Leadership

Introduction

Leadership is the process of encouraging and helping others to work enthusiastically towards objectives. It is the human factor that helps a group identify where it is going and then motivates it towards its goals. It is determined primarily by one’s role behavior, not by one’s personal traits.

Nature of leadership

To be considered as a leader means that you have to possess certain positive qualities that appeals to those around them especially those that are being lead so that they can relate to you on a personal level. Leadership is not an easy task to be bestowed up on any individual, is a duty that requires diligence and perseverance.

In past years or even on the beginning of history, peoples seems to be concerned about the nature of leadership, early research before tried to identify the traits that differed between leaders and those who are not. Some studies focused on personality factors, like intelligence, ambition, and aggressiveness, others examined physical characteristics like height, build and attractiveness. In general, there’s no consistent set of traits that are stable across groups and tasks has emerged despite continued attempts.

While leadership is learned, the skills and knowledge processed by the leader can be influenced by his or hers attributes or traits, such as beliefs, values, ethics, and character. Knowledge and skills contribute directly to the process of leadership, while the other attributes give the leader certain characteristics that make him or her unique.

So much of this, there are three different types of skills leaders use are technical, human and conceptual. Although these skills are interrelated in practice, they can be considered separately.

Technical skills refer to a person’s knowledge and ability in any type of process or techniques. Examples are the skill learned by accountants, engineers, word processing operators and toolmakers. This skill is distinguished feature of jobs performance at the operating level, but as employees is promoted to leadership responsibilities, their technical skills become proportionately less important. They increasingly depend on the technical skills of their subordinate and in many cases have never practiced some of the technical skills that they supervise.

Human skills are the ability to work effectively with people and to build teamwork. No leader at any organizational level escapes the requirement for effective human skill. It is a major part of leadership behavior.

Conceptual skills are the ability to think in terms of models frameworks and broad relationships such as long range plans. It becomes increasingly important in higher managerial jobs. Conceptual skill deals with ideas, while skill concerns people and technical skill involves things.

These three types of skills are applied by leaders in different degree at these various organizational levels.

In leadership, there’s a theory developed by Robert House, in which the subordinates accept a leader’s behavior only so far as they view it as resulting in immediate or future benefit. Thus, a leader's main functions to 'clear a path' to the realization of the subordinates ‘goals; he or she must choose the behavior patterns that are most applicable in helping the subordinates get what they want.

This model or theory of leadership accents two major roles. One is goal setting, which is a powerful motivational approach and plays a central role in the path-goal process. It is the establishment of targets and objectives for successful performance, both long run and short run. It proves a measure of how well individuals and groups are meeting performance standards. The basic premise underlying goal setting is that human behavior is goal directed.

The second major role, leaders engage in path support by helping employees accomplish tasks, and here power and politics become important tools. The powers that I mentioned are not those with fantasy oriented or like the movies we see on tv in which laser beams comes out to their hands, these powers I mean are the personal power – it is the ability of leaders to develop followers from the strength of their own personality, legitimate power – it arises from the culture of society by which powers is delegated legitimately from higher established authorities to others, expert power – a power that arises from a person’ knowledge of and information about a complex situation, and political power – it arises from a leader’s ability to work with people and social systems to gain their allegiance and supports.

Leaders apply different leadership styles, ranging from free-rein to autocratic. Although a positive, participative, considerate leader tends to be more effective in many situations, the contingency approaches suggest that a variety of styles can be successful. The leader must first analyze the situation and discover the key factors in the task, employees or organization that suggests which style might be best.

Now, how to develop leadership skills? Developing leadership skills can be easy if you concentrate on being a good leader to yourself first. This means being true to who you are and guiding yourself well throughout life. Those with good leadership skills aren't perfect and still make mistakes like everyone else. The difference is that good leaders learn from their mistakes and stay committed to the goals they set.

True leaders also understand how to apologize when they make a mistake and genuinely want others to succeed. You should have experience in the field you want to guide others in and think about what it felt like to be in their shoes as a learner. Remembering your own experiences in a certain subject can help you develop leadership skills that can inspire others. However, good leaders don't assume that everyone is like them. True leaders are excellent listeners.

Explaining and understanding the nature of good leadership is probably easier than practicing it. Good leadership requires deep human qualities, beyond conventional notions of authority.

In the modern age good leaders are an enabling force, helping people and organizations to perform and develop, which implies that a sophisticated alignment be achieved - of people's needs, and the aims of the organization. The traditional concept of a leader being the directing chief at the top of a hierarchy is nowadays a very incomplete appreciation of what true leadership must be.

Effective leadership does not necessarily require great technical or intellectual capacity. These attributes might help, but they are not pivotal.

Good leadership in the modern age more importantly requires attitudes and behaviors which characterize and relate to humanity.

Leadership is centrally concerned with people. Of course leadership involves decisions and actions relating to all sorts of other things, but leadership is special compared to any other role because of its unique responsibility for people - i.e., the followers of the leader - in whatever context leadership is seen to operate.

Many capabilities in life are a matter of acquiring skills and knowledge and then applying them in a reliable way. Leadership is quite different. Good leadership demands emotional strengths and behavioral characteristics which can draw deeply on a leader's mental and spiritual reserves.

The leadership role is an inevitable reflection of people's needs and challenges in modern life. Leadership is therefore a profound concept, with increasingly complex implications, driven by an increasingly complex and fast-changing world.

Leadership and management are commonly seen as the same thing, which they are not. Leadership is also misunderstood to mean directing and instructing people and making important decisions on behalf of an organization. Effective leadership is much more than these.

Good leaders are followed chiefly because people trust and respect them, rather than the skills they possess. Leadership is about behavior first, skills second.

This is a simple way to see how leadership is different to management:

·         Management is mostly about processes.

·         Leadership is mostly about behavior.

We could extend this to say:

·         Management relies heavily on tangible measurable capabilities such as effective planning; the use of organizational systems; and the use of appropriate communications methods.

·         Leadership involves many management skills, but generally as a secondary or background function of true leadership. Leadership instead relies most strongly on less tangible and less measurable things like trust, inspiration, attitude, decision-making, and personal character. These are not processes or skills or even necessarily the result of experience. They are facets of humanity, and are enabled mainly by the leader's character and especially his/her emotional reserves.

Another way to see leadership compared with management is that leadership does not crucially depend on the type of management methods and processes a leaders uses; leadership instead primarily depends on the ways in which the leader uses management methods and processes.

Good leadership depends on attitudinal qualities, not management processes.

Humanity is a way to describe these qualities, because this reflects the leader's vital relationship with people.

References:

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership

http://www.sociologyguide.com/leadership/nature-of-leadership.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path%E2%80%93goal_theory

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/path-goal-theory.html

http://www.wisegeek.com/how-can-i-develop-leadership-skills.htm

Human Behavior at Works: Organizational Behavior – Eight editions

http://www.career-success-for-newbies.com/developing-leadership-skills.html

http://top7business.com/?Top-7-Steps-To-Develop-Leadership-Skills&id=2113

http://www.practical-management.com/Leadership-Development/Path-Goal-Leadership.html