The leader plays a very crucial and important participation in the success (or failure) of the organization he is leading. It is this leader that creates the environment where his followers can comfortably and adeptly function towards the common goal and objective of the team. It is this leader that makes or breaks the ability of the organization to sustain itself or plunk down into the abyss of no-hope. Why is a leader that important? He is the key person. He is the main man. And what the leader has to give to the organization or to team matters a lot in terms of how things will work out for them. And what the leader is -- his experiences, his knowledge, his attitude, his potential, his capability, his skills -- contributes to how the rest of his subordinates will work for or against their purpose.
There are a number of characteristics of leaders as there are a number of types of leadership. A leader may be political, poetical, strategic, ethical, constructive, emotional, to name a few. The kind of leadership a leader exudes translates to the kinds of followers works for him. This has become a very important factor in assessing the effectivity of a leader in leading the organization. As we analyze the kind of leader a person is, we will be able to recognize the strengths and weaknesses as well as the things he or she can improve on based on the type of leader he is.
Various studies had been done, mostly on large-scale industries to dig deeper into how it has become such a name in its chosen field. Various institutions do this research in order to gain an insight to what can other organizations do to achieve the level of these already famous names in the industry. A particular study on the moral development of Nike corporation (Boje, 2000) which applied Kohlberg's moral stages of reasoning as a framework where the author analyzed on where Nike corporation currently sits in their moral obligations to those that work for them and to those in the outside community. With this insight, a particular organization may gain a new strategy not to commit the same mistake/s that this particular corporation has ventured and/or prepare his personnel into what they might face once they encounter the same dilemma that Nike had once faced. Studies on various corporations, their culture, organizational structure and its employees have been helpful in determining more ways a company can improve based on the conclusions of the studies.
Various leadership principles govern our different institutions and organizations. Leadership is described as the “process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task” (Chemers, 2002). Alan Keith of Genentech defined leadership as “ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen (Kouzes & Posner, 2007)." It has been argued however that there are more to leadership than what these words may imply on us.
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| Photo from: Wikipedia |
Some thoughts to ponder:
Does your current leader works best for what is current circumstance?
Does he/she brings out the best in everyone?
Does he/she makes the working a duty, a grueling task, or the best part of the day?
What are the qualities of a good leader?
How does one say a leader is good, or bad or so-so?
