Leadership Esentials

Although some people treat the term's "manager ship" and "leadership" as synonyms, the two should be distinguished. As a matter of fact, there can be leaders of completely unorganized groups, but there can be managers, as conceived here, only where organized structures create roles. (Main, 1987) Separating leadership from manager ship has important analytical advantages. It permits leadership to be singled out for study without the encumbrance of qualifications relating to the more general issue of manager ship.

Leadership is an important aspect of managing. (Kotler, 1990) As this paper will show the ability to lead effectively is one of the keys to being an effective manager, also, undertaking the other essentials of managing-doing the entire managerial job-has an important bearing on ensuring that a manager will be an effective leader. Managers must exercise all the function of their role in order to combine human and material resources to achieve objectives. The key to doing this is the existence of a clear role and a degree of discretion or authority to support manager's actions.

The essence of leadership is follower ship. (Haller & Til, 1982) In other words, it is the willingness of people to follow that makes a person a leader. Moreover, people tend to follow those whom they see as providing a means of achieving their own desires, wants, and needs.

Leadership and motivation are closely interconnected. By understanding motivation, one can appreciate better what people want and why they act as they do. Also, as noted in the previous chapter, leaders may not only respond to subordinates, motivations but also arouse or dampen them by means of the organizational climate they develop. Both these factors are as important to leadership as they are to manager ship.

Defining Leadership:

Leadership has different meaning to various authors. (Bass, 1981) Leadership is defined as influence, that is, the art or process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals ideally, people should be encouraged to develop not only willingness to work but also willingness to work with zeal and confidence. Zeal is ardor, earnestness, and intensity in the execution of work; confidence reflects experience and technical ability. Leaders act to help a group attain objectives through the maximum application of its capabilities. They do not stand behind a group to push and prod, they place themselves before the group as they facilitate progress and inspire the group to accomplish organizational goals. A good example is an orchestra leader, whose function is to produce coordinated sound and correct tempo through the integrated effort of the musicians. (Drucker, 1988) Depending on the quality of the director's leadership, the orchestra will respond. (Koontz & Weihrich, 1994)

CHARACTERISTICS OF GREAT LEADERS

Those in LEADERSHIP:

L LISTENS to their followers

E ENVISION a great future

A ANTICIPATE problems - they are prepared

D DISCIPLE their followers

E EXPECT the best from others

R RELY on God and others

S SERVES their followers

H HANDLE the most difficult situations

I IGNITE enthusiasm in their followers

P PRACTICES what they Preach. (Carlson, 2005)

Transforming leadership occurs when one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality transforming leadership ultimately becomes moral in that it raises the level of human conduct and ethical aspirations of both the leader and led and, thus, has a transforming effect on both.

There are four behavioral components that make up transformational leadership: charisma; inspiration; intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration.

Charisma is regarded as the ability in leaders to arouse emotions in followers that will result in a strong identification of the followers with the leader. This includes the leader providing vision and gaining respect and trust. Inspiration is based on behaviors espoused by the leader to such things as communicating high expectations, the use of symbols to gain the focus of followers and modeling the appropriate behavior. Intellectual stimulation includes promoting intelligence and rationality, enabling followers to be creative problem solvers. Lastly, individualized consideration, whereby leaders give support and personal attention to followers and express appreciation of their work thus developing their self -confidence.

These behaviors are then supposed to affect followers in a positive way by elevating them to be the best they can be and in doing so are motivated by achievement and self development rather than 'doing a job' that provides security. The drawback with this work is that Bass still assumes leadership is a position, i.e., 'I am the boss' and omits the moral aspect that Burns regards as an important element of transformational leadership.

Evidence has shown that transformational leadership does result in improved performance. It also aligns everyone around a common purpose and has a future orientation. In addition, transformational leadership encourages everyone to challenge and question assumptions and look at problems from new perspectives.

Scholars have expressed a variety of views as to what managerial skills are required of leaders. Kats and khan suggest technical, human relations and conceptual skills. The technical skills relate to the knowledge and expertise in performing managerial duties and responsibilities. The human relation's skill deals with the ability of managers to get along with others. The ability to take a total system approach by relating the goals and activities of one's department to other departments and the organization as a whole is the conceptual skill. A manager must have the ability to see how his decisions affect others and how he and his department are affected by the decisions of others. Not all are likely to be equally strong in these different skills. In one level of organization, one combination may be effective and in another level, another combination may be necessary. For instance, at the top level, more technical skill is required than the other two skills. Human relation's skills are equally important at all levels.

Effective