Summary of Chapter 1-4 - Essay Example

The Art of Leadership in its first chapters sets out the groundwork on how leadership needs to function to be a success, and how many different things must all fall into place at the same time for leaders to be truly effective. Leaders have many things to balance, but as the text says there are two essential dimensions of leadership, care for people and care for production. If either of these is lacking too much, a workplace cannot function. If, for instance, a leader has too great a concern for people but not enough concern for production, then he or she may be inclined to let their followers get away with things they should not be able to get away with and that can damage production, such as missing inappropriate amounts of time from work, goofing off too much etc.

If, however, the leader has too much concern for production, and not enough concern for people, then he or she will grate on the staff and eventually become an ineffectual leader, because a leader without people to follow and actually do the tasks effectively is obviously useless in every way. One of the most important aspects of this text so far is its clear delineation of the many factors that make up leadership. The first and most important thing for any leader to have is Vision (25). Without vision, or a strong sense of purpose, the rest of the abilities will be useless, because vision gives them all a focus to work through.

This, however, is not enough. A leader must have many important personal characteristics such as vitality, enthusiasm and charisma, as well as a good helping of self-confidence to enable them to do their job correctly. But they must also make sure that none of these facets of leadership go too far, for instance, self-confidence that becomes arrogance can be a problem, and concern for others must balance any self confidence to make sure it does not become too extreme. One of the final things that this text stressed is the fact that a leader cannot do anything without the people he or she works with.

To be an effective leader a person must be able to foster an incredibly high amount of interpersonal trust, without this communication will break down, people will not tell each other what they need to know, and people will end up undercutting themselves and each other in the work place. This means that you have to foster excellent working relationships with people to be able to do your job as a leader effectively. Probably the most important thing this text gave in its opening chapters is the constant ability to check one’s self and learn what kind of leader one currently is and how to improve on those areas.

It gives tests for everything from interpersonal trust scale to leadership styles to leadership qualities. These tests have helped me evaluate myself as a leader and realize that there are certainly some areas I could improve on. One of the things I want to focus most on in the future is connecting my vision to actions that are carried out in my immediate surroundings, and for every task question if it fits in to the vision, and should thus be done immediately, or whether it fails to fit in to my vision, and thus should probably be altered before going further.

One of the ideas that I want to explore in the future is ways that I can improve trust between me and my compatriots, especially by being selfless and trying to show that I will put their needs above my own when the time calls for it.