LEADERSHIP

Leadership, a critical management skill, is the ability to motivate a group of

people toward a common goal. Leadership has been described as the “process of
social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the
accomplishment of a common task” The ability to influence a group toward the
achievement of goals

Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and willpower, you
can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending
process of self-study, education, training, and experience

The five leadership traits/leadership qualities are:

Honest  Forward-Looking Competent  Inspiring Intelligent

PRINCIPLES OF LEADERSHIP
Know yourself and seek self-improvement

In order to know yourself, you have to understand your capacity, know, and
do, attributes. Seeking self-improvement means continually strengthening your
attributes. This can be accomplished through self-study, formal classes, reflection,
and interacting with others.

Be technically proficient

As a leader, you must know your job and have a solid familiarity with your
employees' tasks.

Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions

Search for ways to guide your organization to new heights. And when things
go wrong, they always do sooner or later — do not blame others. Analyze the
situation, take corrective action, and move on to the next challenge.

Make sound and timely decisions

Use good problem solving, decision making, and planning tools.

Set the example

Be a good role model for your employees. They must not only hear what they
are expected to do, but also see. We must become the change we want to see -
Mahatma Gandhi

Know your people and look out for their well-being

 Know human nature and the importance of sincerely caring for your
workers.

Keep your workers informed

Know how to communicate with not only them, but also seniors and other
key people.

Develop a sense of responsibility in your workers

Help to develop good character traits that will help them carry out their
professional responsibilities.

Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished

Communication is the key to this responsibility.

Train as a team

Although many so called leaders call their organization, department, section,

etc. a team; they are not really teams...they are just a group of people doing their
jobs.

Use the full capabilities of your organization

By developing a team spirit, you will be able to employ your organization,

department, section, etc. to its fullest capabilities.

THE PROCESS OF GREAT LEADERSHIP

The road to great leadership (Kouzes & Posner, 1987) that is common to successful
leaders:

Challenge the process: First, find a process that you believe needs to be
improved the most.

Inspire a shared vision: Next, share your vision in words that can be understood
by your followers.

Enable others to act: Give them the tools and methods to solve the problem.

Model the way: When the process gets tough, get your hands dirty. A boss tells
others what to do, a leader shows that it can be done.

Encourages the heart: Share the glory with your followers' hearts, while keeping
the pains within your own.
LEADERSHIP STYLES

Autocratic Leadership
The autocratic leadership style is seen as an old fashioned technique. It has
existed as long as managers have commanded subordinates, and is still employed
by many leaders across the globe. The reason autocratic leadership survives, even if
it is outdated, is because it is intuitive, carries instant benefits, and comes natural
to many leaders. Many leaders who start pursuing leadership development are often
trying to improve upon their organizations autocratic leadership style.

Autocratic leadership is a classical leadership style with the following

characteristics:
1. Manager seeks to make as many decisions as possible
2. Manager seeks to have the most authority and control in decision making
3. Manager seeks to retain responsibility rather than utilise complete
delegation
4. Consultation with other colleagues in minimal and decision making
becomes a solitary process
5. Managers are less concerned with investing their own leadership
development, and prefer to simply work on the task at hand.

BENEFITS
Despite having many critics, the autocratic leadership styles offer many
advantages to managers who use them. These include:
Reduced stress due to increased control.
Where the manager ultimately has significant legal and personal
responsibility for a project, it will comfort them and reduce their stress levels to
know that they have control over their fate.
A more productive group ‘while the leader is watching’. The oversight that an
autocratic manager exerts over a team improves their working speed and makes
them less likely to slack. This is ideal for poorly motivated employees who have little
concern or interest in the quality or speed of work performed.

Improved logistics of operations

Having one leader with heavy involvement in many areas makes it more likely
that problems are spotted in advance and deadlines met. This makes autocratic
leadership ideal for one-off projects with tight deadlines, or complicated work
environments where efficient cooperation is key to success.

Faster decision making

When only one person makes decisions with minimal consultation, decisions
are made quicker, this will allow the management team to respond to changes in
the business environment more quickly.

DISADVANTAGES
Short-termistic approach to management..
While leading autocratically will enable faster decisions to be made in the
short term, by robbing subordinates of the opportunity to gain experience and start
on their own leadership development,  and learn from their mistakes, the manager
is actually de-skilling their workforce which will lead to poorer decisions and
productivity in the long run.

Manager perceived as having poor leadership skills. While the autocratic

style has merits when used in certain environments (as highlighted below),
autocratic leadership style is easy yet unpopular. Managers with poor leadership
skills with often revert to this style by default.

Increased workload for the manager

By taking on as much responsibility and involvement as possible, an
autocratic leader naturally works at their full capacity, which can lead to long term
stress and health problems and could damage working relationships with
colleagues. This hyper-focus on work comes at the expense of good leadership
development.

People dislike being ordered around

They also dislike being shown very little trust and faith. As a result, the
autocratic leadership style can result in a demotivated workforce. This results in
the paradox that autocratic leadership styles are a good solution for demotivated
workers, but in many cases, it is the leadership style alone that demotivates them
in the first place

Teams become dependent upon their leader

After becoming conditioned to receive orders and act upon them perfectly,
workers lose initiative and the confidence to make decisions on their own. This
results in teams of workers who become useless at running operations if they loose
contact with their leader. This is the result of a lack of time dedicated to leadership
development on the employees part.
Democratic Leadership
Democratic Leadership is the leadership style that promotes the sharing of
responsibility, the exercise of delegation and continual consultation.
The style has the following characteristics:
1. Manager seeks consultation on all major issues and decisions.
2. Manager effectively delegate tasks to subordinates and give them full
control and responsibility for those tasks.
3. Manager welcomes feedback on the results of intiatives and the work
environment.
4. Manager encourages others to become leaders and be involved in
leadership development.

BENEFITS
Positive work environment
A culture where junior employees are given fair amount of responsibility and
are allowed to challenge themselves is one where employees are more enthused to
work and enjoy what they do.

Successful initiatives
The process of consultation and feedback naturally results in better decision
making and more effective operations. Companies run under democratic leadership
tend to run into fewer grave mistake and catastrophes. To put it simply – people tell
a democratic leader when something is going badly wrong, while employees are
encouraged to simply hide it from an autocrat.

Creative thinking
The free flow of ideas and positive work environment is the perfect catalyst for
creative thinking. To further their leadership education, people often check the
online MBA rankings to see whether MBA online is a match for them. The benefits
of this aren’t just relevant for creative industries, because creative thinking is
required to solve problems in every single organization, whatever its nature.

Reduction of friction and office politics

By allowing subordinates to use their ideas and even more importantly – gain
credit for them, you are neatly reducing the amount of tension employees generate
with their manager. When autocratic leaders refuse to listen to their workers, or
blatantly ignore their ideas, they are effectively asking for people to talk behind
their back and attempt to undermine or supersede them.

Reduced employee turnover

When employees feel empowered through leadership development, a company
will experience lower rates of employee turnover which has numerous benefits. A
company that invests in leadership development for its employees is investing in
their future, and this is appreciated by a large majority of the workforce.

DISADVANTAGES
Lengthy and ‘boring’ decision making
Seeking consultation over every decision can lead to a process so slow that it
can cause opportunities to be missed, or hazards avoided too late.
Danger of pseudo participation
Many managers simply pretend to follow a democratic leadership style simply
to score a point in the eyes of their subordinates. Employees are quick to realise
when their ideas aren’t actually valued, and that the manager is merely following
procedure in asking for suggestions, but never actually implementing them. In
other words, they’re simply exerting autocratic leadership in disguise.

Delegative (Laissez-Faire) Leadership

Laissez-faire leaders don't interfere; they allow people within the team to
make many of the decisions. This works well when the team is highly capable and
motivated, and when it doesn't need close monitoring or supervision. However, this
style can arise because the leader is lazy or distracted, and, here, this approach can
fail.
Researchers found that children under delegative leadership, also known as
laissez-fair leadership, were the least productive of all three groups. The children in
this group also made more demands on the leader, showed little cooperation and
were unable to work independently.
Delegative leaders offer little or no guidance to group members and leave
decision-making up to group members. While this style can be effective in
situations where group members are highly qualified in an area of expertise, it often
leads to poorly defined roles and a lack of motivation.

LEADERSHIP THEORIES
Researchers have developed a number of leadership theories over the years.
These fall into four main groups:

BEHAVIORAL THEORIES:
What does a good leader do?
Behavioral theories focus on how leaders behave. Do they dictate what needs to be
done and expect cooperation?
Or do they involve the team in decisions to encourage acceptance and support?

In the 1930s, Kurt Lewin developed a leadership framework based on a leader's

decision-making behavior. Lewin argued that there are three types of leaders:

Autocratic leaders make decisions without consulting their teams. This is

considered appropriate when decisions genuinely need to be taken quickly, when
there's no need for input, and when team agreement isn't necessary for a successful
outcome.
Democratic leaders allow the team to provide input before making a decision,
although the degree of input can vary from leader to leader. This type of style is
important when team agreement matters, but it can be quite difficult to manage
when there are lots of different perspectives and ideas.

Laissez-faire leaders don't interfere; they allow people within the team to make
many of the decisions. This works well when the team is highly capable and
motivated, and when it doesn't need close monitoring or supervision. However, this
style can arise because the leader is lazy or distracted, and, here, this approach can
fail.

Similar to Lewin's model, the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid helps you decide
how best to lead, depending on your concern for people versus your concern for
production. The model describes five different leadership styles: impoverished,
country clubs, team leader, produce or perish, or middle of the road. The
descriptions of these will help you understand your own leadership habits and
adapt them to meet your team's needs.

Clearly, then, how leaders behave impacts on their effectiveness. Researchers

have realized, though, that many of these leadership behaviors are appropriate at
different times. So, the best leaders are those who can use many different
behavioral styles and use the right style for each situation.

CONTINGENCY THEORIES:
How does the situation influence good leadership?
The realization that there isn't one correct type of leader led to theories that the best
leadership style is contingent on, or depends on, the situation. These theories try to
predict which leadership style is best in which circumstance.

When a decision is needed fast, which style is preferred? When the leader
needs the full support of the team, is there a better way to lead? Should a leader be
more people oriented or task oriented? These are all examples of questions that
contingency leadership theories try to address.

A popular contingency-based framework is the Hersey-Blanchard Situational

Leadership Theory, which links leadership style with the maturity of individual
members of the leader's team.

TRAIT THEORIES:
What type of person makes a good leader?
Trait theories argue that leaders share a number of common personality traits
and characteristics, and that leadership emerges from these traits. Early trait
theories promoted the idea that leadership is an innate, instinctive quality that you
either have or don't have. Thankfully, we've moved on from this approach, and we're
learning more about what we can do as individuals to develop leadership qualities
within ourselves and others.

What's more, traits are external behaviors that emerge from things going on
within the leader's mind – and it's these internal beliefs and processes that are
important for effective leadership.

Trait theory does, however, help us identify some qualities that are helpful
when leading others and, together, these emerge as a generalized leadership style.
Examples include empathy, assertiveness, good decision-making, and likability. In
our article Building Tomorrow's Leaders, we discuss a series of attributes that are
important for all types of leaders to develop. However, none of these traits, nor any
combination of them, will guarantee success as a leader. You need more than that.

POWER AND INFLUENCE THEORIES

What is the source of the leader's power?
Power and influence theories of leadership take an entirely different
approach. They're based on the different ways in which leaders use power and
influence to get things done, and the leadership styles that emerge as a result.
Perhaps the most well known of these theories is French and Raven's Five Forms of
Power. This model distinguishes between using your position to exert power, and
using your personal attributes to be powerful.

French and Raven identified three types of positional power legitimate,

reward, and coercive – and two sources of personal power – expert and referent
(your personal appeal and charm).

The model suggests that using personal power is the better alternative and,
because Expert Power (the power that comes with being a real expert in the job) is
the most legitimate of these that you should actively work on building this.
Similarly, leading by example is another highly effective way to establish and
sustain a positive influence with your team.

Another valid leadership style that's supported by power and influence

theories is Transactional Leadership. This approach assumes that work is done
only because it is rewarded, and for no other reason, and it therefore focuses on
designing tasks and reward structures. While it may not be the most appealing
leadership strategy in terms of building relationships and developing a long-term
motivating work environment, it does work, and it's used in most organizations on a
daily basis to get things done.