Leadership And Change Management Leaders Leadership Essay

Leadership is "a sequence of multidirectional, reciprocal influence processes among many individuals at different levels, in different subunits and within executive teams" (Yukl 1994, p. 459). It is the way to acheive the gaol and motivate the people to do best. Leadership is the source of inspiration and it shows the action and way of acts to do. Leadership is considered as a product of complex social relationships (Dachler 1988). Current theoretical approaches on leadership research is concern about a greater extent role of leadership research which describe and give some understanding and recommends for effective leader behaviour and normative models. They focus more on explanations of leadership processes, describing leader behaviours, and present why behaviours occur in certain situations. If there are behavioural recommendations are available it means this is usually done more carefully and rarely without any philosophy that anything is possible. Current leadership theories are accepting the limits which have leader influence. "The best leaders are those most interested in surrounding themselves with assistants and associates smarter than they are. They are frank in admitting this and are willing to pay for such talents."(Amos Parrish).

Leader is a "person who rules or guides or inspires others"(Andrew, 2007). A leader is a person having personality which others want to follow him. They may not always make right decisions but they are confident in hte decion making and they know when they should change their directions and why. Even after a few mistakes a leader will not lose his or her follower's confidence . Leaders are recognised, not chosen or selected. In short, leaders have something extraordinary in their personality to inspire their followers. They have the qualities that the others dont have. It is an intengible characteristic that cannot be explained. But hte truth is that when we see it, we will recognise it.

Contemporary theoretical concepts have assumptions that leadership has to be understood. Following Hunt's classification leadership approaches on a continuum from "objectivistic" to "subjectivistic " (Hunt 1991), they are more likely to present it as "subjectivistic purpose". If traditional patterns of explanation included in the content of newer approaches, contemporary theories, these are generally have to be understood as an advantage of classical theory. There are some particular people that others follow them, they like there style, work and extraordinary activities.

If we look at organisational events, there is someone who have the leadership qualities, these are people who are willing to order and tell the other people what they have to do and what to do, and have the respect of other people or gain that respect.

Many images made by inspirations from leadership. They have their own identity and fame in the world. Special individuals like, Hitler, Jinnah, Gandhi or Napoleon. The story around these people show that they passed from so many crisis where acts of one person who is the leading peosonality, are meaningful and people admire to follow decision of their leader. Leaders have the ability to decide, what can do and what they have to do and they deliver thier message to others to communicate and pass thier message to others. When these are absent or cannot deliver their ideas then there may be problem. Quality of leadership is success of groups and organisations. There are so many definitions for the leadership quality. There are so many leadership qualities and four main things are to lead influence on others. Second, where there are leaders and there are followers as well. Third, leaders must appear or involve when there is crisis or special problem. The leaders have quality that they seem to come visible when an innovative action from other side is required. Fourthly, leaders are the people who know that what they have to do and what they should do in future and why they should impliment their stretegy. So, leaders are the people who have clear vision about the thinking and decision that what they should do in uncertain situations and who have the effecting personility in the actions, thoughts and positive views and thinking of others. In this case, leader's qualities are personal. It depends on individual's qualities and actions. Leader can be manager or expert. May be not all managers can be leaders and not all leaders can be managers.

In literature of leadership there have been four 'generations' of theories:

Trait theories.

Behavioural theories.

Contingency theories.

Transformational theories.

"Leaders are person who are able to explain themselves"(Warren Bennis,2004). If we get the knowledge about the lives of people who have marked that they are the great personalities or great effective leaders, it make it clears that they have very different qualities. If we think about political personalities like Nelson Mandela, Ghandi, Margeret Thatcher and Mao Zedong then we will confirm that these are the personalities who have great impact on the followers.

The general qualities or traits should be in leaders. Stogdill (1948) and Mann (1959) reported in a survey that "many studies have resulted that the personality and characteristics differentiate leaders from thier followers"(Stogdill,1948).

John Gardner(1989) studied a large number of North American organisations and leaders and conclude that there are some qualities or behaviours that appear in a leader. These include:

·       Physical, mentally and mind making stamina

·       Most Intelligence and action taking judgement

·       Crucuial to accept responsibility and challenges

·       Task accepting

·       Understanding of people and meet and fullfil their needs

·       Skill in communication with people and followers.

·       Courage to acheive their goal

·       Courage to motivate people

·       Resolution

·       Trustable personality and attitude

·       Courage to decieve

·       Self confidence   

.  Couraging personality

·    Challenges accepting personality

We mostly have heard that leaders lists concerns their apparent 'maleness' (Rosener, 1997). Rarely, we heard that women is leader. The attributes which are related with leadership are mostly male. May be the leadership characteristics are gendered and mostly these characteristics are in male.

The behaviour of leader also counts. They moved from leader to leadership. If leaders are liked and respected then they can have more support and backup from their followers. The successful leadership is based on definable and learnable behaviours i.e, leaders are made, not born. These extensive and systematic studies aimed to identify behaviors associated with effective group leadership. Blake and Mouton (1964) developed the Managerial Grid which categorised leaders based on their dominant behaviours. These researchers were making progress in indentifying what behavior distinguished from followers. These behaviours could be taught. That is why these researchers conclude that leaders are made, not born.

Although behavioural approaches to leadership offered a wider scope than trait theory. Researchers are unable to identify a specific set of leadership behaviours.

Contingency Theory operates on the premise that the leaders ability is based on different situations and the structure of the task at hand of the leaders" (Fred Feidler,2001). Fred Feidler argued that leader effectiveness depends on two related factors one is that the leadership style and the education or situation which force the person to become a leader. He also developed a scale (LPC) to measure the degree to which a person's leadership style tended towards the followers.

There are four leader behaviours: directives, supportive, participative and achievement oriented and also attempts to account for many more achievement factors than previous studies (R.J.House and T.R.Mitchell's Path goal Theory (1974)). Path goal theory explain how and why certain leader behaviours result in desired outcomes. This theory suggest that leaders are basically responsible for helping their followers develop behaviours that leads to achieve their goal or desired outcome.

Victor.H.Vroom and Philip. W. Yetton (1973) suggest the use of co-operative decision making in an organisational context. They create a decion tree to answer the questions about the nature of the followres and problem to be resolved. A leader can determine what sort of leadership style should be used by following the useful ideas of the decision tree.

Transactional leadership is basically in contingncy and is contingnt upon performance . The leader, who have power and control over his or her employees or followers, provides new ideas or suggestions for followers to do what the leader wants. The research depends on its limitations. Transactional approach is carried on with the supply and demand situation. However, transactional leadership is less effective than others and it needs more approaches.

Transactional leadership works on the assumption that people follow the person who inspires them. The latter is a process in which all leaders and followers can help and familiarise everyone with the new ideas and their thoughts (James's. Burns ,1978). He introduced the concepts of both transactional and transformational leadership. This approach creates significance change in the life of people and organisations. (Bernard.M. Bass, 1985) contrasts transformational leadership with transactional leadership.

While transactional leadership simply involves an exchange that leads to desired outcomes, transformational leadership "motivates the people to do more than expectations"( Bass, 1985).

Recent theories on leadership are the process in which leaders are not considered as individuals in charge of the followers, but are consider as members of a community of practice. This community can be defined that the people combine their ideas and share history and familiarise the people with the way of communication.

This model of leadership do not concentrate on the concept of dominance, motivation and influence which are the primary situations of leadership. If the workgroup is one where groups of people are engaged in activity together then leadership becomes the process of coordinating efforts.

In today's world of corporate America, mostly people belief that it is possible to provide the education facility to make them a leader. But In my point of view "Leaders are born not made"(Adison,1995 ). We mostly see the people in promoted. But in many there are no special qualities to effect or attract the people or their followers (Everett Lockhart). Nowadays we have a lot of managers and supervisor but there are few which are leader and having leadership qualities. "Sure, everyone can be a good manager or supervisor but everyone by nature is a manager or supervisor"(Everett Lockhart, 1991). It is not the case that every leader is a manager first, but it is also can be possible that leader can give up the information to the manager and the fact is that, everyone by nature having management and supervising personality and qualities.

We often point out one person and say, "now he is a leader", without thinking that how the person becomes leaders? And how they can attract the people. Sometimes we can say that it is the genetic quality which is in some of the people or we can say that it may be God gifted quality. Those people have this gene, they get to lead. They have all the ability to make decision. There is some good saying that "Leadership DNA is myth". There are the natural or God gifted abilities in the leaders personality. These abilities are present in some of us other do not have these abilities and qualities which leads to leadership.

The main quality in the leadership is that they have command to give up their ideas and they know how and which ideas effect the people. The desire to lead is the motivational quality that put them to lead the followers. Obviously there are people who dominate on their followers. They dominate on them because of abilities and good decision-making. They are the good and attractive leaders among us and have the excellent performance.

Leadership is the collection of skills that produce results. They are able to identify the requirement of their followers and they direct them on the right way to success. Leaders can learn leadership ideas and can get all the information in so many ways for example it also provide training observation on other leaders. Self study etc. Development is the key factor which opens the leadership getaway. It is the an increase in skills or abilities and a continuously learning process through life experiences. No one can be a leader just by saying that I am a leader. Leadership needs to be work hard.

The main keys of leadership are as follows;

Leadership involves in the critical situations and solve them by giving ideas. So good leaders analyse and plan and adapt their plans to new conditions and opportunities. Leaders have a vision and they share their vision as well. A leader takes charge. They cannot just talk a good game to be a leader; they also can take ac and take effective action for the good of our small business and leader inspires through example.

In conclusion, leaders are the effective personalities. Their act, behaviour and decision making policies show their leadership qualities. There are some classical view also in this leadership overview. In which it's described that how commentators have searched for special leading personalities and behaviours and look at the different circumstances. Classical views of leadership tend to identified by position. Where, leaders become focus for answers and solution. People look at them when they don't know what to do. They give direction and have vision. Leaders have special qualities. These create the difference between leaders and followers.

This leadership view stands for forms of organisations that are common in business. Where the purpose is to achieve the goal in short period of time. Classical leaders can have a more participating style. They have power and opportunity to take responsibilities. It can be a 'great- man' model of leadership.

The leadership traits or qualities discussed are honesty, forward-looking, competent, inspiring and intelligent. (Kouzes and Posner, 1984). These qualities are strongly correlated with people. "Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile." (Vince Lombardi). True leaders are rare. This is because of combination of skills, personality and ambition. Some personality traits are natural in leaders roles. This is the trait theory. Extraordinary qualities in an ordinary person which help him or her to leadership. This is the Great Events Theory. People can learn leadership skills. This is the Transformational Leadership Theory(Bernard Bass and Don Clark,2010). These thories discribes the leadership traits.