How Do You Define a Leader - Essay Example

How you define a leader? A leader is a person who inspires the people around himself or herself to achieve a common goal or purpose. Some general characteristics possessed by an ideal leader are patience, gentleness and kindness, persuasiveness, extroversion, conscientiousness, consistency and openness. Traits of an individual’s personality are essential decision factors to identify leadership qualities in a person. Traits may develop the perception regarding a leader as well as a follower. It is these traits of personality, which helps in forming impression and people are prone to forming quick impressions regarding others and reach a conclusion. (Winter and Uleman, 1984) An ideal leader needs to have determination, influence, leadership, care and concern towards his team members, openness to understand and accept the opinions of members. Ideally situation needs to be such that the team feels that their leader match the characteristics of their leadership theories. The attitudes of different leaders are taken into account and the one showing most positive inclination towards fulfillments of the leadership theories is chosen as the leader. The leader’s passiveness may be reduced when there is a characetr of openness and reflection on the followers’ part. All these automatically impart the requried characteristics in the leader. What is leadership? Leadership refers to a certain property or a group of characteristics taken together such that they are inherent in a person defiend as a leader. Leadership is also a process of enacting these traits into action when required. What is the process like, what would you expect it should be? The process is a gradual and constructive one, in which a leader guides the followers towards their common goal and every step leads the team closer towards the objective. What do you expect of people you work with? According to me, the people working with (the leader) should be cooperative, submissive and obedient but at the same time do not hesitate to put forward their valuable suggestions politely. People working with me need to be united and have a progressive thought pattern. I would expect the people to follow my lead in unison and provide their suggestions only when asked instead of acting according to their own will. What people can expect of you? The people in my team may expect me to provide them with the true value of leadership where they would find me as the guide and a friend until the common goal is reached. People can expect that as a leader, I shall be able to logically explain them the common goal or set of objectives to be achieved and be with them in times of crisis. The people may also expect me to help them take the best possible decision. A theory you may ascribe to: A very popularized theory I would like to follow is the situational theory. According to the situational leadership method formulated by Blanchard and Hersey, different leadership styles may be used based upon the situation. After analyzing the needs of the situation the manager might choose the most appropriate style. For instance, according to the levels of competency of employees; the leader needs to delegate tasks. Explaining why A leader may be effective due to the following reasons: Patience Patience is an important tool or technique that needs to be incorporated within a leader. Patience is a virtue that helps the leader to deal with the team members with understanding and consideration at least up to a permissible limit. Short-term weaknesses might be considered in an official but it needs to be followed by encouragement towards attaining the objectives. Patience helps the manager to gain a silent power over the subordinates. A patient leader would prefer to listen to the problems of the members and see them through their training and education that might help them overcome their inhibitions. This tool is especially helpful when an open technique is adopted instead of the chain of command or coercive power. Gentleness and kindness Acts of gentleness or kindness not only opens the door of communication but also imparts a soothing and approachable personality to the leader and this might automatically attract the subordinates. These are important to strike friendliness with the officers. It helps the leader to know the truth about their findings. A certain word of kindness can do wonders to the relation, be it professional or personal. It is always better to attract with sweetness than with a sourly approach. A sweet approach incorporating kindness and gentleness not only helps to draw the task out but also helps to evoke respect and love from the juniors. Persuasiveness Persuasiveness is another crucial tool to be adopted by an ideal leader. While giving order o the officers, it is often not enough to ask them what to do but also to explain why they should be doing it. This is the basic idea behind persuasion tool. A proper reasoning not only helps the officers to carry out their task with an involvement but also generates respect and trust towards the leader. Consistency Consistency is also important to win the respect and trust of the subordinates. A consistent transparency is required along with performance levels and achievement. A leader also needs to be what he is expected to be by the subordinate officers. There is a great sense of achievement when one can fulfill the desires of the subordinates and pose as an ideal example before them. Openness This is a crucial virtue for those leaders who would not like to adopt the coercive power tool. It helps in breaking the concept of hierarchy and the chains of command. Instead it opens the door for further communication and discussion. Openness also creates a broader perspective for interaction. This enables the officers to come up and approach the leader with the issues and the leader can also draw out information through friendly discussions. Such a realization may enable the realization of problems through friendly talk and the supervisor can also assess and evaluate them better. Beside one’s talents and skill, the basic impression that anyone would instantly form regarding a leader is different from the same formed about a follower. There has to be something about the personality and the aura around him. The reviews of the relationship between leadership and personality conducted by Mann (1959) brought about a stoppage in trait-based leadership and some doubts regarding play of traits in leadership. Studies during the 1970s and 1980s were carried out with respect to the trait-based perception of followers. Most of the studies relate to identification of leaders and leadership emergence. These traits are a part of the essential traits or leadership and the important factors which help diving the two groups – leaders and followers. Most of the leadership studies focuses on the characteristics of leaders and emergence of leadership. Some of the characteristics include certain personality traits such as the dominant leadership traits or the important factors, which divide the leaders and the followers. In an ad hoc problem-solving group, natural leadership is assumed to occur. Every member would prefer to rate the others and be reciprocated in the same way. The effect of the perceiver, the target, impact of the perceiver’s rating towards the target – all could be categorized according to the rating of each member. (Hong Ki Won, 2008) The process of leadership is a gradual process became a leader does not grow overnight or in a day’s time. It a building up process. A study by Hetland, Sandal and Johnsen (2008) reveals that a leader is often found to have unilateral influence on the subordinates. The characteristics of followers may be taken as dependent variable while the regressors or the independent variabe which affect this variable are the traits of the leader, his behavior and power bases. Their study essentially focusses on the characteristics of the subordinates which will eventually help us to understand the required characteristics of the leaders. The nature of the subordinates has a great hold over shaping the behavior of leaders. In order to achieve performance beyond expectations, transformational leadership is at work. This involves idealization of the leader as a role model and to gain inspiration from. Such a type of leadership provides a cause to the followers and allows them to identify themselves with the leader. This kind of leadership is linked with positive outcomes which enfold effectiveness, motivation as well satisfaction. Another category of leadership deals with passive avoidant leadership which indicates the avoidance of decision making or showing any reaction essentially after the problems are becoming serious. Ideally situation needs to be such that the team feels that their leader match the characteristics of their leadership theories. The attitudes of different leaders are taken into account and the one showing most positive inclination towards fulfillments of the leadership theories, is chosen as the leader. As far as I am concerned I strongly feel that situational leadership is an important aspect of psychoanalysis. In different situation one may exercise different leadership approaches and in general for same situations same perspectives of leadership may be applied. 1. Blanchard, K. and Hersey, P. (1968) Situational Leadership, 12Manage, available at: http://www.12manage.com/methods_blanchard_situational_leadership.html (accessed on December 7, 2008) 2. Hetland, H., Sandal, G.M., Johnsen, T.B. (2008) Followers personality and leadership, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, May, available at: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NXD/is_4_14/ai_n27925898?tag=artBody;col1 (accessed on August 2, 2008) 3. Mann, R.D. (1959) A review of the relationships between personality and performance in small groups, Psychological Bulletin, 56, 241-270 4. Winter, L. and Uleman, J.S. (1984) What are social judgments made of? Evidence for the spontaneousness of trait inferences, journal of personality and Social Psychology, 47, 237-252 5. Won, H.K. (2006) Links between personalities and leadership perceptions in problem-solving groups, The Social Science Journal 43 (2006) 659-672 Read More