Undoubtedly, managers need to have a specific set of abilities and skills to effectively perform their jobs. But what qualities set successful managers apart from mediocre ones? A manager might be an expert in his field or the smartest person in the company, but this is no guarantee of success. Specifically, to increase the productivity of employees, managers make use of their experiences, knowledge base, and perspectives; however, they also should be effective leaders to inspire others to share common goals. As a matter of fact, leadership is one of the four basic functions that constitute the management process. Planning sets the objectives and direction; organizing turns plans into action with the help of resources; leading builds enthusiasm and commitment that help people apply their talents; and, finally, controlling makes sue that things turn out right. For over a long period of time, scholars have tried to identify the key characteristics, which separate true leaders from nonleaders, and have already proposed numerous systems for categorizing them.
Both management and leadership are important functions in any company, but they pursue different purposes and seek to get different results. The main focus of management is to keep the company going well with few changes, but the leaders try to bring the realities of the environment in the company, which usually requires changing the structures, relationship, and resources. “A key way of differentiating between managers and leaders is to argue that the role of management is to promote stability or to enable the organization to run smoothly, whereas the role of leadership is to promote adaptive or useful changes” (Schermerhorn, Osborn and Hunt 292). As a rule, leadership has an innovative character because their goal is to be responsive to the needs of stakeholders and customers that is why they have to set new priorities and a new strategic agenda. One of the functions of leadership is to produce and set the direction of changes while management lays out specific plans to produce regular results, solves problems, and controls deviations. Leadership is the process of influencing other people and facilitating collective and individual efforts to accomplish shared objectives.
One of the proposed systems for categorizing individual characteristics is known as the “Big Five” model that includes openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism. Extraversion, for example, is also related to management and leadership. Extroverts are usually assertive, sociable, and energetic people who demonstrate self-confidence and enjoy interacting with other people. Due to the fact that they are sociable and dominant in their environment, they, as a rule, emerge as leaders in numerous situations. Extraversion has a very strong relationship with leader effectiveness and leader emergence; however, there are several examples of introverted leaders such as Jim Buckmaster who is the CEO of Craigslist. He does not attend meetings because he does not like them. Conscientious people are organized, demonstrate persistence, and take the initiative that is why they also emerge as leaders. Those who have the openness to experience usually demonstrate creativity, originality, and are open to exploring new things, and very often become effective leaders as well. Self-esteem has no relation to the Big Five personality traits but exists as an important aspect of an individual’s personality. “The degree to which a person is at peace with oneself and has an overall positive assessment of one’s self-worth and capabilities seem to be relevant to whether someone is viewed as a leader” (Bauer and Berrin 578). Individuals with high self-esteem support their employees more and have the greater level of self-confidence.
Successful leadership is usually associated with vision, which can be defined as a future that a person hopes to achieve to improve the present state of affairs. However, simply having a clear vision is not enough, and that is why great leaders are extremely good at turning visions into accomplishments. This can also be defined as being perfect at getting people inspired and motivated to pursue the vision. Besides, visionary leadership gives meaning to employees’ work and makes it valuable and worthy. “Exemplary leaders are forward-looking. They are able to envision the future, to gaze across the horizon and realize the greater opportunities to come” (Kouzes and Posner 112). Successful leaders are the individuals who display initiative, have high energy and are tenacious. They have confidence in their abilities and trust themselves. Successful leaders are original and creative; know their industry and technical foundations. They can easily adapt to the needs of other individuals and the situation. In addition, true leaders are fair, principled, and authentic. What is more, they are honest, trustworthy, straightforward, and predictable. Such notion as integrity is also important in leadership and implies credibility, honesty, and consistency in putting all values into action. Besides, leaders are ambitious and crave power as a means to achieve the desired goal. At the same time, successful leaders must have the emotional maturity to accept their strengths and weaknesses, and become oriented toward constant self-improvement. They are not easily discouraged and always stick to a particular course of actions; nevertheless, they should be flexible and versatile.
When leaders are participative, democratic, and inclusive, they are defined as interactive. “They focus on building consensus and good interpersonal relations through emotional intelligence, communication, and involvement. They tend to get things done with personal power, seeking influence over others through support and interpersonal relationships” (Schermerhorn 275). In general, interactive leadership is extremely strong on participation, communicating, and teamwork, which brings good results for the company’s productivity. Some researchers are sure that great leaders should view leadership only as a responsibility but not a rank. A commitment to serving people and helping them use their potential and talents is called servant leadership. This concept means being “other-centered,” and those who believe in it are sure that the followers are most important in leadership. Robert Greenleaf was first to coin this term and stated, “Institutions function better when the idea, the dream, is to the fore, and the person, the leader, is seen as a servant to the dream” (Schermerhorn 247). Greenleaf claimed that empowerment, for example, is closely associated with servant leadership and means the process of giving employees job freedom and power to influence affairs in the company.
In addition to having a high level of IQ, effective leaders have high emotional intelligence (EQ). Daniel Goleman is a famous psychologist and was the first person to coin the term of EQ. Goleman claimed, “The higher the rank of the person considered to be a star performer, the more emotional intelligence capabilities showed up as the reason for his or her effectiveness.” There are five primary EQ competencies such as self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship management, and motivation. Self-awareness is the person’s ability to understand his own emotions and moods, and their impact on others. Social awareness implies the ability to understand the emotions of other people and empathize with them. Self-management is the ability to control disruptive impulses and think before acting. Relationship management is the ability to build good relationships with other individuals and influence them in a positive way. Finally, true leaders have motivation which means the desire to achieve results and work not for status or money. In fact, IQ and cognitive abilities are extremely important for a leader; nevertheless, the components of emotional intelligence are the ingredients that a leader needs to have as well.
Nowadays, it has become popular to talk about the idea of “super leaders,” individuals whose strong personalities and visions have an extraordinary impact on other people. Martin Luther King and his famous speech “I have a dream” serve as a good example. Some researchers call such type of people charismatic leaders because they have an ability to inspire people in an exceptional and extraordinary way. Findings demonstrate that charismatic leaders have the high feeling of self-efficacy, power, and conviction in the moral rightness of their actions and beliefs. However, charisma has a negative side as seen in famous leaders including Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler. They emphasized personal power and focused on themselves whereas true charismatic leaders emphasize socialized power. What is more, people tend to attribute charismatic leadership to individuals who employ environmental sensitivity, vision articulation, and unconventional behavior, which is not quite the same.
As a matter of fact, society expects companies to be run with moral leadership and ethical standards. Ethical crises usually put organizations out of business and damage their reputations. Leadership is considered a driver of ethical behavior because ethical decisions are complex; therefore, people often look to influential people, role models, and their managers for instructions how to behave. However, the famous Milgram experiments proved that individuals tend to follow authority figures even when doing something can put other people at risk. Thus, when evaluating whether a person is an effective leader, employees pay attention to their level of ethical behaviors. What is more, leaders influence the level of ethical behavior by setting the tone of the climate within the organization. As a rule, those who have the high level of moral development create a more ethical climate. Besides, by acting as a role model and demonstrating ethical behavior, leaders play a vital role in encouraging such behavior in the workplace. In general, authentic leaders possess a moral compass because they know what is right and what is wrong and make employees understand that ethical behavior is valued, desired, and expected.
In addition to various leadership traits, leadership success depends on the way leaders behave with others. In the book, “Organizational Behavior” by Bauer and Berrin, the authors describe two categories of leader behaviors: people-oriented behaviors and task-oriented ones. Task-oriented behaviors based on structuring the subordinates according to their roles and providing them with instructions aimed at increasing the performance. People-oriented leader behaviors involve showing concern for individuals’ feelings and treating them with respect. Both types of behaviors are beneficial for companies, but for different purposes. Employees tend to react more positively and be more satisfied when to deal with people-oriented leader behaviors but increase productivity and performance when leaders are task-oriented. The authors claim that in small companies task-oriented behaviors lead to more leader effectiveness. Besides, leader effectiveness depends on how he makes decisions. The researchers define three types of decision-making styles. In authoritarian decision making, leaders mainly make decisions without involving employees in this process. In democratic decision making, employees have the right to participate in the decision-making process. Finally, when leaders use laissez-faire decision making, employees are left alone to make decisions because leaders provide minimum involvement in it as well as minimum guidance. The effectiveness of the leader style depends on the circumstances; however, as a rule, employees tend to be more satisfied when they participate in the decision-making process.
Why do many leaders believe that the only way to successfully manage employees is to force them to work while the rest choose more humane approaches? Professor Douglas McGregor believed that actions of a manager were dictated by possessing one of two basic set of assumption and presented two contrasting theories in his book, “The Human Side of Enterprise,” known as Theory Y and Theory X. The main assumptions of Theory X managers are that workers are lazy and try to avoid completing tasks, and they need to be forced to work by means of various control mechanisms. According to Theory Y, individuals can enjoy work and are not so lazy. Theory Y managers usually allow them autonomy and adopt a more supportive role.
There is a critical question whether leadership is universal because numerous companies have branches in other countries and have to send expatriates to manage the operations. The expatriates mainly the people who demonstrate good leadership skills at home; however, such skills may not work in the host country. The United States is a performance oriented and individualistic culture, and the leadership theories that suit this culture may not automatically be suitable for other ones. “People who are perceived as leaders in one society may have different traits compared to people perceived as leaders in a different culture because each society has a concept of ideal leader prototypes” (Bauer and Berrin 614). For instance, someone who is caring, confident, and charismatic may be viewed as a leader because people feel that these characteristics are usually related to being a leader. As a matter of fact, such leadership prototypes are historically driven and have a lot to do with country’s heroes. Nevertheless, such qualities as being fair and trustworthy, decisiveness and honesty seem to be universal as well as participative and team oriented leaders. Being a loner, egocentric, and irritable are viewed as undesirable in a leader.
The charismatic behavior appears to be universal, and in Latin and Western cultures, individuals who speak in an excited and emotional manner are viewed as charismatic. In Asian cultures, on the contrary, speaking in reserved and monotonous voice seem to be more impressive because it demonstrates that the leader is able to control his emotions. In collectivist cultures such as Mexico or Turkey, a manager shows personal concern when he interests in employees’ lives and, for example, visits someone’s sick mother at the hospital, which would be unacceptable in the Netherlands or the US. In France, people do not expect the leaders to show empathy and self-sacrifice. In Middle Eastern cultures, leaders are expected to be authoritarian and confident. Thus, it can be concluded that there are no universal leadership traits, and it is important for a good manager and leader to get acquainted with the customs and stereotypes of the host country.
It is wrong to think that there are few great leaders who come only from large and established organizations. In fact, leadership is a set of abilities and skills that are available to anyone, it is only necessary to develop certain characteristics and behaviors. It is important to understand that true leaders never accomplish things by themselves but mobilize others to struggle for shared aspirations. Moreover, they must discover personal beliefs and values as well as a set of principles and philosophy that guide their actions and decisions. Leaders should stand up for the beliefs and practice the things they preach because consistency between actions and words builds credibility. A true leader has to be the example for other people to follow. They do not speak for themselves but for their organization and team because leadership is a dialogue. “An important part of leadership is to educate others on what the organization stands for and why those things matter. The leader teaches, coaches, and guides others to align their actions with the shared values because he is accountable for their actions too” (Kouzes and Posner 90). Leaders should not impose their vision of the future on other people and sell their idiosyncratic view of the world but inspire a shared vision. The great leaders are perfect listeners. “The outlines of any vision do not appear from crystal ball gazing in the isolation of the upper levels of the organization’s stratosphere. They originate from conversations with customers and interactions with employees” (Kouzes and Posner 134). In addition, exemplary leaders should create a climate of collaboration, trust, and mutual respect. What is more, they should express concern for others, pay attention to the ideas of employees, and be open to their influence.
Works cited
Bauer, Talya, and Berrin, Erdogan. Organizational Behavior. Nyack, NY: Flat World Knowledge, 2009. Print.
Goleman, Daniel. What Makes a Leader: Why Emotional Intelligence Matters. More Than Sound, 2014. Print.
Kouzes, James M., and Barry Z. Posner. Leadership Challenge. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH-Verl., 2009. Print.
Schermerhorn, John R. Exploring Management in Modules. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2007. Print.
Schermerhorn, John R., Richard Osborn, and James G. Hunt. Organizational Behavior. New York: Wiley, 2000. Print.
