Critical Paper on Leadership

Critical Paper on Leadership

Introduction

We all are familiar with the term 'Leadership', but a very few know the actual meaning of this term. The term leadership in a layman's word can be described as the cultural influence exerted by the person of the society in a group or in a social meeting to achieve a task or a goal (Chemers, M, 1997).The one who practices the art of leadership is known as the 'Leader', and the term leader can be described as the one whom people follow or person who provide guidance or directs others. It is very difficult to give the exact definition of the term Leadership because of the qualities those leader posses, but we can define leadership on the basis of three different perspectives:

Leadership is accomplishing tasks through others.

It is the leader who leads his group towards success or achieving their goals, provided that every member of the organization or team contributes his/her part in achieving the milestone. It is observed that with the passage of time, the styles of leadership have changed. In the past, the leaders used issuance of order, and hierarchy to accomplish the job. The leaders of today work to win the trust of their team members try to solve the conflicts between their team, develop a mutual understanding between all the team members, and last but not the least tries to develop team work.

Leadership means having superiority over you team or people

This view defines leadership as being on of top your people. This view is totally the opposite of the first view mentioned above which supported team effort. This explains the leadership on the basis of individualism. According to this view it is not necessary that leader is the one who is a good motivator of people, or a relational leader.

“Lead Me, follow me, or get out of my way.” General George Patton

Leadership is directed to change or a better journey.

This view focuses that a leader has to break-off from the status quo taught by their ancestors, and they should mold their leadership styles according to the situations they encounter. They should be willing to take risks, and adopt changes to enhance their leadership styles.

Previously we looked what leadership is, and the ways we can describe leadership. Now, let us look at the quality of one who practices leadership. A leader has great responsibilities over his shoulders. He/ she is the one responsible to take his/her company, group, and team to ultimate success. There could be various qualities of a leader that could be taken into account like 1) justice and judgment (Agamemnon), 2) wisdom and counsel (Nestor), 3) shrewdness and cunningness (Odysseus), 4) valor and activism (Achilles), (Vecchio, R.P, Leadership: understanding the dynamics and influence in organization, pg 4), but the two most common, and essential qualities that a leader possess are as follows:

Flexibility

Worldly definition of flexibility can be defined as the resistance to take stress, or the ability to bear different levels of pressure to prevent breakage (these both meanings ...