How to Become a Leader - Do You Have What it Takes?

There are some people who are so good at being leaders that some may say they were born that way but the reality of it is that they are leaders due to the experiences that they went through. Leaders possess qualities that are considered extraordinary by others and those qualities are what give a leader the strength to make the decisions that he or she must make. It is not easy being a little if you don't know what you are doing. There are 3 qualities that you must possess as a leader and so you must get familiar with what I am about to tell you.

Confidence

The first quality a leader must have is confidence because there will be times where decisions must be made and even if they are tough a leader must always try to remain in control and show those who he is leading that everything is fine. How can you expect to lead thousands of people if you have no confidence in yourself as a leader? You must begin to believe in yourself and others will start believing in you.

Decisiveness

A leader must always be sure of his decisions and not be afraid to make them. There is a huge difference between analyzing the situation and be afraid to take action. The only way for you to learn and to become a more efficient decision maker is to actually begin to make important decisions. So take the first step and start making decisions today.

Surround Yourself With Leader

As simple as that sounds you must surround yourself with those who represent what you want to become. By having great leaders around you it is attracting that to yourself. By watching those great leaders and interacting with them you will eventually begin to pick up habits from them. Learn from all the leaders that you can and become better. There is so much to learn and so many people who can teach it. So when you get an opportunity to surround yourself with leaders take it.

These qualities are what leaders are all about and so you must make sure to develop these qualities.

Unmasking Your True Leadership Potential

Leadership is a series of enhanced and progressive skills utilized in association to lead and inspire people or groups in accomplishing a desired purpose. It is a greatly distinct form of human skill which requires the union of experience, character and knowledge. So if you step forward and unmask your true leadership skills, what can you do then? You can be able to change the world. But your capability to change the world starts with the potential to change yourself. Yes, this whole journey to unmasking that leadership potential within commence with a greater comprehension of oneself. We could utilize our positive traits to the maximum and become mindful of our weaknesses when we know ourselves better, thus helping us to attain our fullest leadership abilities.

Try discovering and exploring those personality traits and how they could interact with leadership. Once you know and understand yourself fully, next you should sharpen your skills in communicating. And mind you, these are not limited to your public speaking proficiency only. This also contains your body language and most especially your writing skills. Your capacity in communicating efficiently improves your competence to develop interpersonal and social relationships. Yet another noteworthy skill is learning how to learn. This skill would largely improve your capability in giving clear, easy-to-understand instructions and making decisions. To identify how you and those you will lead will learn best, analyze various teaching styles and learning techniques.

Try to develop the knowledge, strategic methods and discipline necessary to become an effective leader in your company, community, family, profession or industry. So how can you bring out or unmask that leadership potential of yours? Here are four helpful suggestions you could learn to commence you on your way.

1.) Assess yourself or conduct a self-evaluation. By conducting your own self-assessment, you may have a deeper and thorough understanding of your weaknesses and strengths.

2.) Find an experienced coach or seek the advice of a leadership mentor. Look for someone whose reputation you trust and whose expertise you could count on.

3.) Ascertain and seek paid and volunteer leadership opportunities.

4.) Be a student once again--this time of human nature and leadership by listening to programs and attending teleseminars and training seminars. Being a student gives you chance to grow again by being open to different information available. Although these are just hourly seminars, you can still gain a lot even by just sitting there, listening and observing things.

The famous British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once said, 'we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.' It is because of the fact that leadership really means service that the future of our society depends on leaders that are able to provide strong leadership qualities and selfless dedication.

How about you, what kind of life do you want for yourself? Unmask that leadership potential within you and witness how your service to your family, community, organization, nation and the whole humanity could imprint an indelible legacy for more generations to come.

Leadership styles

Using the right one for your situation

From Mahatma Gandhi to Jack Welch, and Martin Luther King to Rudolph Giuliani, there are as many leadership styles as there are leaders. Fortunately, business people and psychologists have developed useful, shorthand ways of describing the main leadership styles. This can help aspiring leaders to understand and adapt their own styles, so that they can improve their own leadership.

Whether you are managing a team at work, captaining your sports team or leading a major corporation, your leadership style is crucial to your success. Consciously, or subconsciously, you will no doubt use some of the leadership styles featured, at least some of the time. By understanding these leadership styles and their impact, you can become a more flexible, better leader.

This article helps you understand 10 of the most frequently talked-about leadership styles, some good, some bad.

Understanding Leadership Styles

The leadership styles we look at here are:

• Autocratic leadership.
• Bureaucratic leadership.
• Charismatic leadership.
• Democratic leadership/participative leadership.
• Laissez-faire leadership.
• People-oriented leadership/relations-oriented leadership.
• Servant leadership.
• Task-oriented leadership.
• Transactional leadership.
• Transformational leadership.

Autocratic Leadership

Autocratic leadership is an extreme form of transactional leadership, where a leader exerts high levels of power over his or her employees or team members. People within the team are given few opportunities for making suggestions, even if these would be in the team's or organization’s interest.

Most people tend to resent being treated like this. Because of this, autocratic leadership usually leads to high levels of absenteeism and staff turnover. Also, the team's output does not benefit from the creativity and experience of all team members, so many of the benefits of teamwork are lost.

For some routine and unskilled jobs, however, this style can remain effective where the advantages of control outweigh the disadvantages.

Bureaucratic Leadership

Bureaucratic leaders work “by the book”, ensuring that their staff follow procedures exactly. This is a very appropriate style for work involving serious safety risks (such as working with machinery, with toxic substances or at heights) or where large sums of money are involved (such as cash-handling).

In other situations, the inflexibility and high levels of control exerted can demoralize staff, and can diminish the organizations ability to react to changing external circumstances.

Charismatic Leadership

A charismatic leadership style can appear similar to a transformational leadership style, in that the leader injects huge doses of enthusiasm into his or her team, and is very energetic in driving others forward.

However, a charismatic leader can tend to believe more in him or herself than in their team. This can create a risk that a project, or even an entire organization, might collapse if the leader were to leave: In the eyes of their followers, success is tied up with the presence of the charismatic leader. As such, charismatic leadership carries great responsibility, and needs long-term commitment from the leader.

Democratic Leadership or Participative Leadership

Although a democratic leader will make the final decision, he or she invites other members of the team to contribute to the decision-making process. This not only increases job satisfaction by involving employees or team members in what’s going on, but it also helps to develop people’s skills. Employees and team members feel in control of their own destiny, and so are motivated to work hard by more than just a financial reward.

As participation takes time, this style can lead to things happening more slowly than an autocratic approach, but often the end result is better. It can be most suitable where team working is essential, and quality is more important than speed to market or productivity.

Laissez-Faire Leadership

This French phrase means “leave it be” and is used to describe a leader who leaves his or her colleagues to get on with their work. It can be effective if the leader monitors what is being achieved and communicates this back to his or her team regularly. Most often, laissez-faire leadership works for teams in which the individuals are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Unfortunately, it can also refer to situations where managers are not exerting sufficient control.

People-Oriented Leadership or Relations-Oriented Leadership

This style of leadership is the opposite of task-oriented leadership: the leader is totally focused on organizing, supporting and developing the people in the leader’s team. A participative style, it tends to lead to good teamwork and creative collaboration. However, taken to extremes, it can lead to failure to achieve the team's goals.

In practice, most leaders use both task-oriented and people-oriented styles of leadership.

Servant Leadership

This term, coined by Robert Greenleaf in the 1970s, describes a leader who is often not formally recognized as such. When someone, at any level within an organization, leads simply by virtue of meeting the needs of his or her team, he or she is described as a “servant leader”.

In many ways, servant leadership is a form of democratic leadership, as the whole team tends to be involved in decision-making.

Supporters of the servant leadership model suggest it is an important way ahead in a world where values are increasingly important, in which servant leaders achieve power on the basis of their values and ideals. Others believe that in competitive leadership situations, people practicing servant leadership will often find themselves left behind by leaders using other leadership styles.

Task-Oriented Leadership

A highly task-oriented leader focuses only on getting the job done, and can be quite autocratic. He or she will actively define the work and the roles required, put structures in place, plan, organize and monitor. However, as task-oriented leaders spare little thought for the well-being of their teams, this approach can suffer many of the flaws of autocratic leadership, with difficulties in motivating and retaining staff. Task-oriented leaders can benefit from an understanding of the Blake-Mouton Managerial Grid, which can help them identify specific areas for development that will help them involve people more.

Transactional Leadership

This style of leadership starts with the premise that team members agree to obey their leader totally when they take a job on: the “transaction” is (usually) that the organization pays the team members, in return for their effort and compliance. As such, the leader has the right to “punish” team members if their work doesn’t meet the pre-determined standard.

Team members can do little to improve their job satisfaction under transactional leadership. The leader could give team members some control of their income/reward by using incentives that encourage even higher standards or greater productivity. Alternatively a transactional leader could practice “management by exception”, whereby, rather than rewarding better work, he or she would take corrective action if the required standards were not met.

Transactional leadership is really just a way of managing rather a true leadership style, as the focus is on short-term tasks. It has serious limitations for knowledge-based or creative work, but remains a common style in many organizations.

Transformational Leadership

A person with this leadership style is a true leader who inspires his or her team with a shared vision of the future. Transformational leaders are highly visible, and spend a lot of time communicating. They don’t necessarily lead from the front, as they tend to delegate responsibility amongst their teams. While their enthusiasm is often infectious, they can need to be supported by “detail people”.

In many organizations, both transactional and transformational leadership are needed. The transactional leaders (or managers) ensure that routine work is done reliably, while the transformational leaders look after initiatives that add value.

Using the Right Style – Situational Leadership

While the Transformation Leadership approach is often highly effective, there is no one “right” way to lead or manage that suits all situations. To choose the most effective approach for you, you must consider:

• The skill levels and experience of the members of your team.


• The work involved (routine or new and creative).


• The organizational environment (stable or radically changing, conservative or adventurous).


• You own preferred or natural style.

A good leader will find him or herself switching instinctively between styles according to the people and work they are dealing with. This is often referred to as “situational leadership”.

For example, the manager of a small factory trains new machine operatives using a bureaucratic style to ensure operatives know the procedures that achieve the right standards of product quality and workplace safety. The same manager may adopt a more participative style of leadership when working on production line improvement with his or her team of supervisors

The Qualities of a Good Leader

To be a good leader means that you can inspire others to follow your example, willingly and cheerfully. A good leader will both inspire confidence and give a strong example of what we should aim for. These are the characteristics of a good leader.

1. Lead by example. If you wish your workforce to be hard working and diligent, it is important that you live up to your own ideals. There is a saying “I would never ask anybody to do something I wouldn’t do myself”. If your workforce see you arriving late and being unprofessional, it will make it much more difficult for them to follow your advice.

2. Humility. To lead we need to encourage others to act in a certain way. However, if we try to lead through our inflated ego people will not respect us. Rather than stressing your self, try to lead through stressing certain principles. People will be much more willing to follow a leader who embodies humility.

3. Appreciate your Co Workers. To be a good leader, you cannot underestimate the importance of offering gratitude to those who are trying hard to do the right thing. If people get appreciation then it will definitely encourage them to continue doing the right thing. At the same time, our appreciation should be sincere. We should not flatter but look for something good a person has done.

4. Have a Clear vision. Often to lead you will need to overcome the resistance to change. If people have been doing something for a long time then they have an instinctive aversion to implementing new ideas. To introduce a new way of doing things you have to have the confidence and belief in the new way. People will definitely pick up on the belief that you have in your own vision.

5. Avoid arguments. If people criticize your approach, often the best thing to do is not get involved in arguments. You can listen to their criticism politely and thank them for their concern, but often the best approach is just to focus on the new approach; look forward and don’t feel the need to defend yourself. This gives your vision certain nobility.

6. Listen to others. A good leader should try to feel part of his team rather than superior, if you listen to others, they will definitely appreciate it. Often you may find that your workers have good ideas that you can incorporate. Even if they have unworkable ideas, it is still worth giving the impression you value their opinions, even if they are not used.

7. Create a positive atmosphere. If you try to lead through creating a climate of fear, or competition, you will undoubtedly create problems. If you can lead whilst maintaining a positive attitude, it will definitely bear fruits in the long run.

8. Don’t take yourself too seriously. There is no harm in admitting you can be wrong, or making a joke at your own expense. People will appreciate a leader who can admit a mistake; it is after all a human quality. But, just don’t make a habit of it.

Top 7 Steps To Develop Leadership Skills

Are leaders born or made?

Well, leaders are born, but only in la la land!!! You can be born with the traits of a leader but the right encouragement is a must for developing leadership skills.

While developing leadership skills at an early stage has its advantages, it’s never too late to start if you haven’t yet discovered the leader in you! And that’s not a whole load of motivational hogwash.

In this piece, let’s take a look at the why and how of developing leadership skills.

Successful management requires more than just assigning tasks to the team. It calls for a leader who can inspire team members to achieve their full potential. People want to be guided by a person they respect, someone who has a clear sense of direction. To be that person, there are certain things that you must BE, KNOW and DO. And that’s what developing leadership skills is all about.

Robert K. Greenleaf
”The only test of leadership is that somebody follows.”

If you want to set an example for others to follow, may I suggest the following check-list?

1. Test the waters: find out what people think about your style of management. This could be a real eye opener, and the key to making changes to your leadership style. Employ a 360 degree approach wherein you receive feedback from your team members and peers. Let your team in on the objective behind the survey. A relaxed and open environment will help draw out their honest opinion.
   
   
2. Listen hard: when your team members speak to you about all their work related worries, hear them out. You could convey empathy, suggest alternatives and create harmony within the team. GREAT LEADERS ARE GREAT LISTENERS!!!!!
   
   
3. Connect: take complete responsibility for how you are heard. Always rephrase your message to make it sound positive. Effective communication is a fine art.
   
   
4. Be a people’s person: an integral part of developing leadership skills is to learn to respect your team’s capabilities. Let the team members take decisions on certain issues. Trust them with their work; don’t be a watchdog.
   
   
5. Lead by example: your team must believe in your integrity, and that you really mean what you say. Be prepared to put your money where your mouth is. It works like a charm!
   
   
6. Share leadership: distribute tasks among group members depending on the situation and individual strengths. You become a better leader by involving more people in the leadership process.
   
   
7. Evaluate your success in tandem with that of the team: your prime responsibility is to ensure success and development of the team. Focus on building their skills as this will enhance motivation and team performance. Remember, their success is yours too!