LEADERSHIP

Basic Leadership Skills

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Basic Leadership Skills

Introduction

Human nature is the most complicated thing. It is difficult to understand the nature of a human being and what is even more difficult is managing behavior of human beings. For smooth and lucrative operation of business, it is so vital for an organization to manage behavior of its personnel. Organization behavior management is an indispensable function for an organization. Change management, leadership, teams, groups and learning are few of the topics that come under the umbrella of organization behavior. The core aim of this paper is to explore some of the leadership styles and their basic skills. Therefore, this paper discusses the phenomenon of leadership from its different aspects.

Leadership

In this rapidly changing and fast paced world, it is believed that leading life successfully has become a tough thing to do. In our life, we have to make several decisions for its betterment. Sometimes we make rational decisions and some other times we become unable to properly analyze and comprehend a situation and reach some irrational decisions. But the right thing is that every good decision brings confidence in us, and every wrong decision enriches us with experience. With the help, of this experience and some other traits we begin to give directions and guidance to people and that is how the story of leadership starts. Leadership is a very deep and intriguing phenomenon. Leadership is the task of motivating, guiding, directing and leading others in the right direction in order to fulfil certain mutual aims and objectives. A leader through leadership role shows the right and correct path to his or her subordinates. Leadership provides subordinates guidance with which they can bring improvement in their work (Tagger, 1999, 899). According to the management guru Peter Ducker leadership can be defined in a simple and straightforward way as follows: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers".

Leadership and management

There is a thin line of difference between leadership and management. Many scholars and practitioners have made an attempt to clearly describe the difference between these two fields. This thing can best be described by focusing on what are the elements of these two fields that compliment and support each other instead of seeking the differences between these two. One thing that is common in both leadership and management is that both deals with working with other people and working towards attainment of goals (Smith, 1998, 160). Both of these fields are separated from each other, but they go hand in hand. When an organization wants to bring change it has to work in a way that amalgamates functions of both the fields. If long-term focus of the organization (leadership) is not aligned with short term goals and task completion (management). Nature of the relationship is one aspect that separates management from leadership. Management involves more authoritative relationship that flows from top to down. On the other hand, leadership involves more influential relationship between the members. In the case of leadership, the leader influences ...