Leadership - Admission/Application Essay Example

It is generally believed that leaders are made and not born. Leadership traits and qualities are acquired usually beginning during the formative years of the youth and the various skills are developed over a period of a number of years (“Principles of Leadership”). Leadership is all about providing the right direction and motivation to people in a group or organization and achieving the set target or goal successfully. The three key functions of a good leader are being authoritative, responsible and accountable for a given job (“Principles of Leadership”).

There are also three forms of leadership and a good leader should exhibit all the forms and employ them based on what a given situation requires. A leader can be authoritative by which they can effectively communicate their requirements to their fellow employees, could be participative and involve their fellow employees in the discussion process or be delegative by giving a free hand to the employees and allow them to decide what has to be done. A leader uses all three styles of leadership based on the nature of their employees and the work situation (“Leadership Styles”). . During my tenure I was to follow a breakneck indoctrination through a heavily weighted authoritarian type of leadership wherein the daily demand of work relied on a chain of command.

This style of leadership was necessary due to the critical nature of the work, and the work ethics required us to follow the orders without further questioning. After my experiences in the US Navy, I took up a job as a desktop support project supervisor in the early 1990s. It was during a period that witnessed a boom in the information technology industry with the advent of the Microsoft Windows 3.1 as the main computer system for companies and when the Internet began to grow at an astounding rate.

With orders from my managers, I traveled around the US with my team replacing coax networks and UNIX systems and had to manage about 2 to 20 people depending on the project. I had adopted both the authoritative as well as the participative form of leadership and I was able to motivate my fellow employees to work as the projects had very short deadlines and the effective team interactions helped to solve the many issues that cropped up during the project. It was during my mid 30s that I earned a Bachelor's Degree in Technical Management.

During my study I got the opportunity to learn new approaches to leadership that is being practiced in companies Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods and Google. It is noteworthy that these companies made giant strides and prospered even during the economic downturn that began in early 2000 as a result of the dot-com bubble bust, scandals such as those of Enron and the 9/11 attacks in the US. Their prosperity was mainly attributed to the faith imposed by the customers on these brands due to the high ethical standards set by the