LEADERSHIP

Effective Leadership



Effective Leadership

Introduction

Being a leader can be great and hard thing as well. You have the control to modify things, but you do not have the control to modify people. You can transform how a government is running, how an organization handles its finances, and how individuals handle their debts; but you cannot make lazy individuals work harder, nor can you turn dull people into geniuses. What you can do, however, is encourage individuals to improve and this is a job you can achieve only if you are a good leader.

Development of Leadership

“A leader is a man who makes decisions. Sometimes they turn out right and sometimes then turn out wrong; but either way, he makes them” (Bolden, 2006, Pp. 102).

Leader's vision is not a dream its reality for him that he needs to be done. Team construction and mobilization is headed by an effective leader. A leader through leadership role shows the right and correct path to his or her subordinates. A leader is able to bring any change in an organization/institution (Kickul, 2000, Pp.27). The leadership is a very old trait, dating back to the pre-historic era. However, there have been few attempts to trace the history of leadership to its earliest manifestations. What can be learned from the hard-wired behaviors of insects, the territorialism of reptiles, the disciplinary schooling of horses, and the social capitalism of chimpanzees? As for the humans, the tribal leaders can be said as the oldest leaders. The leaders were elected on the basis of power and strength as well as fear. There also used to be family leadership. The strongest and the wisest member of the family was automatically the leader of the entire clan.

Other than this, the spiritual leaders can also be traced back in the past. These leaders used to claim divinity. These were usually males and they used to claim that they had spiritual and magical powers. The Kings and Queens' era also shows us great effective leaders like Alexander the great, Queen Elizabeth etc. after the development and evaluation in different areas of life, many leaders emerged in the corporate world and political world showing effective leadership qualities. For example Abraham Lincoln, Steve Jobs etc. the leadership qualities have developed and have became more defined as people have learned from the past leaders.

Leadership in View of Different Writers

A number of scholars and researchers have conducted many researches and contributed many theories like Fiedler's contingency, trait theory, goal-path, managerial-grid, etc. These theories are based on traits and behaviors of leaders. All theories have a vital role to understand the different perspectives of leadership and helpful to have better knowledge in regards of leadership. One of the most important theory that help me most to understand different characteristics of leadership is Fiedler's Contingency Theory of Leadership. It has also been found that the leader like Gandhi, Lincoln had some charismatic characteristics that made them different from other people. Fiedler says that these qualities and traits are by ...