Leadership Qualities

Managing and Leading Others

• Leadership means taking a company and its employees in a direction based upon a vision.

• Leaders also make sure that the basic operations of an organization are running smoothly.

• Being a good leader takes several qualities.

  • Motivation, confidence, communication skills, and integrity are among them.

• Motivation has three different components.

  • One involves inspiring others.

  • Another component is initiative.

    • Initiative is the ability to act and make decisions without the help or advice of others.

  • A true leader is motivated by a vision and uses it to inspire others

• Leaders also need self-confidence.

  • Being self-confident means knowing what to do and taking action

• A leader must be good at human relations.

  • Human relations is the study of how people interact in the workplace and how communication can be improved.

• Good communication also involves mentoring.

• A mentor is a trusted counselor or guide.

• Integrity is an adherence to a code of ethical values such as honesty, loyalty, and fairness.

  • Integrity is the most highly valued quality in a leader.

Developing Leadership Skills

• To manage activities successfully, you must draw on a specific set of skills.

  • These include human relations, communication, networking, problem solving, and decision-making skills.

• Leadership qualities are learned through knowledge and experience.

• Skills can be developed in a number of ways, such as

  • through reading books, watching videos, and taking courses on leadership.

  • by working with someone who has leadership ability and studying what he or she does.

  • by joining a club, a team, a drama group, or a community organization.

  • by taking initiative at school, at work, or in club activities.

Leadership Styles

Types of Leadership

• An autocratic leadership style is one in which one person runs everything and makes all decisions without consulting others.

  • Autocratic leadership is useful in situations in which it is important to obey orders without question.

• Democratic leadership is a style in which managers work with employees to make decisions.

  • A democratic leader assumes that people have ideas and are inclined to contribute.

• Free-rein leadership requires the leader to set goals for managers and employees and then leave them alone to get the job done.

  • Another name for this type of leadership style is hands-off leadership

• Giving managers and employees the power to run things and make decisions is called delegating.

  There are several reasons for a leader to delegate:

  • The managers do not have time to do everything.

  • The managers can focus on more important work.

  • Employees have more ownership of the production process.

  • Employees have a chance to develop their own potential.

Leadership in Teams

• Many companies have been putting workers in self-managed teams.

  • Self-managed teams are work groups that supervise themselves.

• With these teams, the manager’s role is replaced by the team leader’s role.

• In a self-managed team, the leader is a team player rather than a boss.

• Self-managed teams are organized in two ways:

  • (1) the team selects one team leader, or

  • (2) each team member employs specialized skills, but there is no team leader.

• Self-managed teams have many advantages:

  • They are more goal-oriented than task-oriented.

  • Team members have a chance to learn each other’s job and
    obtain new skills.

  • Team members learn to participate and cooperate.

  • Self-managed teams learn to solve their own problems.

• The disadvantage of self-managed teams is that some people do not have the skills and initiative to work together productively.