Leadership
1.0 Objective: To explain the nature of leadership, the different leadership, the different models of leadership, the qualities of a good supervisor.
1.1 Leadership is encouraging and helping others to work enthusiastically toward objectives… It is the human factor that helps a group to identify where it is going and then motivates it towards its goals. Without leadership, an organization would only be a confusion of people and machines, just as an orchestra without a conductor would only be musicians and instruments. Organizations require leaders to develop their precious assets to their fullest.
1.2 Leadership process is similar in effect to that of the secret chemical that turns the insect pupa into a butterfly with all the beauty that was the pupa’s potential. Leadership transforms potential into reality. Tiny firms develop into giant corporations with the help of leaders. Leadership is the act that identifies, develops, and uses the potential that is in an organization and its people.
2.0 The nature of Leadership
2.1 Leadership is an important part of management, but not all of it. Managers are rewired to plan and organise, but the primary role of a leader is to influence others to seek defined objectives enthusiastically. This means that strong leaders may be weak managers if their poor planning causes their group to move in wrong directions. Though they can get their group going, they just cannot get it going in directions that best serve organisational objectives.
2.2 Other combinations are also possible. A person can be a weak leader and still be a relatively effective manager, especially if one happens to be managing people who clearly understand their jobs and have strong drives to work. This set of circumstances is less likely, and therefore we expect excellent managers to have reasonably high leadership ability. Fortunately, this ability can be acquired through management training and work experience.
3.0 Leadership behavior:
3.1 People have been concerned about leadership since the beginning of history. Prior research tried to identify the traits that differed between leaders and non leaders or between successful and unsuccessful leaders. Some studies focused on personality factors like intelligence, ambition and aggressiveness, others examined physical characteristics like height, build, and attractiveness. No consistent set of traits that are stable across groups and tasks has emerged despite continued attempts.
3.2 Much of the recent emphasis has shifted away from traits and moved towards identifying leadership behaviors. In this view, successful leadership depends on behaviors, skills, and actions and not on personality traits. This is highly significant, since behaviours can be learned and changed, while traits are relatively fixed. The three different types of skills leaders use are technical, human, and conceptual. Although these skills are interrelated in practice, they can be considered separately.
3.3 Technical skills refer to a person’s knowledge of any type of process or technique. Examples are the skills learned by accountants, engineers, etc. These skills are the distinguishing feature of job performance at the operating level, but as employees are promoted to leadership responsibilities, their technical skills become proportionately less important. They increasingly depend on the technical skills of their subordinates and in many cases have never practiced some of the technical skills that they supervise.
3.4 Human skill is the ability to work effectively with people and to build teamwork. No leader at any organizational level escapes the requirement for effective human skill. It is a major part of leadership behavior.
3.5 Conceptual skill is the ability to think in terms of models, frameworks and broad relationships such as long-range plans. It becomes necessary in higher managerial jobs. Conceptual skills deal with ideas, while human skill concerns people and technical skills involve things.
3.6 Analysis of leadership skills helps to explain why outstanding department heads sometimes make poor vice presidents. They may not be using the proper mixture of skills required for the higher-level job, particularly additional conceptual skills.
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