Leadership Case Write Up

Ў§Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thingЎЁ. - Warren Bennis, Ph.D. On Becoming a Leader

This expression provides only a small amount of difference, which differentiate leader and manager. Despite the fact these two, at first glance absolutely not corresponding words, refer to various notions (leader is the set of personal traits, and manager may also be the set of traits, but more often it is referred to as an occupation), they may be compared if we consider leader as the higher level, the next step in the career ladder of the common manager. Leaders are required to do not more than others, but everything they can and it is the explanation of why they are called leaders. Leaders should not be forced into or asked for some actions, they are expected to make extraordinary, not common actions, which will help the company to develop and move further.

Consequently, leaders are not individuals accomplishing the task; they pursue excellence, and in doing so, they have to engage in the whole process of leadership, i.e. to set the goals (tasks) for himself, and to complete it successfully.

The basic actions performed by the leaders consist of the four basic actions: empowering, sharing, coaching and stretching. Due to these actions leader can support his/her competence in managing through leadership. Thus, empowering implies the ability to back up others achieve their potential to get more efficient organizational behavior. Empowering needs facilitating circumstances which can help individuals to self-actualize themselves and acknowledge the value of his/her working results, and encouraging the personnel to both professional and personal growth. Empowering is a great tool used to reach an aim and develop self-esteem in people, and together with this the ability for an individual to express himself/herself better, thus providing better performance.

Sharing is the characteristic, which implies the exchange of know-how and other information. Sharing includes the ability to involve individuals with respect to purposes, involving them in meetings in which various concepts and data are exchanged, in order to reach the real cooperation, and allowing an easy access to resources, and admitting that they should be used and enjoyed by everybody. Sharing is necessary for the implementation and realization of values and the encouraging of change.

Coaching is the ability to lead and to be a teacher. In the core of coaching lays the capacity to honor people around, to listen to them attentively, ponderously and willingly. It needs the acknowledgement of person potential and taking risks and responsibility for these competencies development (as assets) in order to obtain clear, not used earlier potential. Coaching is important for people development, widening of the view, and realization of values.

Stretching means the ability of a leader to take risks and responsibility. Stretching facilitates the creation of challenging situations and coming out of limits. It is stretching that promotes change and helps to achieve salient results.

Consequently, a leader has to accomplish certain actions in order to be recognized as the leader, and possess certain traits and characteristics to provide real leadership treatment of his subordinates.

Leadership traits and characteristic; improvement of leadership

There are a lot of specific traits, which are inherent to leaders: sociability, cooperativeness, tact, diplomacy, desire to be the best, feeling of responsibility, persistence against obstructions, mobility, energy, charisma, physical stability, intelligence, decisiveness etc. The basic characteristics in terms of personality are honesty, integrity, enthusiasm, independence, self-confidence, and desire to lead. Some traits are very important, however, they are especially essential when combined with other characteristics.

However, we should differentiate the formal and informal leaders. A formal leader may neither possess skills and abilities inherent to leadership, nor be capable of leading. ThatЎ¦s why more often leadership is related to an individualЎ¦s skills, abilities and authority. It is common knowledge that sometimes leadership can come from individuals who are not at all formal leaders, i.e. they are informal leaders. Nevertheless, there may be coincidences when the formal leader is at the same time the informal (i.e. really successful) leader. Ability to lead emerges as the result of using individualЎ¦s role and skills to affect others to some extent. It is not the formal power, which leaders use to influence people; instead of this they come from congruence, integrity, and personal ability to influence. This