What is Leadership?
Leadership is a continuous process of influencing behavior. It is a mutual relationship between a leader and his followers. The leader influences the behavior of individuals and groups to achieve desired goals.
Leadership is a process, which needs study. It is a relationship between the leaders, members, and the outside. Good leaders are not born. Good leaders have the desire and willpower, to become effective leaders.
It involves developing the qualities and attitudes in managers which help them to look into the future and to bring necessary improvement.
- Leadership is setting and achieving goals, tackling competition, and solving problems quickly
- Leadership also refers to the company’s management sets in terms of the corporate culture
- People with good leadership skills can become the CEO, president, or owner of their companies
What are the 5 qualities of a good leader?
The following are the 5 qualities of a good leader;
- Communication
- Vision
- Empathy
- Accountability
- Gratitude
Also, Read Personal Growth
Why leadership skills are important
- Support the followers
Leaders support their followers by helping them with organizational resources and helping them to complete their tasks successfully.
2. Psychological Support
Leaders help their followers in solving various problems they face while performing tasks. They make them realize that their work is important so that they work with confidence to complete their tasks.
3. Development of Individuals
Leaders build willingness, enthusiasm, and confidence in followers for achieving their individual and organizational goals.
4. Building the Team Spirit
No individual can work alone. Leaders create team spirit to work collectively and coordinate their activities with organizational activities and goals. A leader works as captain of the team.
5. Motivation
Leaders motivate the employees to work with zeal, otherwise, without motivation, workers will not work with zeal.
6. Provides Feedback
When people work, then they want constant feedback on their performance, which helps in achieving their goals effectively. Leaders provide them with this feedback.
7. Helps in Introducing Change
Effective leaders can motivate members about the need and benefits of organizational change.
8. Maintain Discipline
Leadership is a powerful influence that enforces discipline in the organization more than formal rules and regulations can. Members will be committed and loyal to the rules and regulations if their leaders are kind to them.
10. Reviewing the Norms
From time to time, a leader needs to review his mission and vision statements through interactive ways like organizing workshops and discussions.
How leadership is different from management
The main difference between leaders and managers is that leaders have people who follow them while managers have people who work for them.
A successful business needs a strong leader and manager to get its team on board. Leadership makes people understand how to achieve goals while managing is more about administering and making sure the day-to-day things are happening as they should.
Following are some differences between leadership and management;
Leadership
Honesty & Integrity: Both are crucial to getting your people to believe you and buy into the journey you are taking them on.
Vision: Know where you are, and where you want to go and enroll the team for future success.
Ability to challenge: Always accept the challenge and do things differently and have the courage to think creatively.
Communication skills: Keep your team informed about everything, where you are, where you are going and what are new plans.
Management
Being able to execute a vision: Take a strategic vision and break it down into a roadmap to be followed by the team
Ability to direct: Day-to-day work efforts, review resources needed for a good leadership
Process management: Establish work rules, processes, standards, and operating procedures
People-focused: Look after your people, and their needs, listen to them, and involve them
Why leadership development programs fail
Following are some reasons, why leadership development program fails;
A disconnect between the top and middle management
Successful leaders work together to bring change to an organization. Leadership teams that are not united lead to leadership development programs’ failure. This failure occurs when the top and middle leaders do not communicate properly and have different thoughts.
Too academic-based
Leadership programs often fail when you don’t teach practical applications of the given training. If the training is academic models or theoretically based then learners may not be able to apply these situations in their day-to-day work. Programs can also fail when you offer training that cannot apply to your business or is out of the learner’s scope of control.
Spending too much time on delivering content and information rather than on the hard work of making leaders themselves, makes the leadership programs unsuccessful.
Lack of support
Due to a lack of support, advice, and accountability, their team faces resistance from team members, which leads to failure.
Motivated learners discuss what they have learned, and discuss ways to bring change. If upper management doesn’t want to talk about or consider the new ideas, the training will fail. They lack enough coaching, time to practice, and feedback from their own leaders. As a result, the learners fail to get the support that they learned from the training, thus making the development program unsuccessful.
