Leadership Functions and Roles
Introduction
The leader makes the critical difference in every organization. Every successful organization or nation has benefited from good leadership. The manager’s job is accomplished essentially through other people. The true test of managed competence therefore is the manager’s ability to get work done, to achieve result through and with other people.
The manager’s job entails leadership. He has to provide vision, define and clarity goals and give a sense of direction. The manager has to provide resources and influence employees to achieve desired objectives. Many people confuse positions and authority with leadership. A manager is expected to be a leader. But many mangers unfortunately are not leaders. They do not have the qualities of leadership. The point has to be made here that there is difference between management and leadership.
Leadership involves functions and skills. We hope to discuss some of these functions and skills in this article. One of the important functions of leadership that has to be discussed in the article is motivation. To work with people, influence them appropriately and achieve goals, the leader has to learn to motivate.
Some of us are naturally endowed with leadership skills. The rest of us, indeed, the larger percentage of people in society have to develop the required skills to lead work groups and organizations to the desired goal.
The Concept of Leadership
1. That part of the manager’s activities by which he influences the behavior of individuals and groups towards a desired result.
2. The process of persuasion or example by which an individual (or leadership team) induces a group to pursue objectives held by the leader or shared by the leader and his or her followers (Gardener, 1990, pl)
3. A leader is a person who directs and controls organizational activities towards achieving the purpose for which the organization exists
4. A leader is a person with exceptional vision; a person who uses ordinary resources to achieve extraordinary results
5. Leadership is knowing the way; going the way, and showing the way.
Some Thoughts on Leadership
1. What is that makes a person a leader? Birth, family, royalty, position, brute force, circumstances?
2. At what level do we find leadership? Is leadership limited to the headship of the team, department, organization, community and nation?
3. Do we have leaders at the family Level, social groups, religious groups etc. Do we have leadership at the junior, supervisory and lower management levels as well?
4. What process is involved in becoming or appointing a leader? What is the selection process? Is it by imposition or by consensus? How credible is the process?
5. What is responsible for the leadership succession crisis in a Nation? Why is leadership a make or break activity in a Country?
6. What is the constituency of the leader in a Nation? His village, ethnic group, local government, state? What should it be?
7. What are the indices of measurement? How can we know that a leader has performed or not performed?
8. Are leaders born or made? What percentage of leaders is born? What is the implication of this?
Leadership Objectives and Functions
Leadership has the objective of developing and making effective use of resources to archive objectives. It is concerned with creating a peak performance environment, directing and guiding the group to the desired goals. Leadership function derives from the objectives of leadership.
Personality of a Leader
· Tries to look at people who are controlled by an inmate psychological state that make them to excel
· Some authors even try to explain that leaders are born
· The things that bring them to lime light is innate in them
· When you look at some leaders you realize that until the chance to excel comes and they grab it, there is no uniqueness in their life style that can point to any innate
· They grew up as others and in some cases they have made their own mistakes before they pick up.
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