Leadership is a real social process affecting the most important events in life and the organizations. It may either promote or discourage performance especially the executive leadership that affects almost every sphere of life. Effective leadership seeks to enhance believes, values and expectations within an organization or the society and can change the way people interpret issues and events. A leader needs to think ahead and be able to create an image of the organization in future and this helps one to draw a strategic plan and makes all organizational members to gear all their efforts towards achievement of the set vision. Whenever problems occur within the organization or in the society, a leader should be the first to identify such and bring a solution. This is a basic skill as by being a servant of the people and a problem solver a leader gets the opportunity to take the organization to the next level. Given that leaders cannot work in isolation, they always require people who can work alongside them. Team building skills are very important in ensuring that there is effectiveness especially in organizations in which decision-making is decentralized and employees have high amount of education and training.
Leadership is a reasonable process which and individual use to influence members of a group in achieving goals of the group. A leader therefore is that person who carries out these series of actions directed towards group goals effectively and members must view this as legitimate.
Managers on the other hand are the engineers and administrators of the organization who apply rational problem solving, objective criteria and manipulate standardized organizational building blocks in order to achieve the intended goals.
Leadership behavior is most interesting part in chapter one. Some of the behaviors leaders use to influence their followers include; giving guidelines and techniques for their followers to complete tasks, being informative and friendly to them, seeking followers opinion before making important decisions, appreciating their performance and putting high expectations and confidence in them. This is because most workers in an organization respects and does much of what their leader does and not what they say. The article on leadership and management relates to this material in their explanations that leadership is inseparable from management; the two are dependent on each other.
In chapter two, one can clearly see that leaders should be visionary people. They should be in the forefront in conceiving new ideas for instance developing new products, new techniques of production among other inventions. This is because the world is so dynamic and so does the organizations. In order to remain competitive to maintain and increase one’s stake in the market, an organization needs keep on changing their tactics. Leaders also need to communicate the organization intended position in future to all the members of the organization to ensure that everyone works towards the set goal. The most interesting part is the one that insists that visionary thoughts and ideas are the basic issues that makes a leader. This is very applicable in the work environment that as a leader one has to always think of where the organization should be in one, five or even may years to come and be able to lay down foundations to ensure that it is actually accomplished. The article on visionary leadership, which talks of an ever-increasing desire to initiate, develops and implements change as a leader. This article clearly demonstrate that without a vision there is no direction and workers may not be much interested in wasting much of their energy working because there is no a set goal.
In an organization, it is expected that somewhere along the way problems will arise one after the other. An effective leader should is one who is able to face all kinds of problems whenever for instance when the workers go on strike, when the organization is sued, when the operating machines and equipment breaks down and other common situations. They are not expected to run from them but rather to face them with boldness. It is sometimes ironical to see a’ leaders’ being a problem, burden and obstacle preventing effective operation of the organization. Success in leadership depends not much, on how many problems have avoided but on the number of challenges, one faced and was able to overcome triumphantly. Leader therefore a figure of hope and example to the rest. The most interesting area is on the explanations of the chapter that a leader is a solution and not a problem. This is very crucial because anyone with an intention of being a good leader must tune their thinking towards meeting other people’s needs and helping them to achieve their desired goals. The article on qualities of a good leader that touches on problem solving relates to this chapter given that it insinuates that a leader is someone who not is determined to solve any arising challenge.
People in every organization are usually grouped together in small working units (departments) which are composed of people doing almost related activities. As a team-builder, a leader is expected to coordinate these groups to ensure that they work together in harmony towards the achievement of the set goal. Even though people may be so many, without coordination it is not very easy to reach the target. A leader also needs has the responsibility to ensure that the group they are heading is cohesive and united. The most interesting area is on the responsibility of the leader as the supervisor of the group. A leader is charged with the task of building a strong team. The article on Leadership as a teamwork relates very well to this chapter. This is because both the book and the article acknowledges that leadership is all about leading people and ensuring that they work together towards the achievement of the set goal.
WORK CITED
Griffin, R. & Ricky, W. (2010). Business essentials (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River. NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lussier, R & Achua, C. (2010). Leadership, Theory, Application, & Skill Development (4th ed.). Mason, OH: South- Western Cengage Learning.
Lipman, B. (2005). The Allure of Toxic Leaders. New York: Oxford, University Press Inc.
Guastello, S. (2007). Nonlinear dynamics and leadership emergence. Leadership Quarterly, 18, 357-369.
