Understanding Leadership Styles
Leadership can be born or made, but the main difference comes in the way they approach the responsibility, and how effectively they play their roles. A good leader should be able to know how to act, and when to perform, it demonstrates their firmness to their followers and also enhances their ability to guide the steps of others. In this essay, I will go through my in-depth reflections on the weekly learning we have been doing, and also give my perception of the traits a good leader should display.
Leadership styles differ for every different person because every person has their personality traits, and it is the traits that determine how a leader deals with different situations. Leaders can be born; where they have an inborn leadership capability and charisma, and they influence the people, they are in contact with. Leaders are also made, though formal education, people can be trained on how to lead and manage different personalities in a formal setting. The trained type of leaders are often the ones in charge of blue-collar companies, mainly because they have been trained by prestigious institutions (Andersen, Bøllingtoft and Jacobsen 2016)
The week’s content made me question my capabilities and what I can do and cannot, coming into conclusion that nothing is impossible provided I put my mind into it. In leadership, one must understand their qualities and traits first, and it led to my discovery that am more of a listener than a reader, and I learn through experiences. The realizations have helped me become more self-perceptive but also understand my strengths and weaknesses. Being a leader in an organization means taking charge of everything that happens, including the employees. Still, one has to do their job well, for them to be valuable to the company in the long run, for their presence and input to be missed every time they are not around. Leadership means being able to relate with people and inspire them (Castiglioni, Marchesi and Gatti 2019).
In leadership, a leader can succeed or fail to depend on the role that they play in developing teamwork, and if they participate in collaboration or not (Warrick 2014). Organizations that need results need to work in coordination and with a high amount of teamwork, with every member playing their role well, but doing it for the benefit of the whole team. Teams must work in complete collaboration, commitment, understanding and effective leadership for an organization to register progress. The teamwork of employees in any organization can lead it to success or failure.
Lessons Learned from Weekly Learning
As a leader, it is my responsibility to make sure that teamwork is achieved and effective in the organization. I have to inspire the employees, be charismatic and use personal traits to ensure that the employees are relaxed and they are comfortable working together. A leader is supposed to go out of their way in promoting a healthy working environment, which in turn encourages team bonding, an ambience where workers trust each other and are comfortable working together to achieve a set goal and an environment that promotes cooperation (Parker 2011).
For a leader to lead, they must be followers, meaning that leaders should be ready to accept opinions from different avenues before making a decision (Jawahar, Stone and Kluemper 2019). As a leader, I should understand every follower individually and create personal relationships with everyone. Despite the different kinds of relationships, I may have with my followers; I should treat every person the same way. A true leader must be impartial in their dealings and the treatments of their workers, even f they have an in-group and an out-group.
Contingency leadership is the best type of leadership according to me, and this is best effective when a leader treats every follower equally, meaning that they can count on any of the followers when the leader needs them (Jansen et al. 2016). A leader should be able to inspire their followers, and ensure that they buy into their ideas and ideologies by practising them themselves. They should be having the willingness to serve, lead by example, take responsibility and make bold decisions, that will prove that they can stand by their choices.
Every organization has its own culture, with the culture dictating how they operate and how they perform. A leader’s role is to ensure that their organization has a serene culture that encourages results and is comfortable for every employee. As a leader, I should ensure that I reinforce a culture that promotes the vision, mission, and objectives of the organization that I represent. The learning can be enhanced by my articulation of the image I have for the workplace, with teamwork being them major point and conduct daily activities that outline the cultural vision through my actions (Gordon 2017).
As a leader, the primary responsibility that one should have is maintaining consistency in their decisions and actions. One should walk the talk, if someone has broken the code of ethics, treat them the same way as the others despite their position, status or relationship with you. A leader should have consistent actions that are in line with the organizational culture. The language, symbols they use and decisions they make should conform with the culture laid down (Warrick 2017). Workplace culture plays a massive role in determining a leader’s effectiveness and their ability to succeed in different contexts.
Traits of a Good Leader
In this era, organizations have become more culturally diverse, with some entities having as many as even a hundred different groups of employees. It means that being able to foster inclusivity and providing an environment that is conducive for everyone is an essential trait for a leader to have. A leader should have the skills and abilities to effectively motivate and motivate people from across all walks of life, and all backgrounds (Bonsu and Twum-Danso 2018). An effective leader should be dependable, honest, trustworthy, firm, decisive, informed, team builder, intelligent, positive, encouraging, just, skilled, among other traits, for them to lead their followers well.
In a cross-cultural context, the most effective style of leadership is interactive leadership. In an interactive leadership style, the leader develops personal relationships with each follower, enhances feelings of self-worth to the employees, shares power and information and promotes inclusivity. Interactive leadership helps build cooperation and togetherness in a cross-cultural setting, which in turn guarantees results and creates a serene environment for everyone involved (?ukowski 2017). For a leader’s effectiveness to be seen in such setting, a leader should be an influencer, be firm and address everyone as their colleague, and not in the basis of their background or cultural affiliation.
Conclusion
For a leader to be effective, they must be ready to accept that they have strengths and weaknesses but work towards improving their weaknesses and utilizing their strengths. Leaders are born or made, the most significant difference is the attitude of the individuals towards the responsibility that they are given. The most effective leaders understand that their job is not to deliver orders but to act as an example for others to follow.
References
Andersen, L.B., Bøllingtoft, A. and Jacobsen, C.B., 2016. Are Leaders born or made? Leadership Training Effects on Employee Perceptions of Leadership. The 2016 Academy of Management Annual Meeting.
Bonsu, S. and Twum-Danso, E., 2018. Leadership Style in the Global Economy: A Focus on Cross-Cultural and Transformational Leadership. Journal of Marketing & Management, 9(2).
Castiglioni, M., Marchesi, A. and Gatti, N., 2019, August. Be a leader or become a follower: The strategy to commit to with multiple leaders. In Proceedings of the 28th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI’19) (pp. 123-129).
Gordon, G., 2017. Guiding Organizational Culture. In Leadership through Trust (pp. 53-62). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Jansen, J.J., Kostopoulos, K.C., Mihalache, O.R. and Papalexandris, A., 2016. A socio?psychological perspective on team ambidexterity: The contingency role of supportive leadership behaviours. Journal of Management Studies, 53(6), pp.939-965.
Jawahar, I.M., Stone, T.H. and Kluemper, D., 2019. When and why leaders trust followers. Career Development International.
?ukowski, W., 2017. The impact of leadership styles on innovation management. Marketing of Scientific and Research Organizations, 24(2), pp.105-136.
Parker, G.M., 2011. Team players and teamwork: New strategies for developing successful collaboration. John Wiley & Sons.
Warrick, D.D., 2014. What leaders can learn about teamwork and developing high-performance teams from organization development practitioners. Od Practitioner, 46(3), pp.68-75.
Warrick, D. D., 2017. “What leaders need to know about organizational culture.” Business Horizons 60, no. 3: 395-404.
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