Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 25

Leadership - Essay Example An important skill that leaders must possess is communication skills. A good leader must have superb verbal and written communication skills. Verbal communication skills are required to inspire others to achieve a higher level of performance. Managers are responsible over the performance of the company and its entire staff. Excellent communication skills are needed by managers because they are require to submit different reports to a variety of stakeholder groups which include lenders, employees, suppliers, government, board of directors, and investors. Active listening skills are important for leaders to possess. The use of active listening implies fully concentrating on what is being said rather than just passively ‘hearing’ the message of the speaker (Skillsyouneed). A leader must have excellent analytical abilities due to the fact that leaders are exposed to vast amounts of information. He must be able to dissect information in order to make good operating decisions. Since leaders have to interact with lots of persons the leader must have good people and interpersonal skills. â€Å"Interpersonal skills are measures of how adept you are at interacting with others† (Ncsu). Leaders are assertive and have confidence in themselves. Two important abilities that leaders have are collaboration and teamwork. Teamwork has become a critical success factor in the 21st century. Leadership skills can be enhanced through the use of teamwork. Negotiation skills are also a part of the skill set of a leader. An important role that a leader must perform is to motivate others. A technique that leaders such as managers can use to motivate others is intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. An example of an extrinsic reward is offering financial incentives such as bon uses, while an intrinsic reward could be giving an employee a pad in the back for a job well done. Using teamwork can help develop the leadership, communication, and problem solving skills of the staff. A

Organisational Culture and Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Organisational Culture and Leadership - Essay Example The definition of leadership is founded on the possession of a distinctive skill to influence people towards attaining set goals and objectives (Tsai, 2011). Since each organization has its own culture that governs it, the result is that there is no universally acceptable leadership style or leader. However, it is believed that provided a leadership takes into consideration the culture within the organization, the results will be great (Tsai, 2011). The first dominant framework on leadership was the Trait Theory or the â€Å"Great Men† Theory which was proposed in the early twentieth century. The theory considers â€Å"personality, social, physical or intellectual traits to differentiate leaders from non-leaders† (Shoup, 2005, p.2). This theory ascribes conventional qualities like ambition and energy, honesty and integrity, self-confidence, intelligence, and knowledge to leaders and holds that leaders are born, not made. Mid-twentieth century saw the rise of the Behavio urist school of leadership which emphasized on the actions and dominant behavior of the leaders and highlighted the leaders’ behavior on the job, use of authority and task-relationship orientation. Later, scholars such as Fred Fiedler realized that a leader must match his/her situation and leadership style should vary depending on the situation and context. This gave way to the third phase of leadership studies, known as the Contingency school, which focussed on job constitution, leader-member association, and power position.