Effective Leadership

Effective Leadership

Introduction
Great leaders do not become effective by chance. It taken certain type of an individual to
ensure they become effective and greater leaders. Hence, there are various things that most great
and effective leaders have in common. These issues are very crucial to achieve leadership
qualities that are needed for the leaders in most areas of lives. To ensure one becomes a great
leader, there is the need to have crucial mindset of leadership. This paper will explore what it
takes for an effective leader in an organization while incorporating the character strength
together with the theories of leadership.
What It Takes For an Effective Leader
One essential quality of effective leader is integrity. Integrality aspect explains someone
inner values and the personal integrity need to be displayed by the outward actions. Leaders who
display good integrality are highly respected by peoples. Great and effective leaders do not earn
the entire organization credit, project or merits of a job well done. A great leader is always on the
first line to distribute the merits. A great leader will distribute the credit to individuals who have
earned it (Lawrence 2010).
Communication skills are highly required for an effective leader. A leader needs to have
capacity to communicate well with people, customers, and employees. A good leader has

capacity to balance the assertiveness and the level of respect. A leader need to be a person who
can delegate duties fairly and avoid demeaning of people or make them have an feeling of being
less important. Employees need to be in the first line to have an understanding of directions. In
case they will lack, the employee work will be in danger simply because they do not have an
understanding of what is expected out of them (Kotter, 2008).
According to Katene (2010), a leader needs to inspire all people who are around. A leader
needs to display a sense of encouragement and be a positive mind thinker. Great and successful
leaders are able to influence others and ensure that they do great job. Leaders who are in good
position to inspire other are in an effective way of leading others.
According to Goff (2003), in leadership, everyone considers the morality that defines
why the ethics tend to be crucial to the understanding of leadership. Ethics is much concerned
with the issue of right and wrong. Ethic entails much on what one as a leader need to do as a
member of a group or society and with the different roles that are played in life. However,
leadership entails the roles and the moral relationships created between people (Goff 2003). By
ensuring there is an understanding of the ethics in leadership we gain a better understanding of
what it take for good and effective leadership. Being good indicated moral good and the
technical good (or effective leadership). It is challenging to find the best qualities of good
leadership in one person. Some of the people tend to be ethical but not effective whereas other
tends to be effective and not ethical. As a leader, one is expected to bring in new changes and
need to be successful in doing something new. What is learned in leadership is that it is much
concerned with social construction of values and events of time. The best idea of leadership is
shaped by people perception of what need to be the culture of leadership (Goleman 2003).

As asserted by Broussine and Miller (2005), earlier research that was conducted on the
leadership aspect highlights some of the best personal characters that are said to set out effective
leaders. Personal characteristic have been found as important for an effective leadership mainly
the aspect of intelligence, personality such as dominance, sociability, extraversion, resilience,
high level of energy and self-confidence. An effective leader tends to have a higher that average
level of intelligence mainly related to the level of reasoning and memory. An effective leader
need to ensure there is accurate awareness of themselves considering the leader emotions,
tendencies, strengths and weaknesses. As well, an effective leader needs to be a Person who
applies emotions to enhance a level of thinking and better decision-making process. A leader
needs to achieve a conscious regulation of emotions and moods in an intelligent manner (Marta,
Leritz & Mumford 2005).
On the other hand, the concept of leadership and aspect of management have been
overlapping and have been accorded accordingly. In western countries, leadership is seen as a
prime important thing that raise the level of standards an improving the firm performance. In
most case, leaders have concerns of vision, dealing with strategic issues, transforming, and doing
thing right (Thamhain 2004). Doing thing right tends to have a more detailed delineation on
effective leadership which has been identified as important in leadership. To achieve or build
leadership on the above, a leader need to provide a vision, develop, and consolidate and have a
common purpose, facilitate the achievements of organization goals and be future oriented. As
well, an effective leader has to consider how to link organization resources and outcomes, work
creatively, empower others, and ensure that one is responsive to the diversified needs and
situations (Price 2003).

Effective leaders offer clear vision with the best sense of direction of the organization.
They have capacity to take focus and attention of staffs and employee on what is much crucial
and ensure that they maintain them with certain initiative that have some impact on the
workplaces. They have an understanding of what is going on and what is happening within the
organization (Mumford, Campion & Morgeson 2007). Effective leaders have capacity of
building on the strengths and lower the level of weakness. They have a capacity to focus on the
program of the staff development on the real requirements of the staff and the organization.
Leaders gain their views from taking a systematic program on monitoring and evaluation.
Effective leaders have capacity to take clarity of thoughts, sense of purpose and knowledge of
what is happening and how to get the best out of the employees. This is a key aspect to the
influence of work in the organization and raising the standards of the entity (Horey et al 2004).
After looking on what effective leader needs to have, there is the need to change a focus
and exploit what an effective leader is expected to do. This will take a focus with some of the
best-known examples of behavioral frameworks of Mintzberg and Katz skills.
Mintzberg’s 10 Leadership Roles Katz’s Skills Of An Effective Administrator
Informational Roles
 Maintain abreast on internal and
external happenings
 Ensure other are aware of what is
happening

Technical Skills
 Professional and functional knowledge
 Skills on execution of tools and
techniques of the function or the profession

Interpersonal Roles
 Represent the organization within
various social and official issues

Human Skills
 Be attuned to the feelings, belief of self
and others and their attitudes

 Lead others toward achieving the
desired results

 Apply the awareness in communicating
and behaving in an intelligent manner

Decisional Roles
 Make some improvements and
innovations
 Allot finance and the company finances
 Negotiate over the non-routine
agreements

Conceptual Skills
 Be able to have a look at the
organization in general and how various part of
the company operate independently
 Apply the understanding in making
wiser organization decisions

Effective leaders of an organization need to focus on certain standard of strengths that
can add to professional leadership and management practices. the standards applies to all the
phases and the type of entity and can be subdivided into knowledge, professional qualities such
as skills, personal capabilities and dispositions and the action required to achieve them
(Leithwood & Riehl 2003). The standards are:
 Shaping the future of the organization: it is related to ways of creating a shared
organization vision and achieve strategic plan for the entity in partnership with the
governing body that do motivate the employees and the rest part of the society
 Leadership teaching and learning: leaders or firm executives taking the roles and
responsibilities of raising the quality and performance of an entity must consider learning
and teaching. This has implication that the leader needs to set expectations, monitor, and
evaluate the level of effectiveness on the outcomes. There is the need to implement a
successful learning culture that will ensure that employee will be effective, independent,
and committed towards serving the entity (Klann 2007).

 Develop self sense and working with others: this will entail building effective relation
and developing professional learning culture for the company employees via performance
management and having an effective professional development for the employees.
 Managing the overall organization: this explores the need to improve on the organization
accountability for the stakeholders and provide high quality performance that will
promote collective responsibility within the whole company and contributing to its
mission widely
 Strengthen the community: it will entail creating crucial links with collaboration with
other entities, creditors, debtors and other agencies to ensure they share expertise and
ensure they achieve well being of the stakeholders.
According to Shivers-Blackwell (2006), effective leadership model takes a closer focus
of setting directions, restructuring and realigning the entire organization. In such a case, the
leader takes a bulk efforts and strengths of motivating other colleagues. The common practice
tends to be fostering a level of acceptance on the group goals while demonstrating highest
performance expectations (Crosby & Bryson 2005). Having such, specific practice will have to
reflect on the managerial taxonomy, motivating and inspiring, clarification of roles and
objectives and planning and organizing. Setting the best direction practices and principle will
have a significant influence to the employees stress, individual sense of organization
commitment level and efficacy. Taking one of these crucial practices takes into account how to
assist employees in developing and sharing the sense of purpose, enhance their work while
holding reasonable expectation to achieve positive results (Sarros & Santora 2001).
The behavioral approach on leadership competency has been adopted by most of the
organization in today’s operations. They have looked at the contemporary roles such as strategic

thinking, relationship builder, talent development, and change manager. As well, the behavioral
approach has been of help in changing the focus and attention on the learnable skills with
effective execution of the skills that are grounded on who the leader is and the best personal
characters. This issue incorporates the consideration of situational leadership theories that do
highlight the significant idea on deciding the right and best leadership approach within certain
given situation (Csikszentmihalyi 2004).
On the other hand, there is the Fielder Contingency theory which is the best validate
situational theory. The use of grid theory highlights the adaptation of high relationship, with
higher task approach on all situations. Contingency theory creates a suggesting that there is the
need to consider certain factors that will account for the best people task mix on any situation.
The situation consider in leadership theory are the leader-member relation which may be good or
bad. As well, there is consideration at the task structure that consider the prescription and
systematized action that a leader may want from an employee. Finally, there is the consideration
of leadership positional powers that account for the degree of positional authorities the leader
possess over the staff in relation to certain tasks that are held (Bosco 2004).
Additionally, effective leader need to be in line with the Vroom Normative Participation
model that has set of rules and norms that usually determine how a leader need to participate
when it comes to the process of making decisions. After taking consideration of various
contingencies a leader is expected to choose and determine the decision and if essential on their
sell their ideas and decisions (Eagly & Chin 2010). As well, leaders are expected to consult some
of the employees and staff members to ensure they gather informal idea and make their own
decisions. A leader need to be a person who can facilitate a meeting, where they will have
capacity to define the problem while setting a limit on which the best decisions will be made and

apply consensus approach toward making decisions. Finally, leaders may delegate the decision
making process to the team or to an individual who will be responsible in enacting the best
decision (Aronson 2001).
On another focus, there is transformational leadership theory that takes dual focus on who
a leader is and what leaders are expected to do. The theory has been crucial in merging both
personal characters and the behavioral theories of leadership. It account for greater sense of
personal purpose together with self-confidence and ability to realize their purpose. It takes strong
desire of taking charge and ensures all things are done. Consider strong social presence with
superb oral communication skills with reputation on unconventional behaviors. It account for
willingness to take personal risks while making sacrifice toward realizing leader visions.

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