The Value Of Valuing Employees Six Ways Leaders Inadvertently Curb Innovation

Leadership is, and always has been, a vital aspect of social and economic constructs. It is essential to the survival of societies, industries, organizations, and virtually any group of individuals that come together for a common purpose. However, leadership is difficult to define in a single, definitive sense. As such, theories of leadership, what constitutes a great leader, and how leaders are made have evolved constantly throughout history, and still continue to change today in hopes of improving upon our understanding of leadership, its importance, and how it can be most effective in modern organizational cultures.

For centuries leaders have been analyzed in order to determine what the traits and characteristics of a successful leader are. Leadership, as defined by Koontz and Weihrich (2008) is “the art or a process of influencing people so that they will strive willingly and enthusiastically toward the achievement of group goals” (p. 311). Leadership plays an important role in employee’s participation, creativity, recruitment to an organization, their commitment to the organization, and productivity levels. Over the years, there have been a number of theories surrounding leadership such as the “Great Man” theory, which, according to Riaz and Haider (2010), “assumes that leaders are born and have innate qualities, therefore, leaders

In addition, leadership itself can be described in various forms and through the highlight of different skill sets, but the one thing that all definitions have in common is that “leadership involves influencing the attitudes, beliefs, behaviours and feelings of other people” Spector’s work (as cited in Curtis, de Vries, & Sheerin, 2011, p.306). When the skill set of a leader is compared to that of a manager, true differences are noted. Some of these key differences are apparent even in the approach utilized to reach the desired goals. While a manager directs, a leader transforms, a manager sustains and a leader improves, a manager controls, a leader motivates, a manager’s focus is on short-term goals and a leader’s is long-term based, managers ask how and when, while

In today’s society, there are some people who possesses the qualities of outstanding leadership. Also, in today’s society, there are some people who keep qualities of a poor leader. A good leader is someone who reads and understands their own emotions and recognize the impact on themselves and others. Another thing great leaders do is think and act with optimism, by looking at the positives and not so much on the negatives. Another great strength a good leader has is that he or she knows the strengths and limits of the certain people on their team (Hewertson). Furthermore, a great leader leads by example, set achievable goals, assigns tasks within someone’s strengths, gets the right people on board,

When sifting through history, books, and movies, it’s extremely hard to find a person who truly exemplifies a perfect leader. Each one invariably always has at least one flaw that they have to overcome to accomplish their task as leader. Whether that flaw is arrogance, insecurity, stubbornness, and/or many more, it ails them from guiding their people at some point in their life. However, regardless of the flaws many leaders have, there are still many great leaders out there, whether they are “good” or “bad.” Many of their flaws they have are outweighed by their great leadership skills and strong personalities. An example of a leader who is not even close to perfect, but he achieves so much through his leadership skills, is Ralph, a leader in Lord of the Flies.

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.

In my reflections as I prepared to write this paper, I came to the realization that leadership is much more complex especially since the paper requires that I focus on a few traits. In an effort to make it simple, I wrote down the traits that came to mind and in process had over 10 important traits but an even bigger challenge was on how to narrow them down to 3 or 4 and this is the place that required a good deal of reflection. Eventually, however, I had to prioritize them since in any case; it is not possible to get a leader that has all the traits. As I thought of the various leaders who have inspired me, I noticed that while they strived to provide the best leadership by focusing on their strong points, they still had their weaknesses. To me this provided a justification for at least identifying key desirable traits and thereafter working to improve them. I did manage to settle on four traits, which for me are indispensible if a leader or a leadership is to become effective.

Email is one of the most disruptive tools that professionals use daily. In this technologically advanced world, most companies use email as the main source of communication to send messages, word documents, images, and other files. The use of e-mail has even surpassed the use of verbal communication in many organizations (MacNevin, 2007). The problem starts with the culture surrounding email. People feel the need to respond to an email the second it arrives (MacNevin, 2007). This disruption is a serious problem for the employee 's and company 's well-being, costing both valuable resources to manage.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect and make an analysis of the general strengths and weaknesses of a leader, provide recommendations, thoughts of overall performance to improve on this person’s leadership style in which practices and theories were utilized most effectively. Upon such, draw conclusions and provide an integration of this leadership practice into my own leadership practice. The accomplishment of this will be achieved by identifying several key practices from published documents surrounding and encompassing the leader, and comparing them to known relative concepts for a holistic view of the approach.

There are many examples of poor leadership behavior in today’s workplace. Inadequate leadership can be detrimental not only to a team within an organization, but also to the entire organization itself. I believe it is vital for upper management to ensure that their leaders are properly trained and aware of how to handle certain situations and employees. When a leader’s weaknesses are overlooked, large problems occur.

Leadership throughout history has taken on many faces and many forms yet, whether the leader was considered good or evil, the skills and styles required of a leader have not changed. Christian Reflections on the Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner state that “The work of leaders is change. To them the status quo is unacceptable. Leaders search for opportunities by seeking innovative ways to change, grow, and improve. They seize the initiative to make things happen. And knowing they have no monopoly on good ideas, leaders constantly scan the outside environment for creative ways to do new things.” (Kouzes & Posner, 2004)

The word ‘leadership’ often times triggers a preconceived image of an ideal leader—typically accompanied by the aura that the effective leader should be at the top of the hierarchy, ready to produce the solutions to complex problems. However, this is not true of leadership, given that effective leadership is not achieved by position but rather through style and situational awareness. Examining leadership requires the consideration of the catalysts for different types of leaders. Popular leader development theories tend to focus on the natural servitude of the leader, his or her capability to manage, and leader behavior.

Warren Bennis took this discussion as an opportunity to look beyond the exemplars that have existed in leadership positions to a more personal view of the individual and the mistakes that are made. Leadership leads individuals into fascinating careers but often we wonder, “Where have things gone wrong?” Bennis focused on three areas that he considered to be the most common and most fatal mistakes that individuals make in leadership roles. First, he referred to what an individual knows or doesn’t know, then to their contextual intelligence and finally, he speaks of the concept of knowing one’s self.

Hogan and Kaiser (2005) define leadership as “the ability to build and maintain a group that performs well relative to its competition”. Inyang (2004) considers leadership to be a process which “involves the use of non-coercive influence to shape a group’s or organization’s goals, motivate behavior towards the achievement of those goals and help define group or organization culture”. What makes a leader effective has been the subject of many scholarly investigations; the focus is apparently skewed to issues such as leadership effectiveness, identifying the characteristics of successful leaders, leadership theories and developing leaders. Hogan and Kaiser (2005) note that generally, leadership research tended to take a rather one-sided view on leadership, emphasizing its positive and constructive aspects while avoiding its dark side. Very little is written about leadership derailment or leadership failure. Furnham (2010) notes that many decades of leadership study has produced over 50,000 books with ‘leadership’ in their titles but almost none on leadership derailment or failure, which he considers “the elephant in the boardroom”. Thus the dark side of leadership is often ignored in the literature as “a place inhabited by incompetence, flawed character, and unethical behavior” (Slattery, 2009).

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.