This semester was my first semester back at school working towards my Master’s degree. During this time, I have learned what it takes to become a better leader. I have been in a leadership role with my job for the last the six years. However, I never really looked at myself as a leader, but more as a boss. To me, a boss is someone who has authority over people, while supervising and directing them on how to do a job. A leader is someone who has authority, is knowledgeable, and is looked up to by followers. Honestly, I have held the word leadership on a much higher pedestal than the word boss.
After taking this class, I have learned that I am a leader in every way. After reading early research, I believe that I was born with some traits to lead people. However, I do not agree with the early researchers in saying that only “great” people were born with certain personality traits to become leaders (PSU WC, 2014, L.2). I know that my drive, desire to lead, self confidence, and knowledge of the business have made me the leader that I am today, and they are the reason that I was put in the position by my organization (PSU WC, 2014, L.2). I was not born with those traits. I am a leader with a mixture of inherent and learned traits. This mixture gives me the skills needed to motivate my employees, plan an appropriate path for our work, and drive everyone toward the common goal.
This class has given me the opportunity to uncover traits of leadership that I did not realize I had. It also gave me the chance to look more deeply into what being a leader really means. Now, I know the many theories of leadership and how they can benefit leaders in various situations. This opened my eyes to a broader view of leading and gave me many more tools for leadership in my workplace.
Reference
The Pennsylvania State University. (2014). Lesson 2: Trait Approach. 485: Leadership in a Work Setting.
Matthew J Streng says
When it comes to being an effective leader, traits are the building blocks of skills. Regarding the traits and skills you possess, you listed drive, desire to lead, self-confidence, and knowledge of business as the skills that you’ve learned or developed. Based on Stogdill’s leadership characteristics, you’ve listed four of his ten traits: Drive for responsibility and task completion (drive); self-confidence and sense of personal identity (self-confidence); and ability to influence other people’s behavior (desire to lead). (Northouse, 2013, p.21) However, I believe that your descriptions reveal a weakness in Stogdill’s survey. Namely, you listed knowledge of the business as one of the key skills that has contributed to your success as a leader. Knowledge or technical skills tend to be over-looked as an important factor in leadership; in fact, the text treats it as the least important of the three personal skills (Northouse, 2013, p. 44). However, in most situations, you cannot be an effective leader if you don’t possess technical skills. I would argue that knowledge or technical skills are extremely important.
Of the traits you were born with, which do you feel is most important? Which has contributed most to your success as a leader? Lots of individuals have those traits, yet they are not leaders and clearly you have developed into a leader.
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and Practice (Sixth Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA, United States: Sage Publications, Inc.
Bo Steven Swartz says
First off, I want to applaud you for recognizing your strength as a leader. You sound like a positive, confident person who is worthy of their position.
I think you raise an interesting question by asking what separates a boss from a leader. A leader is definitely a more prestigious position, and often with more responsibility. Not only does a leader have the same pressure to accomplish a task that a boss has, but the leader has the added expectation of bringing people together and forming a strong identity as a group. A great leader will make their followers feel as if they belong and they have a purpose in the group that they are in. On the opposite side, someone who is “just a boss” doesn’t have these responsibilities unless they choose to. For example, let’s say an office manager oversees 20 different people. His responsibility is to ensure that his employees do their jobs sufficiently and that he is able to meet quotas set for his branch. He has no expectation to make his employees feel that their office is anything more than a work environment. Whereas, in the same situation, a leader would motivate his employees to feel as if their work is important and that they are making a difference. Rather than just doing their jobs for 8 hours a day, a leader will make an employee feel as if they’re accomplishing something more than just making a paycheck.
But beyond that example, I like that you are able to identify yourself as someone who developed their leadership qualities overtime. You don’t simply think you were born with everything needed to be a leader and that it happened naturally, you’ve obtained skills over time that have allowed you to become the leader you are today. All it took was one class to put your hard work and effort into perspective so that you could realize that you really are a leader.
Jeffrey Allen Sanders says
The difference between a leader and a boss is very similar to leader versus manager mentality that I have studied in another class. To simply put it, manager development is about making one person better, most likely themselves, and leadership development is about one person making everyone around him united as a whole and a stronger body. The leadership development strategy aims to create a network of individuals who work more consistently and effectively than one managing them and telling them how to do something (Zaleznik 2004). This follows your first image perfectly. The boss says it, the leader does it. In your case, a boss is content with the status quo while a leader looks for areas to improve. The true importance of acknowledging your strengths as a leader is so you can be aware of your weaknesses and work 0n improving them. There will never be the perfect balance or a perfect leader, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop working for it though. It sounds like you have a good understanding of your own traits, and building off of what you already have can only make you a stronger leader. Pursue leadership not management.
Zaleznik, A. (2004, January). Managers and leaders: Are they different? Harvard Business Review, 82(1), pp. 74-81.