Leadership: Concept, Practice, and Development

Leadership assignment

Concept and practice of leadership
According to Hoch, Bommer, Dulebohn and Wu (2018) leadership can be defined as the
process which enables an individual to develop skills of influencing, guiding and leading the
decisions and actions of other people who are either working under the individual or are peers
of the individual. In any organisation the development of effective leadership skills is of
utmost importance because the organisational goals, mission and vision achievement is
guided with the help of effective leadership skills. Thus it can be suitably said that leadership
is the process which if effectively executed helps in guiding the actions of other individuals
and development of effective goal execution.
From my personal experience I have seen that being a leader is not an easy task. In group
projects in my academic time when I was chosen as the group leader, I found the other team
members waiting for my order in every aspect of the project in order to complete the same.
From these activities I realised that there is a difference between a leader and an autocrat.
Being a leader it was my responsibility to help the team members by guiding them and also
by asking their views about the project. However giving orders only for execution purpose is
not the sole function of a leader. Thus as rightfully stated by Turnnidge and Côté (2018)
leadership is an inspiration that should be given to others which will help them to pursue the
vision same as that of the leader and develop a situation of shared effort and shared goals so
that the goal can be achieved easily and the fruits of shared success can be enjoyed.
Characteristics of a successful leader
It is highly important for an individual to develop the personality traits and characteristics in
order to become a successful leader. Some of the major important characteristics which
makes a good leader are honesty and integrity, ability to empathise with the employees,
decision making capabilities, innovative mindset, good clear and crisp communication,
commitment and passion towards work, ability to inspire, charismatic nature and emotional
attachment with other individuals. Ford and Harding (2018) stated that a successful and a
good leader is the person who knows the process of leading the individuals towards the
visions and also has clarity about the mission and vision that needs to be fulfilled.
Goldenhar, Schwatka and Johnson (2019) has rightfully stated that honesty and integrity are
the two major qualities that should be compulsorily present in a leader in order to become

successful. If the individual leader is not honest enough then the leader will not be able to
make the followers believe in the idea and also believe in the vision. Thus it is essential for
an individual to stick to the core values, honesty and integrity and always maintain humble
attitude so that the individuals who are following the leader are able to connect with the
leader and are able to independently follow them. Frankel and PGCMS (2019) further stated
that high level of confidence is also required in order to make the followers believe in the
vision and motivate them to work towards fulfilment of the same. Laureani and Antony
(2018) argued that in this regard over confidence can cause problem and may make the leader
autocrat in nature. Thus it is not desirable that the leader will always order or force the
followers to do the work against their will. Rather it is desirable that the leader will take the
decisions of the individuals into account and politely convince the followers so that they
themselves get ready to do the tasks. Sebastian et al. (2018) stated that probably the most
difficult quality of a successful leader is to inspire the followers in order to ensure that they
logically follow the person. For instance in history examples of leadership shows that
although the vision of Hitler as a leader was a negative one, however the ability of Hitler to
inspire the people had helped him to create such a large base of followers who blindly
followed him without any logic. As rightfully stated by Bell (2018) when the actions of an
individual inspires other individuals to dream more, learn more and do more work, then the
individual can be rightfully termed as a successful leader.
Commitment and passion towards work is also a very important aspect of a successful
leadership strategy. Since the followers generally tend to follow all aspects and qualities of a
leader hence high degree of commitment and passion will also help a leader to gain the
respect of the subordinates and infuse new energy in the team members, which helps them to
perform better. Furthermore Northouse (2018) added that unless and until an individual is
able to communicate easily and without any ambiguity with other individuals it will not be
possible for the individual to become a good leader. Thus it can be stated that a good
communicator can always be a good leader. For instance in case of Barrach Obama, the ex
president of USA, the communication played a very important role in motivating the people
of the nation and making them believe in the dreams of Obama which he had seen for the
country. His words had the power to motivate not only the countrymen but also his
subordinates and the other parliament members which helped him to improve the current
situation of the country and also helped him make people believe that terrorism will be
demolished from the country for the betterment of the countrymen.