What is leadership?
There are many theories about leadership and we cannot conclude what leadership is. To me, leadership is a more about the process than a concept. It is a process of building characters, learning and interacting with different situations. Leadership is a process of social influence, a visionary that can maximize the effort of other people to achieve the goals (Kruse, 2013). Leadership is indeed an indispensable part of any organization and business. How can we know find a good leadership?
As we can see, leadership includes a lot perspectives to create a good/bad leadership. It depends on how you view the leadership. For example, a teacher who make students study exactly like the questions on the exam to have good grade are considered to be a good teacher. However, a teacher who focus on what students really gain the knowledge from what they learn end up having bad score are considered to be a bad teacher. Looking back at this situation, what will we get from? Good and bad leadership depends on how you view what good is and what bad is. There is no judging about your perspectives but finding a leader that fit best with your organization and what your organization toward is important.
Leaderships cannot been seen with one lense and come with the conclusion. In order to find the good leadership, we have to determine what types of leadership we are looking for. You need to ask a question “What do I need?”. There are many leadership theories and each has its own perspectives. However, when applying to the real-life situation, we have to know ourselves first then look for the leadership. Not all leadership theories can apply to us so we have to figure out what traits, characters, ethic, dignity, etc of the leaders that we need. For example, your friend’s company just found a leader, Henry, who can work so productively and effectively that he keeps everything on time and on planned. You desire to have the same leadership like that to boost your business revenue so you look for the leader who has alike traits Henry. However, your business is about service and your new leader Mark does not know to satisfy the customers and employees. Mark can do the work very well and keep everything on schedule but he does not understand how to satisfy the customers which is your business priority. Mark also does not know how to maximize employees’ effectiveness so it does not corporate well. Therefore, we need to understand what we are looking for first then identify which types of leadership we need.
I am determined myself as a hard leader who always do work in the perfectionism. However, perfectionism is not always the best option. I have to learn how to control my perfectionism to go along with other employees. Indeed, there is no right or wrong but how leadership learn to be better on their way. I have worked with other leaders already and each of them has different points of view and different characters. Some might be very hard but work effective. Some might be easy going but also strict. Leadership theories and real-life application can go well together to have the overall knowledge of what leadership is but it also need to look in different perspectives and situations to evaluate.
In conclusion, it is not always easy to find the one that suit best for us but we have to understand the basic traits of what leaders need to base on that to determine what we are looking for. Leadership is a great part that every business need to organize and achieve the goals. Leadership’s traits and characters change overtime so it is possible for them to learn to build their own leadership style on the way. Leadership is essentially necessary for any organizations in any fields. Understand and selecting the best leadership fit with the organization are difficult but worth it for the organization long term.
References
Kruse, K. (2013). What is leadership?. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/04/09/what-is-leadership/#5b9a51b95b90
slc88 says
Hi Susie, I enjoyed reading your blog. I believe that the qualities and characteristics of a leader are always evolving. An individual that’s a leader has to understand and connect with his/her followers to have the most effective and rewarding work environment.