Leadership And The Leadership Styles

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.

Leadership can be defined in many different facets. To me the definition of leadership is, “Displaying the ability to inspire and empower others through the example of one’s own self actions”. Too many times we hear, “Do what I say”, instead of, “Do what I do.” A successful leader’s actions speak louder than words ever will. My first day in the Coast Guard following boot camp graduation, I experienced firsthand on how a leader should not act nor conduct themselves. Though alcohol was the main contributing factor on what occurred that evening, looking back, it was more of the lack of maintaining our core values that ultimately resulted in that Chief losing the title as Chief of the boat and being forced to retire.. That moment left a negative impression on me and it took a horrific car accident that landed me in the office of whom I consider as my most influential leader I have had in my career. Master Chief Richard Wolfe was someone that led by example. He helped broaden my vision and let me see my own potential. He always inspired me to not only better myself, but ensured that I challenged myself to learn something new each day. He would often say, “Challenges are just opportunities in disguise”, and it wasn’t until I advanced to Chief Petty Officer to truly understand what he meant. Far too often we get caught up in the present instead of focusing what is on the horizon and that is how complacency becomes the new norm.

Leadership is often defined as the act of leading a group of people or an organization. In its simplest terms I completely agree with that statement, but how that group of people is lead is an integral part of the definition. Leadership development has become a focus of the Coast Guard for good reason. Providing its members with tools to lead, mentor, and inspire among other qualities in order to care for their shipmates with a goal of maintaining mission readiness is how I would explain leadership within the Coast Guard.

Leadership is dynamic, charismatic and fragile all rolled up into one. There are many words that describe leadership and leadership is defined differently by all. As I sit and type this paper I realized the date, 28 Aug. On this date 10 years ago, I was thrust into a roll that would define my leadership style. Hurricane Katrina made land fall over the city of New Orleans (NOLA) on 28 Aug 2005, this storm created havoc and destruction never before seen in the United States. I was in charge of 12 Coast Guardsman and 3 Coast Guard Airboats in which we would crew. Upon arrival in NOLA we were joined up with the 82nd Airborne Division and assigned 12 Scouts from the 2/505 platoon. These men were on the heels of returning from battle overseas and had been home for less than 30 days. Again these soldiers were thrust into action, but now they had a completely different mission. Joining forces with the Coast Guard and conducting door to door urban search and rescue was now the priority. Over the next 27 days we all grew to trust and count on one another and from the deplorable conditions in which we all suffered it lead to my leadership philosophy.

How I define leadership has mostly to do with 27 years of service in the Army and 20 of those years spent as a Non-Commissioned Officer. Simply put, I believe leadership is the balancing of two competing priorities, the accomplishment of the mission and the welfare of the people that are in your charge. Others can probably think up a million of other subcategories that go into defining leadership, but I believe those are the two over arching things a leader has to do. I see those two priorities being symbiotic because without the people I can’t accomplish the mission but without the mission I don’t need the people.

According to Webster’s Dictionary, leadership is the power or ability to lead other people, the act or instance of leading. I believe that Leadership is an art, the art to get others to follow and accomplish a common goal or task in a harmonic manner. A leader can be shown in all kinds of shapes and forms. To be a great leader many people believe it consists of modeling the way, inspiring a shared vision, enabling others to act, and encouraging the heart. Over the course of me learning how to become a better leader and being in leadership roles, I’ve learned that all these are very necessary to be a great leader.

When asked to define leadership there can often be a multitude of answers. This does not mean that it is not easy to define, but rather that it has different meanings to different people. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines leadership as the power or ability to lead people. I’ve had many positive and negative examples of leadership in my career. While on my first deployment one example was LT Brock Eckel. Normally the tasks given to the Patrol Boats in the Middle East was that of the safety and security of the Oil Platforms off of Iraq. As Search and Rescue wasn’t, it was quite strange to receive a phone call from the NATO forces O-6 to assist in looking for a capsized pleasure craft off of Kuwait. Supposedly they had been in the water

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.

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).

Definitively speaking, the phenomenon of leadership is based upon directing, influencing as well as motivating individuals for the purpose of implementing plans as well as running an organization. Leadership styles vary from person to person and is dependent upon the situations that the leader might be faced with (George, Sims, P. & Sims, D., 2007). Basically, the leadership styles have been categorized into six types (i.e. commanding, visionary, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting and coaching leadership styles). All these leadership styles indicate the different personalities of leaders who are visionary, yet influence people in a style that is identified by Paul Hersey, who proposes that leaders must constantly adjust their leading

Each of the leadership styles described in this week’s reading demonstrated unique qualities that would be beneficial when dealing with specific situations and social groups. Below, I outlined the three significant differences I observed in the text, and gave examples of how the differences connected to my own professional life.

The articles under analysis explore leadership styles from the point of view of their relation to gender (Merchant, 2012) and personality (Yahaya et al., 2011). Merchant (2012) provides a valuable research, which is focused on gender as the major determinant of leadership styles in individuals. Providing an analysis of literature, Merchant (2012) indicates that “many studies analyzing the intersection of gender and influence tactics have resulted in mixed finding” (p. 24). It proves the argument that gender stereotypes play a major role in attributing particular roles for females and males on the basis of their biological sex and what is expected of them. Whereas Merchant (2012) does not present a particular argument