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Leadership

Essay by   •  December 11, 2010  •  770 Words (4 Pages)  •  1,257 Views

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There are many definitions for leadership. According to Webster's dictionary leadership can be define as an act or an instance of leading. In my opinion leadership is a process in which a person influences others to accomplish an objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. Leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership attributes, such as beliefs, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skill. I can also, define it as a person that has a role in the organization to perform at a high effective quality. Mike Pedler defines leadership as a performance art (doing thing). It is what we do (or don't do) when faced with challenging circumstances.

Many people in their lives had a role in a leadership position. The question is what elements were present in their role. The skills that were used during their leadership position are important. According to Virginia A Hulme the skills that help a leader is the ability to motivate others, build trust, retain talent and lead high performance. This involves maintaining the focus of everybody involved in the organization to achieve the desired mission. There are several issues that can factor into the success of leadership influencing; the morale of the staff, the working relationship a leader has with the members of the organization and the resolution to previous conflicts

Constant global integration has seen changes in the requirements of modern day leaders by combining technical and interpersonal skills. In context, situational factors can result in varied styles of leadership being practiced while diversity in the workforce has also changed the role of leaders through the increased use of work teams, and participative decision-making.

Leadership can be generalized to all levels of an organization, not just its designated leaders.My notion that it is desirable to have leadership displayed at all levels of the organization is shared by many experts. In Tichy's opinion "The reality is that while the CEO is a crucial player, it isn't just the top leadership that is important. The companies that win consistently have lots of strong leaders, and they have them at all levels of the organization". Schein is of the same mind: "The most salient aspect of future leadership will be that the desirable characteristics will not be present in a few people all the time, but rather will be present in many people some of the time". The concept of The Power of Servant Leadership pioneer by Spears is also related to the concept of distributed leadership and of "humanizing" organizations. Spears is quoted as saying "Leadership ought to be based on serving the needs of others and on helping those who are served to become 'healthier', wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants".

One can readily perceive the relationship between leadership-for-leaders and leadership-for-all-levels if one imagines that 'leaders' becomes 'thinkers' and 'managers' becomes 'doers' and 'adult leaders' becomes 'all employees'. However, in building leadership capability at all levels of an

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