Leadership:
Leadership is about inspiring people to give their best in order to achieve the desired results. Leaderships is also about propelling people in the right direction, getting them committed to what they do and motivated to achieve their goals. According to Warren G. Bennis and Burt Nanus, managers do things the right way whereas leaders do the right things.
Roles of the leader:
There are two main roles for the leaders to take care of:
1. Accomplishing the mission, and this is the main reason why their group has been created. Leaders commit to fulfilling the goal of the group and in case they do not fulfill it the result will be disappointment and disharmony leading at the end to the dismantling of the group.
2. Maintaining effective relations between themselves and their group members, and between the members within the group itself. Such relations will be effective if they participate in accomplishing the mission and they can be divided on the ones concerned within the team. The ones concerned have to be in charge of motivating the team, raising its moral and preserving its sense of wholeness.
John Adair, leadership specialist, pointed out some time ago that such requests can best be expressed as being three basic needs that all leaders should seek to satisfy: 1) Needs that are important for accomplishing the job, 2) Needs for the individuals, in order to differentiate between the individual needs and the needs that are important for the team as a whole, 3) Needs of the team, in order to build the team spirit and preserve it.
Types of leadership styles:
There are many styles that can be adopted for leadership and they can summarized as:
- Talented/Untalented: Talented leaders rely on their personalities and abilities to inspire and motivate those within their circle of influence. They are fantastic leaders that seek to achieve accomplishments and they can tolerate calculated risk. They have high competency in the art of communication. Untalented leaders, on the other hand, rely mainly on their relations (authority goes to the one who knows). They also rely on their self-confidence, their calmness and their analytical trends in dealing with problems.
- Autocratic/Democratic: Autocratic leaders impose their decisions and they use their posts to coerce individuals into doing what they dictate. Democratic leaders encourage individuals to participate in the decision making process.
- Skillful/Authoritarian: A skillful leader inspires his employees with his future vision and he enables them to achieve team goals. The authoritarian leader push the employees and coerces them into obeying him.
- Transactional/Transformational: A transaction leader exchanges money, position and safety in return for obedience. As for the transformational leader he motivates employees into exerting more effort to achieve more goals.
Effect of the situation:
The situation, in which a leader and his team are placed, highly affects the leader’s trend. There is none better than the perfect style in leading and it all depends on the situation and the affecting circumstances in deciding the most suitable style. Factors like; type of the institute, nature of the job, characteristics of the group and most important the personality of the leader all determine the choice. Tending to accomplish a mission using styles like the autocratic, authoritarian or transactional could be the best style in times of crisis, when the right power is acquired and in jobs that have solid structures in general. Results will mainly depend on the group that works well while preserving the sense of wholeness and unity of the target. Democratic/Skillful/ Transformational leaders are probably the best in achieving good results.
Yet we still have someone like Charles Handy saying , “Whereas the heroic manager of the past knew all, could do all and could solve every problem, the post-heroic manager asks how every problem can be solved in such a way that develops other people’s capacity to handle it.”
Characteristics of the leader:
The characteristics can vary in a leader according to the situation but the searching and analyzing done by effective leaders has identified a group of generic characteristics in any competent leader. John Adair identifies the following abilities:
- Enthusiasm: To accomplish what they can through communicating with others.
- Integrity: Believing in themselves in such a way that makes other believe in them the same way. Self-confidence should not be more than needed or it would lead to conceit).
- Tough but fair: Flexibility, insisting on the highest standards and thriving to win respect and not necessarily popularity.
- Integration: Being true to oneself, feeling whole and being honest. All of these lead to trust.
- Warmth: In personal relations, caring for others and caring for others feelings.
- Humility: Wishing to hear others and bearing responsibility. Don’t be conceited or arrogant.
What an institution needs from a leader:
- Leaders that would give the chance for the right people to carry on their job properly without being scrutinized.
- Horizontal structures where individuals are to be trusted to perform their jobs with the least supervision.
- A medley of individuals who would be able to take proper leading roles with responsibility and whenever needed.
- A culture that would enable them to respond quickly to the requests of the customers with the needed amount of flexibility, to face the constantly changing technology.
What individuals would appreciate in a leader:
- Showing enthusiasm.
- Backing up the others.
- Acknowledging individual efforts.
- Listening to the ideas and problems of others.
- Guidance.
- Showing self-integration.
- Respecting what they say.
- Encouraging the work groups.
- Active encouragement for feedback.
- Developing others.
Leadership Checklist:
Mission:
• What is the thing that needs be done and why?
• What are the aspired results and what is the timeframe aimed for them?
• What are the problems that need to be solved?
• To which extent are these problems considered direct ones?
• Is there a crisis?
• What should be done to overcome this crisis?
• What are the priorities?
• What are the pressurizing factors that can be used?
The Individual:
• What are his strengths and weaknesses?
• What are the possible means to motivate him?
• What are the jobs he is good at?
• Is there a chance to increase the flexibility through developing new skills?
• How skilled is he in achieving results and fulfilling performance criteria?
• Is there any area that seeks development of skills and qualifications?
• How can I support the individual with a form of backup and guidance that he needs to improve his performance?
The Team:
• How well is the team organized?
• Does the team work together congruently?
• Can the team be committed and motivated?
• What are the things that this team can perform skillfully and what are the things it can’t?
• Can I do something to improve the performance of the team?
• Can the team members be defined as being flexible and able to achieve the various missions?
• Is there a space to provide the team with further authorities so it would get more responsibilities in identifying criterions, monitoring performance and taking proper action?
• Can the team be motivated to work together to give ideas that would further its performance? |
