Leadership Essay Research Paper Leadership comes in

Leadership Essay, Research Paper

Leadership comes in many different forms but they all are heading toward the same goal; and that is to communicate with people. Some people are silent leaders and lead by example some are more vocal. Nevertheless, whatever type of leader you are, there are certain criteria that must be met. For example being a good role model, being dependable, being trust worthy, these are all things that a true leader must possess. However, all leaders have their strengths and weakness and these are a few areas in which men and woman striving to become leaders often have trouble dealing with.

All to often leaders become over defensive and it beings to tear away at the seams of a cohesive unit. A little defensiveness is healthy self-protection…like your immune system. Excessive defensiveness will prevent you from learning from your mistakes after all, why do anything different, if all your mistakes are someone else’s fault. Feeling angry because of changes imposed from above. Attack the stupidity of your bosses and you will feel better! This move can be self-defeating if it stops you from understanding their rationale and coming to terms with your own resistance to change. If you have healthy self-esteem, you should be able to admit your mistakes if you have low self-esteem you will either be too hard on yourself for even small mistakes, or you will overreact and defensively never admit them! When you anticipate the failure of one of your projects, do you start telling people why it will fail. You are setting up your defenses in advance so you will not have to create them after the fact. Advance defensiveness can even facilitate failure. Some people will even sabotage their own projects, when they start to think they will fail, if they can do so in a way that ensures their getting off the hook. Recognizing and avoiding your own excessive defensiveness is not easy if you have developed a pattern of protecting a fragile self esteem in this way. However, you will not keep up with the demand in today’s competitive market to learn faster if you do not confront this issue for yourself.

Assertiveness- you may think you are assertive just because you rant and rave at times. Maybe you often give in to others, kidding yourself that you are just being reasonable. So how can you say “no” to your boss or others without incurring their wrath. Say “Yes, but”… and find a way to help others get what they want without you doing it! On the other hand,…you negotiate priorities. Which crisis do they want handled first. A flat “no” is always confrontational even if not expressed aggressively. Being assertive just means speaking firmly about how you feel about a situation. It is less confrontational to refer to YOUR feelings rather than the other’s behavior. The other party as an attack may experience arguing even if you speak gently. You can be assertive simply by asking questions making statements is more confrontational if you are trying to make a point, ask questions to lead the other party to your conclusions. Emphasizing areas of agreement before discussing differences defuses conflict and confrontation Assertiveness…getting the words and the balance just right takes a lot of practice. Practice works best with frequent feedback from someone you trust. You need to be assertive to keep yourself from sliding into burnout due to excessive stress. The benefit to you is control over your priorities rather than being driven by demands, you feel unable to manage.

Delegating-What’s the difference between delegation and empowerment. Empowerment relates to larger scale culture change it involves instituting a completely new way of working. Delegation refers to specific, one-off, decisions it means letting someone else make decisions you normally make Just giving someone tasks to do is not really delegation For a specific project, decision or period, someone is your delegate. The challenge is to give clear direction but not too much focus on the outcome expected. Be clear on the authority and limits you are delegating, is your delegate to decide just how to achieve a task, or is there to be latitude on what and when. What support does your delegate require. What recourse should be taken and under what conditions. What feedback do you require and how often. Ask open questions to verify understanding not closed questions like ”Do you understand... How would you define a satisfactory outcome. Are you betraying your reluctance to let go by asking for too much reassurance.

Team building-Most organization reward individual success/accountability, making real teamwork extremely difficult. Avoid ”groupthink” by rewarding openness – thank people for bad news and for disagreeing with you. Frowning, scowling, and defending your own views will turn teamwork into conformity. Excessive use of authority, however subtle, creates ‘yes men’ (women). This is not to say that you need to accept endless discussion it is how you resolve disputes not whether you do increasing complexity = more specialists, = more pooling of ideas = more teamwork. The days are long gone when one person can call all the shots; genuine teamwork reduces isolation and makes change less frightening. Effective teams use a process to review regularly how they are doing, Team members contribute specialist knowledge, but they should be encouraged to be generalists in the way they behave in the team. At diff