There is much that is written about leadership; like books on leadership styles, techniques and also biographies of leaders that have inspired people to action. While this is true, there is the everyday leadership and a slightly different outlook to leadership as well. Here are a few of them.
1. There Are Different Kinds of Leaders
Among leaders are formal and informal leaders. Formal leaders are elected to their positions like congressmen, senators and office bearers of clubs. Informal leaders on the other hand are those we look up to because of their experience and wisdom. This could be your parents, grandparents or elders in your community. Informal leaders can also be those that are respected because of their expertise and contributions in certain fields such as Albert Einstein in Theoretical Physics and Leonardo de Vinci in Arts. Whether formal or informal, these leaders practice certain styles. This could be
a. Lewin 's 3 basic leadership styles
- autocratic or authoritative: the leader takes decisions without consulting with others
- democratic or participative: the leader involves the people in the decision-making
- laissez-faire or delegative: the leader 's involvement in decision-making is minimized
b. Likert 's 4 leadership styles
- exploitative authoritative: the leader has a low concern for people and uses such methods as threats and other fear-based methods to achieve conformance
- benevolent authoritative: the leader adds concern for people to an
Understanding what leadership is, it is leading, influencing, commanding and guiding people. A good leader leads the pack, influence them as a role model, command them and sticks them together in crisis and guide them to be the best in professional as well as personal life. Thinking about who are leaders or are they made, in my personal view, I would say that, everyone is a born leader, where some stands up and fly, and some others sit back and watch.
The results of my Leadership Style Assessment was a Participatory Leader. I believe that the results were accurate. I try to listen and understand to everyone’s point of view before making a decision regarding others at work. “Participative leadership also known as Democratic Leadership Style is a method of leadership that involves all team members in terms of identifying important goals as well as developing strategies and procedures to achieve the goals. From this point of view, participative style of leadership can be perceived as a leadership style that relies primarily on functioning as a facilitator that the one who simply issues commands or orders or making assignment for each member of the team.” ("Participative Leadership," p. 1-2) The definition of Participative Leader to me means a Leader that listens and considers every point of view before making a final decision.
Leaders are someone that can be a positive influence in anyone’s life. Leaders are someone that people look up to and remember that person throughout his or her lives. The leader
Leadership goes beyond management, for some, leadership is instinctual and pours over into your personal life. This paper will discuss a leader I admire in my personal life, and analyze their leadership style. I will discuss how that leader has influenced my leadership style, as well as how things like environment and the economy affect my leadership approach.
When developing a template to assess which leadership styles are best suited to mitigate the effects of a decline in financial compensation, it is imperative to understand leadership theory. One of the first pioneers in leadership theory was Kurt Lewin. Kurt Lewin (1890–1947), was a prominent figure in psychology in his generation. He provided a solid foundation to the teachings of organizational development. In many circles he was known as the father of organizational development. He was best known for the development of field theory. Field theory was essential because it allowed business professionals to understand why undesirable behaviors was produced. It also taught how to bring about desirable behaviors. Field theory was developed in part because Lewin wanted to address organizational employee turnover.
A leadership philosophy helps to define and let others know what you expect, what things you value, and how you act as a leader. Different styles of leadership are needed for different situations. Every leader needs to know when and how to display a particular approach of leadership within a group. Leadership strategies define every leader’s personal leadership style. Three leadership styles of a counselor are the following: authoritarian style leaders, democratic style leaders, and laissez-faire style leaders.
Urban Meyer is the head coach for The Ohio State Buckeyes football team. He is 49 years old and was born in Toledo Ohio. He attended University of Cincinnati where he played football. Coach Meyer is married and has three children. Prior to coaching Ohio State he retired from coaching was working as a sports analyst for ESPN. Before retiring and working for ESPN, Coach Meyer was the head coach for the University of Florida. He led the Gators to two BCS championship wins and he held the highest percentages of wins for any active college football coach. (www.ohiostatebuckeyes.com).
This is the type of leadership exhibits by dictators. A leader exerts high levels of power over his or her followers. An autocratic leader gives his or her idea which the team must follow. He or she has no time for deliberations on others ideas before chosing one. In autocracy, time wasting in long deliberations is reduced but most followers will not like being treated as bench warmers without having anything to contribute. For leading unskilled workers who do not have any skill about a job, this leadership style is appropriate.
Leaders are those influential people who carry with themselves the responsibility to inspire others to attain a vision. A leader does not puts greatness into people, rather recognises the greatness that they already have. A leader can have endless attributes to be considered but what matters is the attributes that shine within him and makes him a good leader. History witnesses a dictionary of leaders and their own philosophies. Followers make the leader learn more about their own development of skills. Leader-follower fit just right is a challenge to be achieved. Though I truly believe that
A quick Google search for “Leadership” will yield over 490 billion entries with results ranging from Forbes Magazine to the Harvard Business Review, and on Amazon.com there are over 140,000 books written on the topic. If you limit your query to trying to find a definition of leadership the results be come only slightly clearer, with 298 billion results and thousands of websites trying to clearly articulate the definition of a leader. This focus on building great leaders stretches throughout history with philosophers like Plato extolling the virtues by which good leaders could be identified, and examples like Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and George Washington litter the annals of history giving us living examples by which to model leadership.
John C. Maxwell once stated that, “a leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way.” Although leadership can be discovered in various sectors of life, leadership signifies many different qualities about a person.
Leadership is defined in many different ways. Most definitions include having “power, influence, followership, dynamic personality, charisma, goals, autocratic behavior, innovation, cleverness, warmth and kindness” (Curtis, de Vries, & Sheerin, 2011, p.1). People with different personalities often have different leadership styles. These styles include servant, transformational, and autocratic.
A leader who is someone who leads. They are responsible for showing their followers a path and helping them along the way. There are several different types of leadership styles ranging from democratic to laissez-faire. Styles of leadership are important in the success and failure of the leaders. One style that has been around since the early empires is authoritarian leadership.
What is leadership? Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines leadership as “the power or ability to lead other people”. Although this is simply put, it is also correct. But leadership is much more than the ability to lead. The ability is one piece of the puzzle. Other pieces to consider in leadership are education, attributes, and style, just to name a few. In this assignment, I will focus on leadership style. Specifically, I will discuss my style according to the assessment developed by The University of Kent in the UK.
Leadership is a concept most people feel informed enough to discuss, but that few are truly educated sufficiently to comment on. Therefore, it is instructive to consider the leadership styles of people with very different approaches both to better understand the diversity underlying leadership, as well as to appreciate the effective and less effective strategies that underlie different leadership outcomes. For that reason, this essay will consider the styles of two leaders who are less visible in this highly contentious presidential election season: Jill Stein (the Green Party nominee) and Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. The leadership styles of both are very different, yet they are aligned in the sense that both are outsider candidates struggling to gain momentum from a disaffected electorate. This essay begins with a theoretical discussion of leadership more generally and then turns to the two leaders as case studies, comparing and contrasting them and drawing conclusions about how they both work within the same public sphere and for putatively similar ends (i.e., gaining votes).