. They should keep the employees well informed, care for their wellbeing and listen to their complaints and complements. Due to the rapid change in lifestyle, mode of business and increased competition in the market, leaders are forced to adopt emotional and social intelligent way of motivating employees. They should address the key points facing the employees and the necessary action. Effective leadership in every organization depends entirely on the emotional intelligence of a leader. Due to the fact that the economy has become more global it will require successful leaders to develop strong and mature intellectual skills which will facilitate the understanding, negotiating and empathizing with the employees in an organization. Emotional intelligence is very important in every leader since it helps the leader to understand the psychological perception of employees towards work, what motivates them and how to corporate with them while working. Furthermore, emotional intelligence is an essential requirement in today’s workforce because of the rapid change in working environment. Currently, autocratic type of leadership is not applicable simply because the leader is given all the authority to dictate his subordinates. In this regard therefore, democratic type of leadership is rated the best type that a company should employ. This effective method of leadership will help an organization to achieve its desired goals in time and also compete effectively in the market. On the contrary, there are other leadership styles that not used in any way by leaders, namely, emotional and social intelligence. John Maxwell, the leading psychologist in leadership, believes that health leadership is all about influence. Leaders can only gain these influential powers by studying and becoming an expert on both emotional and social intelligence. This will not only help the leaders to understand the feelings of their followers during interactions but also get to understand what to be done in order to change the negative attitude to the positive. These elements are sometimes difficult to be applied in real life situations but it can always be possible when there is a complete appropriate awareness of it or even through assistance from experts. Another difficult task which leaders face is the issue of differentiating between emotional intelligence and social intelligence. According to Goleman (2009) emotional intelligence can be described as a form of social intelligence which is mainly concerned with identifying and monitoring the inner feelings, attitudes and emotions of an individual which can be useful in controlling and shaping the actions of that individual. On the other hand, social intelligence is the way you behave; interact with others, the ability to convince and the way a person reacts to the surrounding environment. Social intelligence can briefly be described as the ability of applying emotional intelligence on our social relations with others. Emotional intelligence Research carried out by key psychologist such as Ryback (2008) is evident that emotional intelligence is the main pillar in leadership. He (Ryback) emphasizes that emotional intelligence is one of the important aspect in leadership because it is the combination of various competences. These skills assist the leaders not only to control their emotions but also to analyze and understand the emotions of his team making it simpler for them to influence the followers to accept the proposed decision. According to Nadler (2011) emotional intelligence is a model of various dimensions which helps a leader(s) in the following ways. Firstly, it enables a leader to have confidence on his leadership and capability of knowing the attitudes of his followers. Secondly, emotional intelligence enables a leader to have skills for self-regulation. This is also important has it will help him to posses the expected behaviors which automatically create trustworthiness, conscientiousness and the ability to handle change in an organization. Thirdly, emotional intelligence enables a leader to motivate his group towards achievement of the desired goals. Through emotional intelligence, a leader can easily unite the group so as to work together towards the achievement of their common goal. Advantages of emotional intelligence in leadership Emotional intelligent leaders are flexible and ready to adopt new strategies of carrying out the work. Most of these leaders are ready to delegate work to employees with capabilities of handling the work. This is essential for individual development especially in the side of employees. Furthermore, delegation helps in preparing employees for succession in the company. Many organizations with no succession plan tend to fail whenever a key person leaves the company. It is this reason which requires the leaders to be very intelligent in order to identify employees with leadership traits so that they can be developed through provision of development courses. Emotional intelligence leaders are in a position to influence the workers to have the right picture on their minds on what an organization believes to be great performance. This will also help in couching employees to be the desired change for the company. Every success for any organization depends on employees’ performance. In some other cases, organization structure plays an important role because it positioned the company well in the market which eventually improves competitiveness in the company. Many leaders who are emotionally intelligent have are in a position to create a challenging work environment which allows the employees to continually learn and get excited in the work place. Social intelligence is relevant for effective leadership Through social intelligence a leader would be aware on how others feel towards the decision or any other proposed issue. This is important because the managers and employees will relate like brothers and sisters. This competency is very essential in a place of work. Many workers tend to understand one another and therefore it facilitate the sharing of ideas and strategies. Furthermore, the new employees will benefit from good orientation provided by senior employees. According to Middlewood (2009) social intelligence is very important to leaders because it act as a change catalyst i.e. introducing and pushing change to be implemented for the desired or better results. Advantages of social intelligence to leaders Leadership competencies, as explained by Goleman, (2009) are very essential when developing the employees and it discourages the habit of employees moving to other companies. From his research, it shows that leaders with no social intelligence tend to lose more employees as compared to leaders who are expert in application of social intelligence while exercising leadership in their companies. Some of the key findings in this research are that leaders with strong competences of social intelligence make high profit with amazing financial growth in the company while those leaders who emphasizes on self-mastery competencies tend to lose not only customers but also decline in performances thus affecting the growth of the company. Sensitive institutions like banks require leaders who are expert in social intelligence so that they can identify departments which are weak and take the necessary actions. Leaders with self-mastery competences alone find it more difficult to run a banking institution and this shows the advantages of social intelligence competence in leadership. It is evidenced that social places such as churches require leaders with social intelligence so as to satisfy parishioners. In conclusion, a leader can also be faced with drawbacks. Social and emotional intelligence has three leadership skills that affect leaders in terms of what they play in the organization. These skills are very vital because it controls the way a leader expresses his feedbacks on performance. It is expected that leaders lead his followers with wisdom; a leader is a man and is prone to challenges. a leader should not even at one time show ill motives on the performance of his follower, he always talk good of any activity that is performed. This habit helps the leader to decode and encode the message in the right manner and thus controlling and regulating the behavior of the employee. A leader should posses’ emotional and social skills. These skills comprises of emotional/social expressiveness. This helps in controlling the behaviors and other non-verbal expressions which then helps to communicate certain information. The second skill is social/emotional sensitivity which helps the leader to read the moods of an individual and finally, emotional/social control skill which deals majorly on the natural behaviors of an individual. All the three skills have been proven to deliver quality results if leaders and followers in the company works towards a common goal, leaders in different departments ensure that the employees are motivated continuously through rewards, praising of the work done and financial rewards. References Libert, D. B. (2010). How to Harness the Power of Social Media for growth of the Business. John Wiley and Sons Rothstein, M. G. (2010). Self-Management and Leadership Development. Edward Elgar Publishing Middlewood, D. (2009). The Principles of Leadership. SAGE Publications Ltd Nadler, R.S. (2011). Leading with Emotional Intelligence. McGraw-Hill Professional Prosser, S. (2010). Leadership and Organisation Development. Radcliffe Publishing Stewart, N. A. (2009). Leadership: A Reflection. Trafford Publishing Ryback, G. (2008). Putting Emotional Intelligence to Work. Boston: Butterwork-Heinemann. Goleman, W. (2009). Working with social intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Read More