What Makes A Good Leader?

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 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,

In the world today, there are leaders everywhere such as Parents, Pastors, The President, CEO of Companies, Supervisors and World leaders just to name a few, these individuals can be good or bad, for you or against you. A leader is a person that sees things through in order to make change either in the mental growing aspect of one’s life, the economics of the world, or spiritual belief. The characteristics of a good leader are the leaders’ ability to inspire others willingness to leader and integrity.

The trait approach to studying leadership uses the assumption that some people are natural leaders with certain attributes that pertains to their personality, motives, values, and skills (Yuki, p. 13, 2010). The studies sort to identify what are the specific traits of leadership. Examples of some of the leadership traits the study found are high intelligence and action-oriented judgment, task competence, achievement-oriented, the ability to motivate people, courage, and resolution driven. This approach was one of the earliest processes used to identify what makes a great leader great. The studies conducted

Introduction: Any discussion on leadership issues reveals the complexity of the topic with wide-ranging views and perspectives. However leaders do share some common characteristics, and they have a positive impact on the organization and the employees. Through countless interviews, Kouzes and Posner discovered that all types of leaders, across different industries, professions and countries exhibited similar practices when describing their most exceptional leadership accomplishments.(Truedell, 2011 p. 1 Review) Various theories of leadership include the Great Man Theory, Trait Theory, Behavioral Theories, Motivational

What qualities make a good leader? You can ask a hundred different people, and you will get a hundred different answers. A good leader is someone who accomplishes the mission, has the respect of their subordinates, and makes the difficult decisions when needed. For me, I believe that a great leader needs to have a variety of qualities, but most importantly a sense of fairness, hard work/care, and common consideration for others. Different experiences throughout my life and time at West Point have lead me to believe that these three tenants are what are most needed for a great leader. In terms of a leader’s moral character, common consideration has the greatest influence on the success of a leader, because without common consideration, a

In the three surveys that I took about what makes a good leader, all three of the individuals agreed on relatively the same thing. Not one of the survey takers chose the answer neither agree nor disagree or worse. Each answer was agree or strongly agree to the fourteen questions. A leader has great characteristics and the ability to motivate others. In this paper, I will go over their results and talk about what makes a good leader.

There is leadership in all of us, although some of us may not realize that we are capable to lead others in some degree. The world has seen its fair share of leaders, both effective and ineffective ones; some had used their leaderships in negative lights such as Manuel Noriega, former Panamanian Dictator or positive ones such as that of Franklin D. Roosevelt. [The use of the pronoun ‘his’ to refer to the leaders is incorrect. Since you discuss a variety of leaders here, it must be used in the plural form.]Despite their differences, both leaders were very effective in their crafts. One may ask “What make an effective leader?” In my opinion, communication is the key. In order for leaders to succeed, they should be able to strategically communicate to their audiences.

A leader can be a manager, but a manager is not necessarily a leader. The leader of the work group may emerge informally as the choice of the group. If a manager is able to influence people to achieve the goals of the organization, without using his or her formal authority to do so, then the manager is demonstrating leadership (Allen, 1998).

A great leader shows strength as strong as an ox, wisdom like the king Solomon taught to us as children in Sunday school, and the fortitude like a lion. Leaders have to be this way in order to control the masses. The great leaders of our past impact the world and leave their legacies behind for leaders to follow. Future leaders look up to these men and women for guidance on how they had the gentle but forceful hand at being a dynamic leader to the multitude of people.

Make decisions. When we think of what makes a great leader, one characteristic that comes to mind is decisiveness. Leaders must have a certain set of skills in order to make effective decisions. Since decisions are based on conceptual ability or “the ability to conceptualize situations and select alternative to solve problems and take advantage of opportunities” (Lussier-Achua, p.11). Other skills such as diagnostic, analytical, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, time management, the ability to be creative, perceive trends, anticipate changes, and recognize problems and opportunities are important for leaders to have to make effective decisions. They are capable of making quick, calculated decisions and communicate the goals to others. Effective leaders also understand how to balance emotion with reason and make a decision that positively impacts no only themselves but their employees, stakeholders and organizations. As discussed in the Improving the decision-making process PowerPoint slides, there a two types of decision-making styles. They are rational decision-making and intuitive decision-making. Which type of style to use depends on the situation at hand. Rational decision making is most appropriate when a situation has presented all the facts and there is a clear understanding of possible consequences of actions. The rational mind can make reasoned decisions founded on the certain order of the world. However, when faced with the unknown the rational mind

The years of our existing intelligence have carried particularly bold statements such as to say ‘Leaders are born, not made’. The Great person theory and Trait theory suppose that good leadership is developed or birthed by intrinsic factors which are internal. This suggests, personality characteristics such charisma, confidence, social skills and

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.

The question ‘’ what makes a great man?’’ has been asked over and over again. Being in a leadership post does not automatically qualify a person to be a leader. One has to be an effective leader to be considered successful. This brings to mind the great nature versus nurture question. Is it possible for a leader to be made and not born? To answer this question, a study looked at the traits that are considered to make a leader effective and thus great (Kirkpatrick & Locke, 1991).