History and Leadership

Introduction

Leadership entails the capacity of adapting the prevailing setting so that every individual feels more empowered in contributing innovatively or creatively in matters relating to problem-solving and achieving the set objectives. In other words, leadership reflects the ability of the organization’s management in setting and achieving challenging objectives, taking decisive and swift actions, outperforming competitor, as well as inspiring group members to perform better. To begin with, effective leader has the capability of doing something though the use of his or her skills and talent. The reason for that is because skills are regarded as the proficiency which is acquired via training and experience while talent is an individual’ natural ability (Major, 1997). Although talent helps a lot, it rarely required or significant in effective leadership. It should be noted that the majority of people rose to become excellent leaders not because of their talent but due to training, gaining experience, and above all the persistence of becoming great leaders (Geoffrey, 2011).  An excellent or effective leader is more flexible to the extent of making adjustments. Effective leadership entails understanding that his or her team performs the very best of them when the members have differing styles and personalities to increase perspectives during problem solving. He or she avoids being caught up in the in constraints or challenges which can hinder team building or ‘group think’.  In most cases such a leader is a person who acts as a facilitator of his or her team, generates healthy group discussions and consensus (Adeniyi, 2007). Conversely, effective leadership, such a leader knows that in case the team ends up believing in, and is also committed to the plan of action, the chances of realizing success in the organization goes up immensely. This means that he or she facilitates the team to become more passionate about handling any task they had mutually agreed to do. Thus, in case the team feels that an effective leader forces them to do what he thinks is best, it is possible to loss innovation through instilling little passion in them (Major, 1997). Effective leadership makes a leader to be highly organized and trust the members of his or her team to their respective tasks. Such a leader ends up becoming a delegator i.e. setting up clear and concise expectations as well as providing an on-going feedback. In other words, they are publically and regularly recognize others (Stanfield, 2009). Equally, they have the propensity of accepting blame for failures and disappointments even if they might have not been directly responsible. They are quick in rewarding others rather themselves. Finally, they have the capacity of making tough decisions and they are willing to take risky measures, even if traditional wisdom can dictate otherwise (Geoffrey, 2011). Effective leadership makes a leader to stand alone in case they believe and trust their convictions. On the other hand, a good leader typically takes the right action as opposed to ensuring that things are done. He or she takes into consideration the aim of the goal to be achieved. Equally, since a leader is ethical, it means that he abides by the rules of the organization, treats others fairly and with compassion, and keeps their word (Klann, 2007). Moreover, such a person ensures that he or she has minimized collateral damage. Workers should not be cheated or demoralized. They should be treated with respect. This means that a good leader values their working environment and the people surrounding him or her (Irwin, 2014). A good leader is a person who ensures that he or she has minimized wastage of resources. They achieve this through considering the harm they could have caused to the environment in the process or ensuring that they have achieved the goals of their business enterprise. This is to say that they ensure that resources are efficiently utilized as well as impact they could have caused to the environment in case of ineffective utilization of resources (Geoffrey, 2011). Nevertheless, a good leader can manage to acquire the whole staff but their main duty is to develop followers. In the process of developing followers, good leaders also ensure that they have acquired the skills and knowledge of becoming good leaders too (Major, 1997). They ensure that they have developed abilities and skills of their group which in return forces them to enhance or develop their own good leadership abilities and skills. In connection to that, they ensure that they have left a lasting impression or mark on their groups and their business organization as a whole (Klann, 2007). In short other that ensuring that he has managed to grow all individuals from the inside out, he or she leaves their organization in a better position unlike before. Regardless of the huge difference which exists between effective and good leadership, ethics plays a big role in harmonizing the two. Typically, ethical leadership makes a lead others on ethical grounds as well as being responsible for good and bad results.  With ethics, it means that both effective and good leaders can have tremendous impacts on the way people behave as well as what they ought to achieve (Mendonca & Kanungo, 2006). In short, they make ethics a clear and dependable part of their plan of action in setting standards, modeling appropriate behaviors hence holding everyone accountable.

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