Identify Leader Inside You
This statement of General George S.
Patton Junior, prepared and circulated by Pyramid College; tells us to stay
positive and proceed to achieve goals with determination.
It's just to follow our passion, be
prepared to work hard and sacrifice, and, above all, we shouldn't let anyone
limit our dreams.
Leadership Tussle
The political parties, traders, and
bureaucrats everyone try to be best in leading others. There are parties with
millions of followers just because of their right approach to deal the
political issues. It is a must to not create Leadership Tussle with others and
competitors. Everyone has their own priorities and one should stay firm with
their values. The Congress Party or the Bharatiya Janta Party or Regional
Parties in Punjab, Karnataka, Haryana, or other areas of the nation face the
problem of leadership tussle, and most of the time there issues are resolved by
the interference of their key leaders.
Leaders are known for what?
Leaders are known for moral values,
ethical conduct, and their qualities. Before exploring the leadership qualities
in self and building the same, it's must understand a fundamental
difference between "ego" and "rite". Remember -
A person full of ego is pleased by bowing (down) to others, while A person
full of rituals and moral values, becomes happy to honor himself by bowing
down.
It's fact that a tree with more fruits
than its capacity faces the problem of breaking off its branches due to a heavy
load of fruits. In real life, if a person gets more than his capacity to absorb,
he also starts doing wrong deeds, be egotistic and even start breaking
relationships with others. We must remember to stay cool and build our
absorbing power so that God can give us more as per enhanced capacities. The
tree has more fruits than its capacity and broken branches, soon be deprived of
getting fruits in future, similarly a person with full of ego and broken
relationships start falling into harmonious relationships with
others.
Who is a leader?
A leader is identified by his
followers, without followers, a person cannot be called a leader. How to make
followers? How to take work from others? What are the tools used for effective
and dynamic leadership? These all issues are the managerial issues, everyone,
faces in life. Becoming a leader is not so easy, it requires exploring
leadership skills and try to inculcate the same in self. To become a good
leader, one should follow the following equation:
Adoption of Leadership Styles + How to
Lead: Discover the leader within you + Adoption of Leadership tools = A
Good Leader
(a) Leadership Styles:
(i) Types of Leadership Styles:
Everyone should understand various
types of leadership styles used around the world. A few of them are as under:
1) Autocratic leadership
It
is used where the leader has absolute power over his or her employees or team.
Employees and team members have little opportunity for making suggestions, even
if these would be in the team or organization’s interest. Autocratic leadership
usually leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. For some
routine and unskilled jobs, the style can remain effective where the advantages
of control outweigh the disadvantages.
2) Bureaucratic leadership
Bureaucratic
leaders work “by the book”, ensuring that their staff follows procedures
exactly. This is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety
risks (such as working with machinery, with toxic substances, or at heights) or
where large sums of money are involved (such as cash handling).
3) Charismatic leadership
When
a leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team and is very
energetic in driving others forward. However, a charismatic leader tends to
believe more in him- or herself than in their team. This can create a risk that
a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader were to
leave. In the eyes of their followers, success is tied up with the presence of
a charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great
responsibility and needs long-term commitment from the leader.
It's
truly said, "बुद्धिमान वह नहीं है जो अधिक पढ़ा लिखा है । बुद्धिमान वह है जो इस कला को जानता है कि कब किससे किन शब्दों और कैसी शैली में बात करनी है।"
4) Democratic
leadership or Participative leadership
A
Democratic Leader invites other members of the team to contribute to the
decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving
employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also helps to develop
people’s skills. As participation takes time, this approach can lead to things
happening more slowly, but the end result is often better. The approach can be
most suitable where team working is essential, and quality is more important
than speed to market or productivity.
Democracy
is the decentralization of Power. Perhaps more unsettling is the wealth of
evidence that having power makes people more likely to act like sociopaths.
High-power individuals are more likely to interrupt others, speak out of turn,
and fail to look at others who are speaking. They are also more likely to tease
friends and colleagues in a hostile, humiliating fashion.
5) Laissez-faire leadership
This
French phrase means “leave it be” and is used to describe a leader who leaves
his or her colleagues to get on with their work. Most often, laissez-faire
leadership works for teams in which the individuals are very experienced and
skilled self-starters.
6) People-oriented leadership or Relations-Oriented leadership
Where
the leader is totally focused on organizing, supporting, and developing the
people in the leader’s team. A participative style, it tends to lead to good
teamwork and creative collaboration. In practice, most leaders use both
task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership.
7) Servant leadership
A
leader who is often not formally recognized as such. When someone, at any level
within an organization, leads simply by meeting the needs of his or her team,
he or she is described as a “servant leader”. Supporters of the servant
leadership model suggest it is an important way where values are increasingly
important, in which servant leaders achieve power based on their values and
ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people
practicing servant leadership will often find themselves left behind by leaders
using other leadership styles.
8) Task-oriented leadership
A
highly task-oriented leader focuses only on getting the job done, and can be
quite autocratic. He or she will actively define the work and the roles
required, put structures in place, plan, organize and monitor.
9) Transactional leadership
This
style of leadership starts with the idea that team members agree to obey their
leader totally when they take on a job: the “transaction” is (usually) that the
organization pays the team members in return for their effort and compliance.
You have a right to “punish” the team members if their work doesn’t meet the
pre-determined standard. The leader could give team members some control of
their income/reward by using incentives that encourage even higher standards or
greater productivity.
10) Transformational leadership:
A
person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team
constantly with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are
highly visible and spend a lot of time communicating. They tend to delegate responsibility
amongst their team.
11) Situational leadership
A
good leader will find him- or herself switching instinctively between styles
according to the people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred
to as “situational leadership”. For example, the manager of a small factory
trains new machine operatives using a bureaucratic style to ensure operatives
know the procedures that achieve the right standards of product quality and
workplace safety. The same manager may adopt a more participative style of
leadership when working on production line improvement with his or her team of
supervisors.
(ii) Adoption of Leadership Styles:
From
Mahatma Gandhi to Jack Welch and Martin Luther King to Rudolph Giuliani, there
are as many leadership styles as there are leaders. Whether you are managing a
team at work, captaining your sports team, or leading a major corporation, your
leadership style is crucial to your success. Understanding these leadership
styles and their impact can help you develop and adapt your own leadership
style and so help you become a more effective leader.
(b) Discovering, Building, and Sustaining Leadership Qualities:
Do
you want to be a highly effective leader? Do you want to develop the
self-confidence, vision, wisdom, motivational impact, and delivery skills that
the most effective leaders have? And do you want to be the person to whom,
quite naturally, other people turn for direction? What to do for discovering,
building, and sustaining leadership qualities? The following steps are usually
used by the people for becoming an effective leader and the same may be
followed in life:
A. Create a reliable, robust,
and attractive vision of the future that people will respect and believe in
(meaning that they'll enthusiastically follow your lead);
B. Communicate your
vision, and see the benefits as people work to the best of their abilities to
complete the projects you initiate successfully;
C. Grow your self-confidence,
becoming a calm and self-confident leader, and one who inspires confidence in
others;
D. Build a reputation for
expertise and a track record of achievement that teams members
and your peers will come to respect, value and trust;
E. Make good decisions under
pressure, with the confidence that you’ve done the homework needed for these
decisions to be right;
F. Build a strong, flexible,
and highly effective team, expanding your ability to deliver many times
over;
G. Develop the sureness of
touch shown by the best leaders, and learn to build the empathic,
mutually trusting relationships needed for maximum team
performance;
H. Enjoy mutually rewarding,
cooperative working relationships with team members and peers. And enjoy
the happy, energizing atmosphere that comes with this;
I. Keep people on target and
performing well together in a “firm but fair way” that gets
the job done while respecting the rights of team members;
J. Learn to inspire and
motivate team members so that they'll "go to the ends of the Earth"
to give their very best;
K. Become a truly inspirational
leader and enjoy the perks that come with this.
(c) Leadership Tools:
The
leadership tools are those personality traits and behavioral aspects which are
noticed in most of the leaders; recognized as best support to a person for
becoming an effective leader:
A. Empower the subordinates to think
like leaders themselves:
Great
leaders don’t just lead by example; they know when and where to delegate. They
respect their skills and competencies to fulfill their work. They monitor,
motivate, scale up goals, give ideas and direction to others to succeed in
life. They prefer working relationships instead of personal relationships.
B. Talent Hunt followed by building
skills of newcomers:
The
leaders hire best from the market of job-seekers and provide sufficient
training to build others’ skills in the working environment. They make others
responsible for providing proper authority to complete the tasks.
C. Be more creative and innovative:
Leaders
require to become creative and innovative constantly in each function they
perform. This personality trait makes them different and they sustain
themselves by focusing upon their Strengths and Weaknesses, keeping eyes upon
opportunities and threats. In other words, with SWOT analysis, they
not only improve their capacities and competencies but also expand the
organizational activities.
D. Make Vishnu’s symbols your
management tools:
There
are four symbols of Lord Vishnu i.e. Shankh, Chakra, Gada, and Lotus. First,
the Shankh of conch shell trumpet is used to announce their presence in the
organization. The team or followers must know- who he is, what are his
capabilities, what is his vision, and what he expects from his followers to
perform, and why, and how this will help in achieving his final objective.
Second, the Chakra works as both a weapon and a symbol of life. A leader uses
it as a symbol of review and he reviews his followers’ progress or
organization’s progress through organizing regular meetings on daily basis or
weekly, monthly basis, etc. With these meetings, he ensures regular checks of
what has been done and also keeps attention on the overall aim. He ensures that
the team has not drifted from the goal. Third, the Gada i.e. Mace is used
as the teacher’s ruler, to punish those who do not do what they are supposed to
do. Fourth, the Lotus which is rich with nectar and attracts bees and
butterflies is a symbol that reminds him to award the people who do what they
are supposed to do.
E. Think positive and Get Inspired:
Thinking
positively makes the leader able to take accurate decisions for being proceeded
in the right direction.
It's
true "If you look at the people in your circle and don't get inspired,
then you don't have a circle, You have a cage."
F. Advisory approach/give them a place
to go:
A
leader is well aware that a person with a place to go (promotion chances)
always works hard and sustains the welfare of the organization. He always
adopts an advisory approach and shows followers a place to go for keeping them
engaged throughout their life.
G. Provide positive workplace culture:
The
positive workplace culture includes motivation, productivity, quality work,
retention, etc. A leader ensures positive workplace culture at the workspace
and helps in building a positive attitude towards the company/organization.
H. Behave like a friend not as a boss/
Genuine helping hand to everyone:
A
leader most of the time uses his emotions and behaves like a friend instead of
a boss. He tried to make favors whenever required i.e. keep a genuine helping
hand ready for the followers. Let’s recall ‘Pyar ki Ghappi’ in the Hindi movie
‘Munna Bhai MBBS’ to make others convinced to follow the leader. A leader well
knows that human touch makes a person bright in others’ eyes and he uses it for
taking work from others.
*Copyright © 2021
Dr. Lalit Kumar. All rights reserved.
