Leadership

The Meaning of Leadership

Leadership is the social process of influencing the behaviors of others without posing any threats of violence. It is a process of influencing the thoughts, attitudes and behaviors of others by setting a direction that helps visualize what they can hope to achieve or what lies ahead for them. It’s the capability of getting other people to do something significant through harnessing their efforts jointly. Leadership in a very ordinary sense refers to creating a group of followers whom another individual leads. Merely accompanying a group of people isn’t leadership unless the person actually is choosing and showing a direction to the followers. Without followers a leader isn’t a leader in spite of having the desired qualities or nature of a leader.

 

The Essence of Leadership in Business

The nature of business leadership is both a complex and compelling phenomenon. Many discussions of leadership confuse personality, important objectives, formal position and specific behaviors with acts of leadership. It may involve certain characteristics, but leadership is not confined to these characteristics; rather, it’s all about influencing others in a substantial way.
Whether the setting is a business, a government, an educational institution or in an athletic setting, most people would agree that having a good leader is desirable. A good leader is someone like a good physician. Just as the physician must identify the patient’s disease accurately to ensure the effectiveness of the prescribed treatment, the business leader must also be able to diagnose problems, values and voices while finding effective solutions. In leadership you push past the average expectations by carrying a sense of mission, motivating, learning and inspiring new ways of thinking. This is known as transformational leadership. It emerges as the most updated and diversified techniques in the field of leadership theory and practices to boost workforce competency and performance.

Leadership and Management in Business 

True leadership in business is a subtle quality, and thus we often confuse management duties with personal style with leadership. Management and leadership are related, but they are not the same. You can be a manager or a leader; you can also be both or neither. The biggest difference between managers and leaders lies in the way they motivate others. When executing plans as a manager, you focus on supervising results, comparing them with goals and correcting deviations. In contrast, as a leader you focus on energizing people to overcome hurdles in reaching goals. Effective leaders hunt pressing issues such as influence, power, dependence, and policies for change.
Power, achievement and affiliation shape the basic human needs and are acquired over time to result in legitimate reward, coercive, referent and expert powers in business issues affecting leadership behaviors. If as a leader you have a high need for institutional power rather than personal power, you may be more effective. Personal power can be transformed into leadership abilities through the adoption of different approaches to leadership and adjusting your perspective of what the meaning of “power” is.
What we must remember when trying to expand and embrace the idea of being a leader ourselves is that leadership encompasses the field of a widely discussed phenomenon in the business world. A leader overnight is not made, created or born. The growing influence of global culture and workforce diversity makes the task of being an effective leader that much more challenging. In a very simple and straightforward manner, leadership is all about energizing people toward a specific goal. The theoretical and practical knowledge regarding leadership may facilitate you to implement perfect leadership strategies in business development and activities which you can then embrace using the required adaptability and emotional intelligence to succeed as a business leader.

Being a Leader

Over the past several years, one of the most important contributions psychology has made to the field of business has been in determining the key traits of acknowledged leaders. Psychological tests have been used to determine what characteristics are most commonly noted among successful leaders. This list of characteristics can be used for developmental purposes to help managers gain insight and develop their leadership skills.

The increasing rate of change in the business environment is a major factor in this new emphasis on leadership; whereas in the past, managers were expected to maintain the status quo in order to move ahead, new forces in the marketplace have made it necessary to expand this narrow focus. The new leaders of tomorrow are visionary. They are both learners and teachers. Not only do they foresee paradigm changes in society, but they also have a strong sense of ethics and work to build integrity in their organizations.

The traits of an effective leader include the following:

·         Emotional stability: Good leaders must be able to tolerate frustration and stress. Overall, they must be well-adjusted and have the psychological maturity to deal with anything they are required to face.

·         Dominance: Leaders are often competitive, decisive and usually enjoy overcoming obstacles. Overall, they are assertive in their thinking style as well as their attitude in dealing with others.

·         Enthusiasm: Leaders are usually seen as active, expressive and energetic. They are often very optimistic and open to change. Overall, they are generally quick and alert and tend to be uninhibited.

·         Conscientiousness: Leaders are often dominated by a sense of duty and tend to be very exacting in character. They usually have a very high standard of excellence and an inward desire to do their best. They also have a need for order and tend to be very self-disciplined.

·         Social boldness: Leaders tend to be spontaneous risk-takers. They are usually socially aggressive and generally thick-skinned. Overall, they are responsive to others and tend to be high in emotional stamina.

·         Self-assurance: Self-confidence and resiliency are common traits among leaders. They tend to be free of guilt and have little or no need for approval. They are generally unaffected by prior mistakes or failures.

·         Compulsiveness: Leaders are controlled and very precise in their social interactions. Overall, they are very protective of their integrity and reputation and consequently tended to be socially aware and careful, abundant in foresight, and very careful when making decisions or determining specific actions.

·         Intuitiveness: Rapid changes in the world today, combined with information overload result in an inability to know everything. In other words, reasoning and logic will not get you through all situations. In fact, more and more leaders are learning the value of using their intuition and trusting their gut when making decisions.

·         Empathy: Being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes is a key trait of leaders today. Without empathy, you can't build trust; without trust, you will never be able to get the best effort from your employees.

·         Charisma: People usually perceive leaders as larger than life. Charisma plays a large part in this perception. Leaders who have charisma are able to arouse strong emotions in their employees by defining a vision which unites and captivates them. Using this vision, leaders motivate employees to reach toward a future goal by tying the goal to substantial personal rewards and values.

Leaders are rarely (if ever) born. Circumstances and persistence are major components in the developmental process of any leader, so if your goal is to become a leader, work on developing those areas of your personality that you feel are not up to par. For instance, if you have all of the basic traits but do not consider yourself very much of a people person, try taking classes or reading books on empathy. On the other end, if relating to others has always come naturally to you, but you have trouble making logical decisions, try learning about tough-mindedness and how to develop more psychological resistance. Just remember, anyone can do anything they set their mind to.