How to be an Effective Leader - Essay Example

The Effective Leader and Section # of The Effective Leader When we identify individuals, particularly children, as Effective in one or more domains, we regularly concentrate on what they know about the domain (e.g., school achievement) and their aptitude to learn about that domain more speedily or more thoroughly than other individuals (e.g., school aptitudes). But Effective adults are generally identified as such by the leadership roles they take in their fields, not by how quickly they learned about their fields. For instance, in the field of Effective education, one does not attain eminence by memorizing a textbook on theories of and facts about Effective education, or by solving puzzle-like IQ-test problems that forecast how rapidly or thoroughly one would be able to learn the contents of that book. Instead, one accomplishes prominence by leading the field with one's ideas. If one thinks of some of the most renowned people in the field of Effective education, one knows they got to their positions not by demonstrating high scores on examinations of knowledge of books on effective education, but by being leaders with their ideas about how to educate the effective. Effectiveness in leadership is, in large part, a function of creativity in producing ideas, analytical intelligence in assessing the quality of these sort of ideas, practical intelligence in executing the ideas and convincing others to value and follow the ideas, and wisdom to ensure that the decisions and their execution are for the common good of all stakeholders. Creativity, intelligence, and wisdom are not merely inborn. Even though these attributes may be partially heritable, heritability is distinct from modifiability. Leaders can develop their creativity, intelligence, and wisdom. Therefore, on the present view, one is not "born" an effective leader. Rather, effectiveness in wisdom, intelligence, and creativity--the ingredients of effective leadership--is, somewhat, a form of developing competency and expertise that one can decide to utilize or not in actual leadership decisions. The environment strongly influences the extent to which we are capable to utilize and develop whatever genetic potentials we have. Leadership entails both skills and attitudes. The skills are developing competencies and expertise based on how well one can perform certain functions of leadership. Effective leaders are highly skillful in making and implementing decisions that represent creative, intelligent, and wise judgments. The attitudes are developing proficiency based on how one thinks about these functions. Effective leaders seek out the information they need and then process it creatively, intelligently, and wisely. Many leaders have the skills they need to be effective leaders but not the attitudes: They effectively squander their own effectiveness. This article argues that the attitudes are at least as vital as the skills. One needs inventive skills and attitudes to generate fresh and good ideas for leadership; one needs critical intellectual skills and attitudes to decide whether they are good ideas, in addition to practical intellectual skills and attitudes to execute the ideas and convince others of the value of the ideas; and one needs wisdom-related skills and attitudes to evaluate the long- and short-term impacts of these thoughts on other individuals and institutions as well as oneself. Effective leaders either excel in all three or find helpers--staff, assistants, and followers, whatever--to help them compensate for the skills or attitudes in which they do not excel. This view of leadership contrasts with many traditional views. Traditional models of leadership regularly emphasis on identification of "fixed" traits or behaviors that make leaders Effective; A confluence model of creativity suggests that creative people illustrate a variety of characteristics. These other models instead emphasize the interaction between internal attributes and situations. Characteristics represent not innate abilities, but largely, decisions. In other words, to a great extent, people decide to be creative. People who make a decision to be creative exhibit a creative attitude toward leadership. Creativity is in large part attitudinal, as Thomas Edison recognized when he referred to his inventions as 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration. A confluence model of creativity (Sternberg 1999) emphasizes the idea that creative people demonstrate a variety of characteristics. These characteristics represent not innate capabilities, but largely, decisions. In other words, to a great extent, people decide to be creative. People who make a decision to be creative exhibit a creative attitude toward leadership. Creativity is in large part attitudinal, as Thomas Edison recognized when he referred to his inventions as 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration. What are the elements of a creative attitude toward leadership 1. Problem redefinition. Creative leaders do not describe a problem the way everyone else does, simply for the fact that everyone else defines the problem that way. They decide on the real nature of the problem using their own judgment. Most importantly, they are willing to defy the crowd in defining a problem differently from the way others do. Effective leaders are more willing to redefine problems and better able to do so. For instance, the Founding Fathers originally conceived of the problem of an oppressive British government as one of how to minimize the burdens imposed by the British monarchy. Finding that they were unable sufficiently to ease this burden, they redefined the problem as one of how to shake off the monarchy entirely. 2. Problem analysis. Creative leaders are willing to examine whether their solution to the problem is the best one possible. Effective leaders are more willing to analyze their own decisions and better see their strengths and weaknesses. 3. Selling a solution. Creative leaders understand that creative ideas do not sell themselves; rather, creators have to make a decision to sell their ideas and then come to a decision to put in the effort to do so. Effective leaders are better salespeople. They persuade others of the value of their ideas and to follow those ideas. They therefore need to be able to articulate the value of their ideas in a clear and persuasive way. 4. Acknowledgement of how knowledge can both help and hinder creative thinking. Creative leaders appreciate that knowledge can hinder as well as facilitate creative thinking. Sometimes leaders become entrenched and susceptible to tunnel vision, letting their expertise hinder instead of facilitating their exercise of leadership. Effective leaders are more likely to recognize their own susceptibility to entrenchment and take steps to battle against it, such as seeking able advisors, new ideas from novices, and so forth. 5. Readiness to take sensible risks. Creative leaders know that they must decide to take sensible risks, which can lead them to success but also can lead them, from time to time, to failure. Effective leaders are more willing to take large risks and to fail as often as they need in order to accomplish their long-term goals. 6. Readiness to surmount obstacles. Creative leaders are willing to overcome the obstacles that confront anyone who decides to defy the crowd. Such obstacles appear when those who welcome paradigms confront those who do not. All leaders encounter obstacles. Curiously, Effective leaders are particularly susceptible to obstacles, because they often want to move followers more quickly and further than the followers might be ready for. The Effective leader needs great resilience in order to accomplish his or her goals. 7. Conviction in one's ability to achieve the task at hand. Creative leaders believe in ability to get the job done. This conviction is sometimes referred to as self-efficacy. Effective leaders believe in themselves and their ideas--not necessarily in the value of every single idea, but in the value of their overall strategy for leadership. 8. Willingness to bear ambiguity. Creative leaders recognize that there may be long periods of uncertainty during which they cannot be sure they are carrying out the right thing or that what they are doing will result in the outcome they hope for. The more Effective the leaders, the greater the ambiguity, because these leaders try to make large changes that can create shock waves for followers but also for themselves. 9. Willingness to find extrinsic rewards for the stuff one is intrinsically motivated to accomplish. Creative leaders almost always are intrinsically motivated for the work they do. Creative leaders find environments in which they get extrinsic rewards for the things they like to carry out anyway. Effective leaders almost always love what they do. 10. Continuation of intellectual growth instead of stagnation. Creative leaders do not get stuck in their patterns of leadership. Their leadership evolves as they accumulate experience and expertise. They learn from experience instead of simply letting its lessons pass them by. Effective leaders do not flame out as time passes them by. Rather, they adapt to changing circumstances. Creative Leadership A creative leader wishes to move his or her followers from one point to another. In replication, the limiting case of creativity, the leader does not move at all in the space. In redefinition, the leader stays in the same place, but redefines the location (or axes pinpointing the location). In forward incrimination, the leader moves the organization forward in the conceptual space in the direction the organization already is going. In redirection, the leader moves the organization in a new direction in the space. In reconstruction/redirection, the leader moves toward the back in the space in the route from which the organization came, and then redirects from a point already passed at an earlier time. In reinitiating, the leader changes both the starting point and direction in the space. And in synthesis, the leader essentially "adds" vectors in the space--combining the vector in which his or her organization is moving with that in which another organization is moving to synthesize their movements. Different kind of leadership emanate from various forms of creative contributions. Especially, various leaders transform the nature of an organization or other institution, while others do not. At a particular time, in a particular place, transformation may or may not be called for. Therefore transformation is not necessarily required in every leadership situation. But the leaders who tend to be remembered over the period of history are perhaps, in majority of cases, those who transform organizations or, more generally, ways of thinking. One can compare the current view to that of transactional and transformational leadership. Transactional leaders emphasize the contractual relationship between leader and follower. For instance, an employee might agree to engage in certain activities in exchange for certain rewards from the leadership of organization by which he is employed. Transformational leaders lay emphasis on higher needs and a relationship in which followers may become leaders and leaders become moral agents. Transactional leaders are more apt to pursue options that preserve current paradigms. Transformational leaders, in contrast, are more likely to follow any options that reject current paradigms. They are crowd-defiers. In terms of Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, which applies to ideas outside the sciences as well, these are the leaders who revolutionize ways of thinking. In other words, transformational leaders demonstrate a more creative leadership style than do transactional leaders. Intelligence Intelligence would appear to be important to leadership, but how important In fact, if the conventional intelligence of a leader is in greater proportion to that of the people he or she leads, the leader may disconnect with those people and may become ineffective. Intelligence, as envisioned of here, is not only intelligence in its conventional limited sense--some sort of common factor or as IQ, but in terms of the theory of successful intelligence. Successful intelligence is defined as the skills and attitudes needed to achieve something in life, given one's own conception of success, within one's sociocultural environment. Successfully intelligent people balance adaptation to, shaping of, and selection of environments by capitalizing on strengths and compensating for or correcting weaknesses. Wisdom A leader can have all of the previously mentioned skills and attitudes and still be short of an additional attribute that, arguably, is the vital quality a leader can have, but that is, perhaps also the rarest. This additional quality is wisdom. Wisdom here is taken to be in terms of a proposed balance theory of wisdom, by which an individual is clever to the degree he or she uses successful intelligence, creativity and awareness as moderated by values to (a) seek to reach a common good, by (b) balancing intrapersonal (one's own), interpersonal (others'), and extrapersonal (organizational/institutional/spiritual) interests, (c) over the short and long term, to (d) adapt to, shape, and select environments. Wisdom is in large part of a verdict to use one's intelligence, creativity, and experience for a common good. One of the most influential leaders of the 20th century was Nelson Mandela. He transformed South Africa from a repressive Apartheid state into a model of modern democracy. It did not become a country without problems. But if one looks at the alternative model provided by Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, economically, politically, and morally a failed state, one can see how badly things could have gone. Conclusion Leaders can be intelligent as well as creative in many ways, but it gives no guarantee they are wise. In fact, probably comparatively few leaders at any level are particularly wise. Yet the few leaders who are (or were) wise to the point of being Effective--perhaps Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa--leave an indelible mark on the people they lead and, potentially, on history. It is important to mark that wise leaders are probably generally charismatic, but charismatic leaders are not automatically wise, as Hitler, Stalin, and many other charismatic leaders have demonstrated over the course of time. Effectiveness is not just a matter of ability-test scores or of grades. The state of the world makes clear that what the nations of the world need most is Effective leaders, not just individuals who get good grades or good test scores, or who have the skills that will get them into elite colleges, which in turn will prepare them to make a lot of money. The United States is so individualistic that it is working against its own self-interests. We risk developing successive generations of self-interested effective individuals who view their knowledge primarily as a means to serve their own needs and desires. A Effective leader needs exceptional creative skills and attitudes to come up with ideas, academic skills and attitudes to decide if they are innovative ideas, practical skills and attitudes to make the ideas work and convince others of the value of the ideas, and wisdom-based skills and attitudes to ensure that the ideas are in the service of the common good more willingly than just the good quality of the leader or perhaps some group of family members or supporters. A leader deficient in creativity will be unable to deal with novel and difficult situations, such as a new and unexpected source of hostility. A leader lacking in academic intelligence will not be able to decide whether his or her ideas are viable, and a leader deficient in practical intelligence will be unable to implement his or her ideas effectively. An unwise leader may succeed in executing ideas but may end up implementing ideas that are contrary to the best interests of the people he or she leads. Works Cited Steinberg, R. J. (1999). Intelligence as developing expertise. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 24, 259-375. Read More