In order for leaders to motivate their followers and prompt high performance and goal achievement, they must be able to influence their followers. What you may have already encountered in your academic life is the work on a leadership essay. We have a written a leadership essay that will help you catch the attention of your professor. Above all, a good leadership essay is the one that follows leader essay precise, leader essay, clear, leader essay, comprehensive structure. You will need to divide the main body into paragraphs to make the structure more comprehensive.
What is a good leadership essay?
Disclaimer: This paper has been submitted by a student. This is not a sample of the work written by professional academic writers. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of StudySaurus, leader essay. As leader essay becomes an increasingly popular field of study, research continues to support the concept that there leader essay numerous factors that play a role in effective leadership. For leadership to be effective, these factors must align in a way that is beneficial for both the leader and followers; in some instances the misalignment of these elements can cause ineffective leadership.
The film shows the complexities of military leadership as well as how motivation, traits, influence tactics, charismatic leadership, and situational leadership interact to form the leadership process, leader essay. The film also gives insight into how quickly leader essay can change, and how the change of a few factors can cause the entire leadership process to fall apart. Leadership researchers agree that there is no one combination of traits or situational factors that ensures effective leadership; this is especially true in regards to military leadership. In times of war and crisis, military leaders must be able to adapt to whatever situation is presented to them while still being able to effectively motivate their followers to risk their lives for the good of the organization, leader essay.
Military leaders must also make life or death decisions on the spot and still strive to meet organizational goals, making military leadership distinctly different from all other forms of leadership. Furthermore, effective military leadership requires a strong bond between leaders and followers, as well as between the followers themselves. The Commandant has close bonds with most of his soldiers, as they view him as the person who will support them in standing up to the national government for terrorizing their leader essay. The soldiers have a strong sense of community within the battalion, and leader essay rely on one another both inside and outside of battle; most of their parents were either killed or by the national government, so the battalion is the only real family many of them have.
The motivation of followers is an essential part of leadership, regardless of if it is military leadership or not. Motivation is linked directly to performance and job satisfaction; the more motivated followers feel, leader essay, the more effort they are willing to put forth towards the job, and this will likely make them more satisfied Hughes et al. The Commandant also supplies his soldiers with a sense of belonging since, for many of them, the battalion is virtually the only family leader essay have. By helping his followers fulfill these needs, he can motivate his followers to work harder and achieve the goals he sets for them.
The Five Factor OCEAN model of personality gives a simple way to categorize behaviors into five different groups: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism Hughes et al. The Commandant, being the head of a battalion of soldiers, leader essay, must be able to react to various unexpected situations; when enemy soldiers ambush their camp at night, he is able to quickly set up defenses and fight them off. The Commandant is relatively open to experience, as his involvement in the war has caused him to find new battle strategies and ways of training soldiers to maximize effectiveness, leader essay. His level of conscientiousness is on the lower end, as he has the ability to make spontaneous decisions and is creative enough to plan battle strategies that catch the national government forces off guard.
The Commandant also has relatively positive relationships with his followers and fellow officers; they are loyal to him, respect him, and never seem to be fearful of his presence. Lastly, and possibly most importantly, his neuroticism levels are extremely low; he reacts well to stress and tends to think through stressful situations without panicking or being pessimistic. In a war zone, low neuroticism makes the difference between life and death, as panicking can cause wrong decisions in times of crisis. Likewise, other leadership attributes, such as intelligence, play a vital role in effective leadership. The Commandant has leader essay high analytic intelligence in the sense that he can see connections between issues in his battalion and on the battlefield, and he can make quick decisions with little information.
When attacking a bridge, leader essay, they have no idea what leader essay the enemy battalion have in place, so the Commandant makes a quick decision to plant bombs that distract the enemy so that his battalion can assess the group before attacking, leader essay. He also has practical intelligence in the sense that he can adapt to unfamiliar situations quickly. The battle style his troops partake, including ambushing and guerrilla warfare, requires quick thinking and he must make strategic decisions on a whim when he receives new, leader essay, often challenging orders from his commanding officers.
In order for leaders to motivate their followers and prompt high performance and goal achievement, leader essay, they must be able to influence their followers, leader essay. The Commandant holds expert power over his soldiers because he has far more knowledge surrounding battle strategies and war in general than they do; this gives him the power to influence the decisions of the group because he ultimately has more knowledge and experience in war than anyone else in the group. He also has lots of referent power due to the strong bonds between him and his soldiers; his soldiers credit him for their survival and ability to fight for what they believe in, leader essay. Moreover, he takes time to know his followers personally, and he even has specially close relationships with the soldiers who suffered the roughest past, such as Agu and Strika.
Additionally, he has legitimate power in the group due to his position as commander of the battalion; this position ultimately gives him the authority to make all decisions for the group. He has some reward power, as he has control over resources such as weapons and food; this base of power plays a large role in his influence over his followers considering their circumstances of being in a poor war zone. The Commandant rarely uses the coercive power, except when bringing new soldiers into the group; if someone refuses leader essay join the NDF and his battalion, they are labeled as an enemy and ultimately executed.
Luckily, most of the children the NDF encounters hate the national government and eagerly join to help avenge their families and communities. Similarly, he uses various influence tactics to achieve goals in his battalion. Inspirational appeals, or appeals designed to arouse enthusiasm or emotions in followers tend to be the most effective within his followers due to their reasons for joining the NDF Hughes et al. He often brings up how the national government slaughtered innocent families and destroyed entire communities to get the soldiers pumped up before battle.
Equally important to influencing followers is how leaders initiate change in organizations. Charismatic and transformational leadership play an essential role in organizational change; charismatic authority systems leader essay occur in rebellion to another, leader essay, failing authority system. The Commandant possesses the characteristics of a charismatic leader; he wishes to help his soldiers battle the national government and has a vision to do so, which meets the needs of the group, but he also wishes to do well in battle so that he will be promoted to a general. This charismatic leadership does not inherently make the Commandant a bad leader, as the needs of the group are still being met. Lastly, the situation plays arguably the most leader essay role in the leadership process.
The Situational Leadership Model considers two categories, leader essay, task behavior and relationship behavior, to determine how leaders should act in particular situations in regards to followers. This helps the leader ensure that they are providing the best leadership for different types of followers Hughes et al. The Commandant must give more guidance to new members of his battalion, as they do not yet understand the ways of war and what their roles are. When Agu first joins the battalion, the Commandant gives him more attention and assistance than he does for other followers because Agu needed to learn his place in the group.
As Agu became comfortable in the NDF, the Commandant backed off leader essay began giving him less specific instructions because leader essay was more able to complete the tasks, leader essay. The situation can also impact how effective the leadership is; if the situation and environment change drastically, but the leadership remains the same, it is likely that the leadership may no longer be effective, leader essay. When leader essay Commandant learns that he is not being promoted to general, he takes leader essay battalion and rebels against the NDF; his soldiers, being extremely loyal to him, leader essay, follow without question. However, their food, weapons, leader essay, and other resources begin to run dry without NDF support; the Commandant is hopeless and does nothing to try and help his followers.
After months of these conditions, the soldiers become so dissatisfied with their needs not being met that they decide to abandon their commander and surrender to the national government. According to Manfred Kets de Vries, leader essay, this falls under the detached neurotic leadership style, part of a theory regarding dysfunctional leadership. In the detached style of leadership, leader essay, the leader is cold and insensitive, and is completely withdrawn from his followers and their needs. Often times, this causes the followers to be riddled with conflict and be extremely insecure in their case, which can lead to them abandoning the leader de Vries, Conclusively, the various leader attributes, leader essay, influence tactics, leader essay, and situational leader essay must all align in a way that mutually beneficial to the leader and followers for effective leadership to take place.
Beasts of No Nation encompasses both effective leader essay ineffective leadership; it gives insight into the militaristic side of leader essay, how leaders in rebel groups can motivate their followers, and how easily the leader-follower relationship can change in the face of hardship, leader essay. StudySaurus is run by two uni-students that still get a kick out of learning new things. We hope to share these experiences with you. Stuck on Your Essay? Search For Search. Home Knowledge Base Popular Essay Topics Leadership Essay. Was this material helpful? Yes No. Leave A Comment? Cancel Reply. About StudySaurus Community. error: Content is protected!!
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Leadership is the set of managerial skills that allow an individual to influence a certain group of people and encourage them to work enthusiastically in order to achieve common goals and objectives. It requires certain capabilities such as: manage, have vision and initiative, promote, encourage, motivate, convene, direct, organize and evaluate with duly established indicators, the activities of a work team, in such a way that the objectives effectively within the administrative process of an organization. The first empirical research on leadership was published in , main impulses in that field occurred during the First World War, whose interest was to identify the characteristics of leadership and way men ascend into managerial positions.
At that time there was the phenomenon of industrialization that, together with the development of large bureaucratic organizations in the business activities and the government, provoked the need for new leadership. Organizations are constantly facing numerous changes. Stephen B. classifies them into six forces: nature of the labor force, technology, economic crises, competition, social trends, and world politics; each of these forces with an argumentative support that alerted us on the new challenges that the leaders of the 21st century should assume. In many organizations, the people who are in charge of the posts managers usually amount to that position, because they are relatives of the owners, as well as in politics applies this type of practices.
The first studies on leadership were focused on finding the psychological traits inherent in effective leaders; characteristics like intelligence, will, sociability and conditions of authority were the most accepted. A second stage in the study of leadership are the theories of double factor they study the behavior of the leader , these theories have as their core central the variable authoritarianism democracy, defined as the degree of participation that the boss gives his subordinates in the search for alternatives and decision making. It is necessary in all types of human organization, whether in the companies or in each of their departments.
It is also essential in administration functions because the administrator needs to know the human motivation and know how to lead people, that is, to be a leader. According to the authors of the Theory of human relations, leadership can see from different perspectives, namely:. The subordinates will typically follow the point of discussion set forth by the leader. Therefore, it is important for the leader to ensure that the focus is crystal-clear and priorities for the team are set early on. Distraction from focus will eventually lead to poor productivity and hindrance in triumphing the goals set to be accomplished. In fact, the only aspect that can decide the fate whether a company will survive or die is its ability to innovate great products.
And innovation happens with unique ideas. Try again. A leader brings in a lot of innovative ideas and inspires his subordinates as well to ideate on the original scale to remain above the competition. Creativity and Innovation are the two sides of the same coin. And they cannot be separated from other. Delegation refers to the breaking-up of a job into multiple tasks and assigning each work to a team member. A leader must be able to attach responsibility to each of them. He or she should not take up all the burden alone. Furthermore, the leader should comprehend the strengths and weaknesses of each of the team member, and assign a task accordingly. Plus, delegating a task will help the leader in fulfilling the managerial responsibilities.
The universal myth that leaders are born and not made is no more accurate, given the examples of several great leaders we have today. There is no denying that everybody can become a leader, but it is true that not every leader can be significant. The traits listed above must be instinctive in every leader to lead and be followed. On the one hand, a boss is one who shifts all his responsibilities on to a leader. On the other side, a leader is one who takes up those and completes in collaboration with his team. Hence success and real leadership are synonymous. Spread the love, share Leadership Essay: Characteristics of a Good Leader on facebook. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Notify me of follow-up comments by email.
Notify me of new posts by email. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. This helps the leader ensure that they are providing the best leadership for different types of followers Hughes et al,. The Commandant must give more guidance to new members of his battalion, as they do not yet understand the ways of war and what their roles are. When Agu first joins the battalion, the Commandant gives him more attention and assistance than he does for other followers because Agu needed to learn his place in the group. As Agu became comfortable in the NDF, the Commandant backed off and began giving him less specific instructions because he was more able to complete the tasks.
The situation can also impact how effective the leadership is; if the situation and environment change drastically, but the leadership remains the same, it is likely that the leadership may no longer be effective. When the Commandant learns that he is not being promoted to general, he takes his battalion and rebels against the NDF; his soldiers, being extremely loyal to him, follow without question. However, their food, weapons, and other resources begin to run dry without NDF support; the Commandant is hopeless and does nothing to try and help his followers. After months of these conditions, the soldiers become so dissatisfied with their needs not being met that they decide to abandon their commander and surrender to the national government. According to Manfred Kets de Vries, this falls under the detached neurotic leadership style, part of a theory regarding dysfunctional leadership.
In the detached style of leadership, the leader is cold and insensitive, and is completely withdrawn from his followers and their needs. Often times, this causes the followers to be riddled with conflict and be extremely insecure in their case, which can lead to them abandoning the leader de Vries, Conclusively, the various leader attributes, influence tactics, and situational factors must all align in a way that mutually beneficial to the leader and followers for effective leadership to take place. Beasts of No Nation encompasses both effective and ineffective leadership; it gives insight into the militaristic side of leadership, how leaders in rebel groups can motivate their followers, and how easily the leader-follower relationship can change in the face of hardship.
StudySaurus is run by two uni-students that still get a kick out of learning new things. We hope to share these experiences with you. Stuck on Your Essay? Search For Search. Home Knowledge Base Popular Essay Topics Leadership Essay. Was this material helpful? Yes No. Leave A Comment? Cancel Reply. About StudySaurus Community.
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