Traits And Characteristics Of An Effective Leader

Leadership is a very broad topic; I never knew just how many different traits and skills that it takes to become an effective leader. Some of which I was familiar with, and others that I was not aware of, but now from taking this course, they all seem to be necessary for the role of leadership. The attached paper, will explain of some of the important theories and concepts that I thought were most important to be able to become and effective leader.

The next question posed to Rene inquired about essential characteristics of a leader. After giving the question some thought she responded by saying that a leader must be able to remain objective and prioritize. “Prioritizing in my job is essential,” Rene stated, “with so many issues to deal with some nights it can be difficult to determine which to tackle first. However, remaining calm and objective in your decision making can help a leader prioritize properly, which can improve patient outcomes.” Additionally, Rene emphasized that the best leaders lead by example. By displaying desired attitudes and behaviors, a nursing leader may inspire their staff to act in a similar manner. Another area Rene stressed when posed this question was a leader’s ability to support learning. She went on to state that “it is necessary to focus on learning, not chastising. Placing the blame on someone rather than stepping back and looking at the details of a problem, deters the team from achieving the overall goal. Incident reports remain vital to the process of learning.” Rene continued to emphasis that by filling out incident reports individuals can analyze a situation or process and determine where the flaws or errors remain present. Without incident reports and learning from mistakes, growth remains difficult. Diana S. Contino (2011), author of “Leadership Competencies: Knowledge, Skills, and Aptitudes Nurses Need to Lead Organizations Effectively,” believes that organizational and

“At times of change or dealing with uncertainty or in a crisis-- that is when the best leader will shine” (Ellis, 2016). A leader who can work effectively in a complicated, unpredictable situation is a competent leader and he tirelessly works to improve his capabilities (Ledlow & Coppola, 2010). All great leaders are known for communicating effectively what they want to achieve. They are visionaries who have the ability to lead others toward a shared goal (Gibson & Weber, 2015).

What is leadership profile and what it means to you as an individual? What makes a great leader? These are questions that have been asked and researched for years. Well, I’m going to try to explain my theory on what leadership profile means from my point of view. Leadership profile is the mode you view a leader from your observation on how they lead. Research has been conducted by Evans., and Matthew (2016) at Development Dimensions (DDI) International exam database of assessment data for more the 15,000-plus leaders in 300 organizations, 20 industries and 18 countries and the results reported high –resolution leadership including numerous findings about leadership skill and readiness. There is no one pattern of how these leadership profile can be governed; however, you can rest assure it can be effective if used appropriately. These results have lead me to my definition of a leader, which is a leader is anyone who has affected your life by taking the role of a leader or anyone who you would follow to the ends of this earth. Though the way I understand leadership profiles may be somewhat different from the way you perceive it, nonetheless in my understanding leadership profile is the manner in which you interpret the person who has the knowledge to lead. Nowadays, with all this research being conducted on the subject there is no truthful way to narrow down an accurate answer to the questions above, but researchers are determined to continue their endless research in this

Leaders are made up by traits, skills behavior and effectiveness, which are determined by distinguishing personal characteristics of a leader, such as intelligence, honesty, self-confidence, and appearance. However, the value of a particular trait or set or traits, skill behavior and effectiveness vary with the organization’s situation (Draft, 2015). For example, our executive leaders of Humana have their own unique style.

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.

The basic premise for leadership is the process of influencing other people to follow your lead in order to accomplish a goal. It is about the relationship between the leader and the followers. A good leader tries to motivate people to bring about positive changes revealing a common objective without using coercion or manipulation. Leadership is not about control, but permitting interaction and communication between the leader and the individual followers. With empowering others, leaders build a foundation of collaborative thinking and encourage an atmosphere of personal involvement; a leader can strengthen the respect and loyalty of his or her followers. Leaders can affect this process by applying their own personal characteristics, such

I define leadership as the ability to provide strength and coverage to support a Sailor, regardless of rank. The ability to instill Core Values, provide training and the tools a Sailor will need to excel in both their professional and personal life. A true leader will support a Sailor, any Sailor, during the high times of a career, but to be a solid force if there are any lows.

In chapter two of the textbook, Introduction to Leadership, I was introduced to leadership traits, and asked to identify my specific traits and determine my leadership strengths and leadership weaknesses. There is an extensive list of traits which contribute to the leadership process and effectiveness of the leaders, however, six are considered to be key traits: intelligence, confidence, charisma, determination, sociability, and integrity. (Northouse, 2015) Of these six traits, I consider intelligence, charisma, determination, sociability, and integrity to be my strongest, and while I am very confident, I tend to question myself occasionally. Therefore, I would consider confidence to be my weakest trait on the list.

Leadership is an action not a position. With the proper personality, a leader can accomplish many things like knowledge of the organization. Being able to handle all type of situations shows great leadership traits. According to (Hughes, Ginnett, and Curphy) the adjustment dimension of the Five Factor Model of Personality “is concerned with how people react to stress, failure, or personal criticism” and it is important for leaders to develop their response to this dimension. Leader trait research examined the physical, mental, and social characteristics of individuals. In general, these studies simply looked for significant associations between individual traits and measures of leadership effectiveness. Physical traits such as height, mental traits such as intelligence, and social traits such as personality attributes were all subjects of empirical research. (LEADERSHIP THEORIES AND STUDIES)

Not all leaders are famous like Martin Luther King, most leaders are ordinary people; you can walk down the street and run into someone and not know that they are a very powerful leader. I personally know of a good leader that is an ordinary person; my father. Although some people believe that leaders are born and not made, I believe that anyone can become a leader if they have enough courage and are thick skinned. There are many words that people come up with when they are asked to describe what makes a good leader. The most popular characteristics used to describe a good leader would be a good listener, responsible, and decisive. When you think of what makes a good leader you should also ask what kind of education they have and what

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

A good leader needs to have many particular characteristics. Some of these are obvious, such as that they care about what you are doing and always puts you before themselves. Also another trait of a good leader is that they always keep promises they make. Some of the subtle attributes of a good leader are that they do not hide behind bad news. Moreover, they are easy people to talk to and they have a good if not excellent sense of humor.

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.

Leadership is a term on which no one can develop a mutual consensus as it carries a different meaning for ach individual. Some people may consider a person as their leader who is capable of taking them away from hardships, some people may consider the one as their leader who is quite charismatic and can show them dreams of a bright future or some people may consider that man as a leader who can make them progress by devising wise strategies for them etc. There is, somehow, something very common in all the perspectives that are the philosophy behind the definition, which is related to choosing a best of the best person as their leader. Nobody wants to have a person as his leader who doesn’t have knowledge of the needs and aspirations of his