My concept of leadership and how community service eperiences have impacted my life - Essay Example

Your concept of leadership and how your community service experiences have impacted my life A general definition of a leader would be: “a leader is someone who influences a group of people towards the achievement of a goal”. There are 3Ps that are related with the term “leader” and these are: People, Purpose and Person. A leader is a person that is deeply committed to the goal and s/he will try to achieve it even if nobody follows him/her.A leader is someone who has a personal vision and in order to achieve it s/he needs the help of others.

The leader should communicate his/her vision in such a way that the followers will share it and the goal will become a common goal.The leader needs the trust of the followers.My first leadership experience took place when I was a child. I was the oldest of four children and as the first child I had to take care of my siblings, make sure that they went to school, prepared their homework and of course resolved their conflicts. At the same time, I had to make them respect and trust me. So, I discovered and did instinctively everything that a leader does i.e. being responsible for the group (my siblings), motivate them (to go to school and prepare their homework), influence and control them.

From this experience I realized that someone cannot be an effective leader without having strong emotional relations.Later on, following a strong internal lead I became a member of the National Charity League. Now, I am a Vice President of the League and in general I have accomplished 200 hours of community service.The mission of National Charity League is to foster mother-daughter relationships in a philanthropic organization committed to community service, leadership development and cultural experiences.

(http://www.nationalcharityleague.org/).The National Charity League is based mostly on volunteers i.e. people join without expecting any financial returns, they just do it because they feel they want to offer their services to other people. This makes the work of the leader easy and difficult at the same time.It is easy because people share the vision of the leader and have common goals but on the other hand it is difficult because they are not employees so it is difficult to coordinate and “oblige” them to act professionally.

So,in this case the leader has to adapt his/her leadership style accordingly. This means that the leader in this case cannot be authoritative or coercive since the human factor comes first. S/he cannot be democratic since this is a style that a leader can implement when s/he is not sure about the direction that needs to be taken. The style of leadership that is most suitable for community service is the affiliative. Here, the leader focuses on strong emotional relations and then he receives the benefits i.e. employees loyalty.

S/he offers positive feedback. As a style it is positive but it should be better used when the leader wants to improve communication and increase morale. (Goleman,2000).My community service experiences helped me to improve my leadership style and it has helped on a personal level since I have found out how to improve communication with other people and at the same time achieve common goals.ReferencesGoleman D. (2000), “ Leadership that gets results”, Harvard Business Review, March – April 2000http://www.

nationalcharityleague.org/