Leadership and Crucibles
Tests in life do not wait for no one to become ready to face them. Often we face hardship in our lives without even expecting it. Our crucibles differ in difficulty and form. Some of us might be tested financially, while others might be tested physically or even emotionally. Nonetheless, along with crucibles come moments that help us perceive our surroundings or ourselves in a new way. Moreover, when we experience crucibles the two most important things that we can learn from them are the ability to extract wisdom and the ability to use our adaptive capacity to endure future challenges. Mastering the necessary set of skills to make critical decision neither guarantee success nor make an individual a leader. However, the ability to always learn and figure out why success was not achieved is something if mastered can make the individual suitable to lead. This one of the most important aspect marks the distinction between ability to lead and its inability. People may disagree over what leadership means but the traits that make one a leader are definitely not up for debate. For instance, the ability to analyze the hardship to extract the lesson that life teaches us through crucibles, rather than just hasting through the problem to overcome it, is one that individuals must have in order to lead. In addition, by polishing that skill, the humbling notion that we will not always be successful in getting our desires to come true is reinforced.
Many people
This approach emphasize that having a leader with a certain set of traits is crucial to having effective leadership. It’s the leader and the leader’s personality that are central to the leadership process.
In today’s society, there are some people who possesses the qualities of outstanding leadership. Also, in today’s society, there are some people who keep qualities of a poor leader. A good leader is someone who reads and understands their own emotions and recognize the impact on themselves and others. Another thing great leaders do is think and act with optimism, by looking at the positives and not so much on the negatives. Another great strength a good leader has is that he or she knows the strengths and limits of the certain people on their team (Hewertson). Furthermore, a great leader leads by example, set achievable goals, assigns tasks within someone’s strengths, gets the right people on board,
If one has no leadership ability, one cannot be a leader. If one does not make what his or her followers consider the correct decisions to achieve their goals, no one will have faith in the leader's abilities and, consequently, no one will follow and without followers, there can be no leader. Another important criterion which one must have in order to be a leader is a person who leads a crowd in the direction where the goal can be accomplish as well as someone who acknowledges a problem and finds solutions to it.
The book, “Remarkable Leadership”, is significant in our leadership discussion because its main focus is on bringing out the leader quality in all of us. The book’s premises rest on the belief that leaders maybe born but they can also be developed, thus leadership is learnt. The author draws reference on the fact that we are all born with some sort of talent/gift or we may have an interest in something that needs to be developed through training. The critical concepts in the books discuss the qualities and roles that leader should possess, which include being; an advocate for change, an effective communicator, a teacher/mentor, develop necessary relationship, being an innovator, know the importance of teamwork, and one who values learning continuously.
Authors Bennis and Thomas argue in the article “Crucibles of Leadership” that the ability that an individual has in finding meaning and responding to negative events is a factor of leadership that is the most reliable and predictable. Several examples depict situations that people faced trying circumstances and negative events and were able to show their leadership skills. Bennis & Thomas (2002) refer to these moments as moments as being the crucibles. I have personally gone through a rough time when I was volunteering and being a leader on my group. However, the person that I refer to had gave me an attitude then a comment in front of my group which made my group shocked and that had changed me, due to the embarrassment.
To be a leader, you need a variety of skills. Providing one of them being, intelligence; if you desire to be a leader, you must be intelligent in what you are leading. For example, you can't go out and lead a group of hikers if you have no idea where you're going, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll get them lost. There are many forms of leadership, those including: leading through something, being in charge with responsibility, or even helping someone through a hard time. Each one of these requires some leadership.
Leadership is one of the most useful skills one can obtain. It was believed that leadership couldn’t be taught, but that one is born with the appropriate skills to lead. Leaders come in a wide range of different personalities and styles. There have been many great leaders since the beginning of human existence. The great question of what makes an effective leader continues to be one that can be debated. Many theories have been formed about how leaders have been either made or born with the trait. Sergio Marchionne, Chief Executive Officer of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, is an example of a great leader. His leadership style and traits contributed to the success of the multi-billion dollar company after suffering a major financial crisis in 2009.
“At times of change or dealing with uncertainty or in a crisis-- that is when the best leader will shine” (Ellis, 2016). A leader who can work effectively in a complicated, unpredictable situation is a competent leader and he tirelessly works to improve his capabilities (Ledlow & Coppola, 2010). All great leaders are known for communicating effectively what they want to achieve. They are visionaries who have the ability to lead others toward a shared goal (Gibson & Weber, 2015).
The ability to become a leader is easy, but the knowledge to lead wisely is the challenge. This paper will highlight Kouzes’s & Posner’s 5 practices of an extraordinary leader, the concepts of leadership, integrate leadership concepts module 9 and other modules, the authors analysis of his leadership abilities, the author’s leadership philosophy, and the author’s best thing learned while in Leadership Challenges.
What matters the most is what you do day by day over the long haul, explains the author. If you continually invest in your leadership and let your ‘assets’ compound, the inevitable result is growth overtime. While some are born with greater natural gifts than others, the ability to lead is really a collection of skills, with nearly all of which can be learned and improved. You can be a good leader if you want to, since everyone has the potential to be one, you just have to understand that you can’t accomplish it overnight. Leadership is complicated and has many facets, and it takes a lot of ‘seasoning’ to actually an effective leader. Whether you do or don’t have the natural ability for leadership, the author states that in the development and progress process probably occurred in the following four phases: Phase 1 being ‘I don’t know what I don’t know’ here a person doesn’t realize how valuable leadership is and believes it’s for people up the corporate ladder thus passing up the opportunity to learn how to lead. Phase 2 is ‘I know what I don’t know’ here you begin to realize the importance of learning how to lead and the learning process begins’. Phase 3 is ‘I grow and know and it starts to show’, in this phase you realize you lack skills and begin daily discipline of personal growth in leadership. In phase 4 ‘I simply go because of what I know’ is when you’re knowledgeable and your ability to lead
“Leadership is more ability than job. Moreover, it is all about determination, ability to solve problems, set direction for followers, gather them for common purpose and motivating people to achieve tasks. Furthermore, it is a charisma and the ability to reacting at the right time for a particular competitive situation” (L.Mullins, 2010, P372).
Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. The article “Leadership That Gets Results” by Daniel Goleman is an article that helps readers understand that there is not only one way of becoming a successful leader. Research indicates that leaders with best results do not rely on only one leadership style. Goleman, describes leaderships styles as array of clubs in a golf pro’s bag. Over the course of the game, the pro picks clubs based on the demands of the shot. Thinking is involved during the selection, but usually it is automatic. The pro is aware of the challenge ahead, quickly utilizes the right tool, and puts it to work. It has also been found that emotional intelligence
I enact my authentic self to the fullest extent at work, but it is not necessarily that best approach for my environment. I want to lead with kindness and smiles, but I work at a warehouse in the northeast with not so friendly people. Therefore, I am limited to my true authentic self in order to adapt to my surroundings. I am slowly adjusting my leadership approach to adapt to my not so friendly or happy workplace.
Leadership is something that can be taught (Northouse, 2015. There are some valuable theories, which will be discussed later in this paper, how a leader can develop into having a strong influence in any daily aspect of their lives. Also later in this paper it will be discussed the various styles of leaders that can affect the behaviors of the actions of each leader. Each leader can learn these attributes or some of them just have the natural capability of being a leader.
Leadership is not an easy task. This is mainly because in every situation, the leader is expected to make some decisions that determine the direction that his company takes. As such, if he makes a mistake, there is a very great possibility that the whole organization will be misled (Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes 2). As such, the leaders need to be very effective in their decision making skills. This is mainly because if they. An indecisive leader is an ineffective leader there is no way that he can lead the organization to success. A leader needs to be very decisive so as to rally support from his staff (ubalt.edu