Colloborative Leadership - Essay Example

One view maintains that leaders are people oriented and their main task is to inspire people. Their chief functional output is a change and their capabilities are assessed in terms of controlling the process of this change. That is to mould and control change to suit organization's objectives. On the other hand, managers are task and process oriented and their main task is to organize such tasks and processes. Management's main output is work done in allotted time and costs. In plain speak management is assigned the task of producing and maintaining a degree of predictability & order; while leadership assumes the function of producing change under a constantly revised schemata of direction and vision.

Leadership is the process of motivating others to work to meet specific goals and objectives. Leadership deliberately causes people-driven actions in a planned fashion for the purpose of accomplishing the leader's agenda, which in constructive scenarios match organizational agenda. Leadership physically compr. Such qualities hasten and fasten agenda achievement by leadership. Some of these qualities are stated below corresponding to their importance in an organizational setting:(a) A collaborative leader must have the capability to initiate, nurture and develop a vision and a concrete sense of direction in which to lead the organization.

Leader must convince the entire team of his stance of an inspired shared vision. At least leader should be able to convey his vision to critical adherents. Visionary leaders enable people to feel they have a real stake in the project. They empower people to experience the vision on their own. It can be clearly seen that collaboration is the essence of leadership. According to Bennis "They offer people opportunities to create their own vision, to explore what the vision will mean to their jobs and lives, and to envision their future as part of the vision for the organization," (Bennis, 1997).

(b) An effective collaborative leader is expected to have high level of problem solving skills. He may share problem-solving responsibilities with the team but he must have a "fresh, creative response to here-and-now opportunities," and not much concern with how others have performed them. (Kouzes,1987).Thus he would be capable of giving new solutions to complicated problems and lead in dead ends. (c) A collaborative leader must exercise a lot of empathy. There is vast amount of difference between empathy and sympathy.

Although the words sound same, they, in fact have widely divergent meanings. According to Norman Paul, in sympathy the subject is principally absorbed in his or her own feelings as they are projected into the object and has little concern for the reality and validity of the