What is leadership? Leadership has nothing to do with seniority, titles, personal attributes and leadership isn’t management. According to Peter Drucker (Forbes) “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.” and John Maxwell (Forbes) said “Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less.” But according to me Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. I will write this essay is to understand the current thinking of people whether leadership is an innate ability or skill that can be taught. I think there are two types of people, who have leadership viewpoint. Some people with limited thinking who take leadership as an innate talent while others who have broad view take leadership as a skill that everybody can learn.
The first part will discuss about different views of innate ability of leadership. The second part will explain about how leadership skills or qualities can be learned or taught by efforts and knowledge. The final part will give fair conclusion on the basis of the arguments discussed in both the parts.
Whenever, we discuss about leadership, one question is always comes in our mind is that a person is born with leadership qualities or those skills can be learned or taught. To understand, this question we need to refer the trait viewpoint of leadership. Trait viewpoint is also knows as characteristic viewpoint. This trait perspective suggests that some
What matters the most is what you do day by day over the long haul, explains the author. If you continually invest in your leadership and let your ‘assets’ compound, the inevitable result is growth overtime. While some are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, with nearly all of which can be learned and improved. You can be a good leader if you want to, since everyone has the potential to be one, you just have to understand that you can’t accomplish it overnight. Leadership is complicated and has many facets, and it takes a lot of ‘seasoning’ to actually an effective leader. Whether you do or don’t have the natural ability for leadership, the author states that in the development and progress process probably occurred in the following four phases: Phase 1 being ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ here a person doesn’t realize how valuable leadership is and believes it’s for people up the corporate ladder thus passing up the opportunity to learn how to lead. Phase 2 is ‘I know what I don’t know’ here you begin to realize the importance of learning how to lead and the learning process begins’. Phase 3 is ‘I grow and know and it starts to show’, in this phase you realize you lack skills and begin daily discipline of personal growth in leadership. In phase 4 ‘I simply go because of what I know’ is when you’re knowledgeable and your ability to lead
19). Still a part of the Great Man Leadership era, these trait theories just went a step further in attempting to pinpoint exactly which traits of these “great men” were consistently associated with the leaders, in an effort to more clearly define what a great leader was. This was again a further attempt to be able to identify a leader early on and predict which individuals were born to become leaders. It is thought that a major flaw with these theories was the failure to account for external factors, such as the environment in which the individuals were brought up in, as well as the situations they experienced (Horner, 2007, p. 270). Still today we do continue to study the characteristics of leaders in order to better define and understand what makes someone a good leader.
give a holistic view of the entire leadership process and clearly demonstrates how important it is
As a growing debate, the question at hand is whether great leaders are born with specific leadership traits, or if one can be taught certain traits over time. According to (Wikipedia.com) the approach of listing leadership qualities, often termed "trait theory of leadership", assumes certain traits or characteristics will tend to lead to effective leadership. I believe that leadership traits such as honest, competent, initiative, inspiring, hardworking, intelligent, and the ability to lead the masses, are some of the leadership traits one should possess. Within this paper, I will examine the overall concept of leadership traits, while observing the traits that were, or can be associated with successful leaders.
The essay classifies leadership into four key approaches: (1) trait approach, (2) behaviour approach, (3) the
This is why, Organizational renowned scholars have been studying of this very significant topic of leadership for literally hundreds of years. Because. It is very complex, not simple one.
In modern day business, leadership has become an issue that is given far more attention and investment than ever before. Leadership involves establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, providing the information, knowledge and methods to realise that vision, and coordinating and balancing the conflicting interests of all members and stakeholder. This essay will discuss whether leaders are born not made, with varies of theories being compared and contrasted and the strengths and limitations of leaders itself. Further this essay will analyse the future aspects of theories which would establish whether a leader was born with leadership qualities or made into a successful leader.
Leadership is a major issue when it comes to whether or not a society is going to be viable. It seems that if the leader is a good leader, a leader that puts his
According to organisational behaviour by McShane, leadership is defined as influencing, motivating and enabling others to contribute towards the effectiveness and success of the organisation of which they are members (page 382, McShane).Becoming an effective leader depends on the leader’s leadership style. Successful leaders have vision and charisma, also the leader should have an ongoing personality, talkative, careful and self-disciplined. The leader must also have self-concept
The trait leadership theory focuses on the individual leader’s personal characteristics as the basis of its investigations. It is one of the earliest leadership theories upon whose tenets many researches on leadership have been done. Although it is not very coherent, its heuristic nature has contributed to its significance in leadership research. Zaccaro and Klimoski (2002) define traits of reference to leadership as the stable personality characteristics, which result in a consistent leadership performance pattern, given different scenarios and groups. They include individual personalities, temperament, rationale, prowess, as well as cognitive abilities. Initially, the theory explored both physical and psychological characteristics that tell apart leaders from non-leaders.
The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do
If we focus on the idea that people can poses different personality and characteristics can be linked to successful leadership across various situation this would be defined as the trait theory of leadership. Some researcher believe that the ability to lead was something that a person was born with and not something that could be developed or learn. Many people still believe that leaders just have an intuition that makes them good at making decision and developing
“Leadership is more ability than job. Moreover, it is all about determination, ability to solve problems, set direction for followers, gather them for common purpose and motivating people to achieve tasks. Furthermore, it is a charisma and the ability to reacting at the right time for a particular competitive situation” (L.Mullins, 2010, P372).
Leadership is something that can be taught (Northouse, 2015. There are some valuable theories, which will be discussed later in this paper, how a leader can develop into having a strong influence in any daily aspect of their lives. Also later in this paper it will be discussed the various styles of leaders that can affect the behaviors of the actions of each leader. Each leader can learn these attributes or some of them just have the natural capability of being a leader.
Research on management and leadership in organizations over the past century shows there are still no clear definitions or answers about what counts as effective and successful leadership; the field remains varied and argued. Actual studies of leadership began in the early twentieth century. The research and studies on leadership have resulted in defining what characters, traits and attitudes are considered to be significant for leaders to possess. The early studies of leadership theories focused on the person and their behaviors, currently known as leadership trait theories and behavioral theories. It is important for organizational leaders and managers to understand what characteristics, traits and actions of an individual mark a great leader when forming a strong diverse workforce.