Free Essay Sample on Qualities of Effective Leadership

Chief Executive

Leadership is essential to the success of an organization because they drive the vision of an organization by organizing resources, coordinating tasks and offering direction. Leadership itself is a hidden quality in the personality of a human being which is the case why it’s hard to substantiate the quality of leadership by looking at a person because character issues are involved. However, by observing organic structures such as experience, skills, responsibility and the power of organizing people we can be able to determine the quality of effective leadership. In this case, effective leadership doesn’t automatically come.

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Organization structures determine the ability of a leader to motivate and coordinate subordinates to work towards a particular goal. In this case, leadership means by which a leader influences and guides followers to achieve organization goals. Leadership is not in any way inclined to either gender although press coverage can be confusing.Leadership attributes such as strength and assertiveness are associated with male Chief Executive.On the other hand, warmth, sociability, compassion are kinds of qualities a woman should exhibit (Peck,2016) Sheryl Sandberg in her interview admits that she fears the stage because she was going to share her thoughts about her experience of being at the top of Facebook management. It’s not that Sheryl Sandberg is not a leader but leadership requires some particular qualities to be effective.

What Inspiration includes?

Leadership needs inspiration. Once a leader shares a vision, it is important to inspire the flock to achieve the same. Inspiration includes empowering followers by building their confidence and clearing roadblocks on the way that may limit their creativity and initiative. Inspiration creates vigor and rejuvenates confidence of the team towards achieving the set goals

Articulation of vision is a core principle of effective leadership (Useem,2011). A vision provides direction to where an organization wants to be. Out of vision, an organization can drive objectives and values of an organization from the corporate level to functional levels. Lack of vision means an organization lacks direction hence difficulty in coordinating team activities and tasks. Developing the idea is, therefore, an ingredient to competent and quality leadership. According to Cain (2015) leadership is associated with extroversion with less concentration on judgment and vision. Even if a leader has a good interpersonal relationship, the absence of vision will render his or her leadership null. Vision directs the actions of leaders and through vision, an organization can evaluate its progress about its leadership style.

An environmental forces

For an organization to effectively deal with environmental forces both internal and external requires strategies. Strategic leadership ensures that team prepared in dealing with contingent uncertainties that include changes in the industry. Useem (2011) notes that quality leadership needs a strategy both short-term and long-term and ensure that it is widely understood by all stakeholders to avoid any form of resistance. Bill Sedlacek; former president BF Goodrich notes that we need a robust strategic alignment between goals, people, and resources to manage crisis (Roppela,2011). Considering the complexity of an organization and its environmental leader needs to be strategic to be able to coordinate all the elements of an organization.

Quality leadership requires taking control charge. A good leader should offer direction and guide the team. Leaders embrace bias for assuming responsibility for activities even if not officially delegated to you; leaders should be on the forefront to ensure that thing work by the organization plan. Taking charge means taking a leading-edge position to address issues if you are in a position. Psychologist Alice Eagly notes that good leaders should always be ready to make tough decisions and ensure consistency (Vedantam, Penman Schmidt and Klahr, 2016)

An effective leader is the one with high moral values of integrity. Quality leadership and integrity go hand in hand. Integrity is the first thing that followers expect of their leaders. Through integrity, a leader in able to win the confidence of the members thus be able to command them.

Successful leaders as a team players

Successful leaders are team players because leadership is about coordination of not only work but human beings. People need an enabling environment for them to achieve set goals. Leaders should not push people to perform but rather support them by creating a safe working environment without intimidation and threats. It is the role of leaders to nurture and train their employee as Russel (2016) notes that performers can manage their emotions in the time of stress and calm control. It is only possible when a leader is a team player. By being a team player, a leader can solve disputes within the members amicably without escalating the situation.

As a leader, it is good to ensure that information flows from the top to the bottom appropriately. Communication is important to provide information about organization goals to the subordinate. Quality leaderships do not embrace one-way communication, but also two-way. In this case. It is better to provide an ample channel to pass information to the top in the form of feedback. It enhances the level of participation and decision hence build employees moral because they feel part of the organization (McCormick2011). Communication is important particularly during crisis for instance, when power and cell lines were knocked down during Hurricane Katrina there was no communication and people used social media to help pass the message because people leading the operation were not able to communicate (Ropella 2015)

Visibility of a leader is important too; leaders should not be people who negate their responsibilities or actions during a crisis. They should be there to provide expected direction and all time

Quality leadership

Good decision making is one of the most critical attributes of quality leadership. Highly effective leaders are often decisive and make appropriate decisions timely in accordance to the circumstance. Leadership ensures timely decision making thus reduce time wastage Effective crisis leaders, for instance, should be flexible enough to offer flexible solutions according to the nature of the situation at hand. Therefore, leaders should have new and flexible systems by innovating encumbering systems thus create the new way of handling situations. Leaders are best placed to implement actions for today's crisis through innovation and creativity

During crisis, for instance, leaders should offer direction., This crisis may be incidences such as employee shooting, chemical, and cyber technology (Ropella2015). Some of these situations are delicate thus they require prompt action. While highlighting on mistakes that leaders do, Ropella (2015) notes that failure to plan is an enormous mistake. Planning involves definition goal to determine specific outcomes of intervening a crisis; this also concludes defining people’s responsibilities: who does what (Ropella (2015). Leaders should, therefore, be good planners. Ropella (2015) further identifies three essential crisis leadership competencies that attribute to effective leadership.; Evasion is one of them. The ability to offer direction from the strategy itself. It implies that leader should take charge. Engage is also an important quality because it ensures that leaders consult thus lead through people. Lastly, leadership should be able to execute or act. It should include transformational results

Self-awareness as critical quality for a leader

Self-awareness is very critical quality for a leader. It is good for leaders to understand what trigger; for instance, their extreme emotion to be able to manage the situation. It helps to keep leaders and sober during crisis hence practical decision People want to follow leaders who can be remembered in a positive way but not with lose temper. Russel (2016).

Texas Health CEO Barclay Berdan; while commenting on Ebola notes that “Leadership during an event like this is about what you do long before the stressful situation and the crisis begins. “He notes that effective leadership is all about transparency. It is good to be well informed with facts when talking to media and if you want to help. He further indicates that listening to what people are saying is equally important for a leader because he or she can understand the whole situation. In this case, it is good for leaders to understand their roles very well (Berdan 2016)

Leadership is more than just taking an initiative to control a team. It involves standard qualities for it to be effective. Leaders should have high self-esteem should believe in themselves. The should be change oriented and always looking forward to a new thing. They should be high achievers just the same way they expect of their team. Decisiveness and communication are also an important quality for effective leadership.

Reference

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