What is leadership? A simple definition of leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. This definition of leadership, I think, captures the leadership essentials of inspiration and preparation. Effective leadership is based upon ideas, but won't happen unless those ideas can be communicated to others in a way that engages them.
Put even more simply, the leader is the inspiration and director of the action. He is the person in the group that possesses the combination of personality and leadership skills that makes others want to follow his direction. In business, leadership is welded to performance. Those who are viewed as effective leaders are those who increase their company's bottom lines.
In my opinion, to be a good leader, he/she must be able to identify potential problems and solving them before it reaches crisis proportions. So a good leader must always analyze, plan and adapt their plans to new circumstances and opportunities. Besides that, a leader must always have a vision. Vision is essential to good leadership. Vision provides direction and without direction, there’s not much point to all that planning.
Learning to be a leader isn't easy because it takes a conscious commitment and consistent effort to develop one's business leadership skills. But on the positive side, anyone who is willing to make the effort can become a good leader. Key leadership success secrets set the great leaders apart from the so-so leaders in today's organizations. Leadership style is learned from mentors, learned in seminars and exists as part of a person's innate personal leadership skill set developed over years, and existing possibly, from birth. Leadership differs from management and supervision although some people and organizations use the terms interchangeably. While the definitions of the terms differ, an individual may have the ability to provide all three.
Supervision means that an individual is charged with providing direction and oversight for other employees. The successful supervisor provides recognition, appreciation, training and feedback to reporting employees.
Management means to conduct the affairs of business, to have work under control and to provide direction, to guide other employees, to administer and organize work processes and systems, and to handle problems. Managers monitor and control work while helping a group of employees more successfully conduct their work than they would have without her. A manager’s job is often described as providing everything his reporting employees need to successfully accomplish their jobs. One famous quote from Warren Bennis, Ph.D. in On Becoming a Leader distinguishes management from leadership: “Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing.”
While a supervisor and a manager may also exhibit leadership skill or potential, true leaders are rare. This is because the combination of skills, personality and ambition essential to leadership are difficult to develop and exhibit.
The Transformational Leadership Theory is the one I believe is correct for most leaders today. This belief forms the basis for my thinking about leadership.
Everybody will have someone in their life to inspire them. One of my favourite leader in current time is Barrack Hussien Obama. Barrack Hussein Obama is the 44th and current President of the United States and was born on August 4, 1961. He married to Michelle and they have two daughters, Malia, 13 and Sasha 10. As we all know he is the first African American to hold the office.
Obama previously served as the United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election. Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.
As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009 and the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act in 2010.
As the President of the United States, Obama is a mindful decision maker. Obama will always gain different perspectives on difficult issues. For example, if his cabinet were to contain people that constantly agree with him, he could make purely “Obama” choices all of the time and the right decision might not always be made. Obama has shown his decisiveness through the innumerable times he has taken action in just about the sixty days that he has spent in the White House.
In my opinion, one of the most difficult tasks that any world leader will face is balancing time with their two major obligations: the population that they are leading and their actual family. There’s no hiding the strong bonds between the members of the Obama family. Obama is certainly a family man; he’s seen in public all of the time with his loving family.
With the 2009 inauguration, Obama inherited two wars, one of the worst economic disasters in American history, and a multi trillion dollar debt. Obama has displayed that he knows how to inspire confidence in people and he will and he will have to make it out of these challenges. Obama attacks the economic recession daily, creates new plans to counter the U.S debt and has already put his troop withdrawal and distribution plans into action. The American people then know that the government is working hard so that they can trust in the Federal Government once again. Obama knows the true meaning of leadership: to encourage the American people to act for a common purpose because they want to. Here is a phrase that Obama used in one of his recent speeches:
“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin the work of remaking”
He has certainly held true to his word on this quote. To help the alleviate the recession, he has spent more money in his first sixty days in an entire term of any other President. Obama hasn’t just talked about plans of rebuilding America, he has acted on them. Americans are gradually investing more and more trust in their government as each crisis is dealt with.
Obama also supported diplomacy as the first measure to be taken in response to any suspicious activity. In particular, Obama supported the re initiation of diplomatic action with Iran. He opposed the bill that would regard the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group, thereby allowing the present to position troops in Iran, which could interpreted as military action against the Iranians. This shows that the President respects all organization, regardless of their history or relationship and that his first thought when approaching foreign organizations.
Besides that, Obama is always focusing on fairness to his people. Obama’s tax plan delivers broad based tax relief to middle class families and cuts taxes for small business and companies that create job in America. Fairness is an especially important trait for any leader because a good leader must treat everyone with equality, regardless of race, gender or social status.
As a leader, Obama is a person which has a character of an individual viewed as a member of society or their behavior in terms of the duties, obligations and functions of a citizen. Obama demonstrated very eloquent citizenship when he worked as community organizer in the south side of Chicago.
As a conclusion, I would like say that Leadership is about setting the right example and making a difference in people’s life. Obama has formulated a more cross cultural approach to the world, thinking not only of the US’s interest but also the interests of the other nations as well.
REFERENCE
1) Allan William, Sally Woodward, Paul Dobson, Managing Change Successfully, Thomson Learning, 2002
2) Antony Bell, Great Leadership, Davies Black Publishing, 2006
3) Dr. Henry R. Meyer, Managing for Success, Leeds Publishing, 2005
4) Article: Secrets of Leadership Success by Susan M. Heathfield,
No comments:
Post a Comment