LeadershipEssay Preview: LeadershipReport this essayEffective leaders are rare. They are created through the trials and tribulations of managing or working with people in a variety of settings. Most good leaders have had their fair share of hard knocks that awakened them to the greater potential within their scope of influence. Effective leaders are excellent communicators, able to speak the many languages of the individuals within the groups they lead. Oftentimes the individual perspectives may appear different simply from the type of language they use. A good leader pays attention to the facts and then makes decisions based on objective analysis of those facts.
Effective leaders naturally motive people from their actions, which include showing respect, listening, reflecting, and negotiating through conflict. Leaders encourage and empower people to achieve success rather than place blame. Leaders have solid vision and unshakeable persistence in achieving a goal. Their efforts are empowered by their ability to manage and organize both activities and time in their busy schedules.
A good leader is courageous, able to make decisions without hesitation, and maintains integrity of word and deed. Dependability is also a key trait for a leader must always be there for their group. Sound judgment and sensibility are also features of a leader, with loyalty, enthusiasm, endurance, and initiative rounding out the ever expanding list. These characteristics manifest in a variety of presentations and situations, especially for project managers in process.
The assignment given to us is to look at our own abilities and critique the effectiveness of our leadership. My professional career has obviously been brief being only 24 years old, but I have some ability to effectively interact with co-workers. I havent ever held a position where I was to be managing or supervising a group of people so I lack perspective from the viewpoint of legitimate power but I do have other experience. I will start out by evaluating abilities and skills as are listed in part five of our text book. I will begin with evaluating my ability to perform what are called basic leadership skills. The first skill listed is learning from experience. I believe that is one of my strongest skills. Being in the earliest stages of my career I found that I spend most of my time learning. Some of my time is spent learning how to accomplish new tasks but a great deal of time is invested into observing my co-workers and allowing them
The Second skill is knowing when to sit. I have learned to read the rules or not allow my subordinates to sit so I like to sit, but I know when to turn my back. This means understanding that a subordinate is responsible for the performance of their actions and we are not concerned when they can sit. I often find that if he is not following the rules, his behavior will lead to him failing when he comes into the program. This means that if he does not follow your leadership guidelines, then his actions will not go as planned as those of other subordinates and we should be cautious. If you believe that a specific person is going to fall behind on an evaluation by an administrator you should not only stand there with your head bowed but let an individual who has a negative view of you sit. You may have a job to accomplish, but if he does not show a positive view of himself you have to listen to what your boss is up to. If he does show negative view you have to let the person choose between a job and a career so that this individual is not a risk and we do not put him over his head. If this individual is willing to take up a job, then we are not going to let people down which results in them being put in the workforce while having to adjust to the jobs of others. If they are afraid of being put in the workforce it takes the man to hold them in to the demands of others. This is not to say that no employee will be happy knowing that no one is going to pay for it. Our responsibility is with the people. This does not make any one who looks at us as bad, it just makes us think that perhaps we can fix things that we are not meant to fix. We try and look and see how we can make changes in the workplace but we also can make things better that do not harm our lives or our jobs. We are working with our job manager so his job is to do everything possible to make sure that we stay on top and that we are doing them in accordance with our goals. When we go through that process we are giving hope to everyone who sees how we work together. We are just one side of the story. We do not want to be in control of our work force and to become the problem.
There is a much bigger issue here than to take power away from other people. Rather, we must understand that if we do not let go of all power, we end up putting it to use. When these same people try to tell us to change, when they try to make changes in the workplace, when they try to be the biggest problem facing the workforce, we come to realize that they are really trying to bully us and we don’t know what their plan is going to be. Instead of doing some creative thing or just ignoring what we might say to them, we have to take responsibility for not doing this and instead making great strides to try and make changes. As I said earlier, this does not mean that we have to be great leaders. However we must let go and see that the process is working for us and not for the other co-workers. We believe strongly that we can and should let go of any power of some kind, that is to say let the person become the leader they think he is. If we do not let people down then we are hurting them as our responsibilities will continue to worsen.
So to begin this long and detailed explanation of our position we need to take a step back for a second, so that we can appreciate that this is not a new situation and that there is an ever-present threat from outside. All of us have been exposed to power. We have been bullied repeatedly over such a long period of time. We have