What Does Effective Leadership Mean?

When sifting through history, books, and movies, it’s extremely hard to find a person who truly exemplifies a perfect leader. Each one invariably always has at least one flaw that they have to overcome to accomplish their task as leader. Whether that flaw is arrogance, insecurity, stubbornness, and/or many more, it ails them from guiding their people at some point in their life. However, regardless of the flaws many leaders have, there are still many great leaders out there, whether they are “good” or “bad.” Many of their flaws they have are outweighed by their great leadership skills and strong personalities. An example of a leader who is not even close to perfect, but he achieves so much through his leadership skills, is Ralph, a leader in Lord of the Flies.

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.

Leadership. We all know great leaders when we see them. They are the one who inspire us, they are committed and honest. Winston Churchill, General Patton both exemplify the qualities of a great leader. But how often do we think about the qualities that make a leader substandard. We all know from the leaders who did bad things. Adolph Hitler always comes to mind but was he a bad leader or just a bad man. In this week’s class paper, we read about the pitfalls of a bad leader. In her article” The Value of Valuing Employees Six ways leaders inadvertently curb innovation, motivation” author Christine Comaford explores the six factors that are detrimental to a leader and their leadership abilities. In my following paper, I am taking a look at those six pitfalls and the different strategies an organization can initiate to correct those drawbacks.

Leadership can be defined as the ability of a company 's management to make sound decisions and inspire others to perform well (Investopedia, 2014). From the beginning of time, in the middle of all the major changes and historical events there where effective and motivated leaders having a wide sphere of influence and inspiring other groups of people to be creative and efficient. A leader is defined as a person or thing that holds a dominant or superior position within its field, and is able to exercise a high degree of control or influence over others (businessdictionary,2014).Leaders have always played a major role in the evolution of technology as well as in forming the very lifestyle of today’s society. Effective leaders are able to set and achieve challenging goals, to take swift and decisive action even in difficult situations, to outperform their competition, to take calculated risks and to persevere in the face of

Many may measure leadership in success, however, leadership is also measured in personality. The phrase “born to be a leader” holds true when considering the qualities a leader must possess. To be an effective leader, first it must be understood that respect, logical problem solving, and confidence without arrogance is key; these qualities are present in the leaders of the novel The Lord of the Flies as well as in modern leaders of today’s society.

Don’t tell anyone else about this. Keep it to yourself. I am about to let you in on a secret about effective leaders. They are “sneaky.” Before I tell you, please keep in mind the context that these are outstanding leaders who work hard, commit themselves to personal development, and get the job done. They are anything but lazy. But they are “sneaky.” Here is how;

As a growing debate, the question at hand is whether great leaders are born with specific leadership traits, or if one can be taught certain traits over time. According to (Wikipedia.com) the approach of listing leadership qualities, often termed "trait theory of leadership", assumes certain traits or characteristics will tend to lead to effective leadership. I believe that leadership traits such as honest, competent, initiative, inspiring, hardworking, intelligent, and the ability to lead the masses, are some of the leadership traits one should possess. Within this paper, I will examine the overall concept of leadership traits, while observing the traits that were, or can be associated with successful leaders.

I aspire to be a well-rounded leader capable of fluidly adapting to situations and effectively using the appropriate leadership tool. To accomplish this goal, I understand that I need to further develop certain aspects of my leadership and learn strategies and skills from leaders with diverse strengths. In actuality, these differences represent the gap between where I am and where I desire to be. Although working outside your natural tendencies is challenging, the reward for gaining these skills is immeasurable when leading

This theory is based on the premise that there are certain personality characteristics that are essential for a person to possess in order to be a leader. The main emphasis is on what the person is in terms of a constellation of personality traits. This theory searches for that set of universal leadership traits that will assure success. Numerous traits have been suggested: courage, integrity, loyalty, charisma, ambition, intelligence, honesty, clairvoyance, persistence, arrogance, health, political skill, confidence and vision.

Scripture has much to say in regards to leadership and those in positions of leadership. The Bible tells us that leaders are to lead with integrity and values that govern the heart. “So he shepherded them according to the integrity of his heart, and guided them with skillful hands.” (Psalm 78:72 NKJV) Unfortunately, that is not the practice of many in leadership, often leaders operate with a public set of values that differs from that of their private life. The definition of effective leadership has changed from character driven leadership to results oriented leadership and is now determined by the results a leader produces, as long as the leader is producing good results, the private life of a leader has no bearing on the situation. (Rima, 2000) While it is true, that leaders can, for a time, engage in a quality practice of leadership that differs from their personal life and produce positive results, eventually, the destructive behaviors of their personal life will affect and influence their public life and may result in failure and scandal.

Leadership is the process of using power and influence to navigate followers to achieve a specific goal. The purpose of this paper is to explain that effective leaders must hone specific traits that are indispensable for managing organizations successfully. This paper explores the techniques, approaches, and practices that make leaders powerful, influential and efficient. Additionally, to help define effective leadership, a case study is analyzed based on personal experience of cooperating with a district supervisor who employs effective leadership strategies. While analyzing the leader’s behavioral patterns and implemented strategies, it

The Trait Approach was the 1st systematic attempt to study leadership. In the 20th century it was known as the “great man” theory. This approach takes a look at the leaders personal attributes such as but not limited to: motivation, energy, intuition, creativity, persuasiveness and foresight. Some of the traits that are essential to this list include: intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. Thus it focuses mainly on the leader and not on the followers or situations. The strengths of the Trait Approach includes: 1) it is intuitively appealing, 2) it has research to back it’s theory, 3) it highlights the leader, 4) it identifies what the traits of a leader should have and whether the traits we do

As it was written on one of the class slides, a leader can change the way people thinks about what is possible. In other words, it can be suggested that leaders have certain traits that allows them to possess or cultivate leadership characteristics. When a the “Great Man” theories was presented during the early 1990s, it focused on identifying innate qualities and characteristics that many great social, political, and military leaders possessed. This leaderships traits approach is one of the first methodical attempts to study what leaders possess, which ultimately concluded but not fully determine as the only traits needed. These traits are intelligence, self-confidence, determination, integrity and sociability. As to where I stand in this trait spectrum, I know that I have determination, integrity and

The study of leadership has not stayed static in the past hundred years. People have been trying to determine what truly makes an exceptional leader for many years now, so many different theories have evolved in an attempt to explain the concept. Bolden, Gosling, Marturano and Dennison (2003) said that leadership theories have moved "from the "great man" notion of heroic leaders, through trait theories, behaviorist theories, situational leadership, contingency theory and on to transactional and transformational leadership." The reason that all of these theories have existed is because it is difficult to pin down exactly what exists in a person or what one can learn that makes them an exceptional leader. All of these theories though have in common that they are trying to find individual "characteristics and behaviors" (Bolden, et al, 2003) that define leadership.

Effective and responsible leaders can be found in organizations everywhere. What makes an effective and responsible leader is a complex and tangled web of personal attributes and knowledge. A leaders approach must be multifaceted and at the very core must contain heart and soul that is ever evolving.