Leadership for Managers: Reflection Journal on Introduction to Leadership and Personal Side of Relation

Running Head: Leadership for Managers
Leadership for Managers

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Reflection Journal
Leadership is a research area and practical application of skill to lead the organization and
individual to achieve the business goals and objectives. Leadership is the ability of an individual
to inspire, influence, motivate and lead his team to the zenith of success (Bolman & Deal, 2017).
The reflective journal here will focus on introduction to leadership, the personal side of relation
and using leadership as a tool towards relationship building.
I believe that some people are born with the traits of leadership and are natural leaders, while
some of the people have to work on enhancing their skill sets to become a successful leader. The
world has given plethora of business leaders who have established that effective leadership is
the primary contributing factors for the sustained growth of the organization. Steve Jobs of
Apple, Jack Welch of GE, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft are some of the prominent
names who have defined leadership and given it a true meaning(Northouse, 2018). The study of
leadership at the university helped me in understanding the qualities required to be a successful
leader and how to lead the team effectively.
The biggest quality of a leader is his ability to inspire and transpire his vision into the culture of
the organization. Leaders are excellent communicators who possess the skill to inspire
thousands of people to work on the same goal (Goleman, 2017). For example, Jeff Bezos of
Amazon made the company the largest e-commerce company on the face of earth, it was his
vision and his transformation style of leadership which people resonated with, and moved
swiftly to make Amazon a highly successful company. The organizational culture at Amazon is
focussed on the customers, which is in sync with Jeff Bezos vision of creating a customer-centric
company (Antonakis & Day, 2017).
It is a highly plausible statement that one leadership style is better than other; it depends
entirely on the situation and the dynamics of the industry to adopt a leadership style. Some of
the prominent styles of leadership which have been in vogue in the past and the present and
have shaped the business around the world include Democratic, Transformational, Autocratic,
Charismatic and Lassiez-Fair. Democratic style of leadership is where the leader involves every
employee in the decision making process and gives them the freedom to work on their own
accord. This style of leadership focuses on empowering the employee by the virtue of giving
them the freedom to work and be responsible for their own actions (Heietz & Linsky, 2017).

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Transformational style of leadership is the one which I mostly relate with, it is the ability of the
leader to inspire the team by leading from the front. The leader here translates his vision into
the organization and ensures that it prevails in the organization culture. A transformation
leader engages with the employees at all fronts of decision making and values their feedback; he
makes sure that his employees are up for the task and consistently working towards enhanced
productivity and excellence (Renz & Herman, 2016). Transformational leadership believes in
building a culture of sustainability in the business organization and inspire people to innovate
for the betterment of the society. Autocratic style of Leadership is one of the extreme styles of
leadership, in this the leader not only guides but dictates the employees everything to do in the
business organization. He sets the rules, and dictates the term of work at the workplace.
Lassiez-Fair is another extreme style of leadership, where the leader does not interfere in any
employees work and give them full autonomy to work, to adopt the style of Lassiez-Fair the
team at the organization has to be highly trust worth and efficient (DuBrin, 2015).
As mentioned earlier in the journal certain leader have the inherent traits and some leaders
master the skills to become a highly successful leader, in both the cases the qualities of the
leader remains mostly the same. A leader have to be futuristic, he should be smart enough to
spot on the future trends in the business and leverage it to his business advantage. This quality
of spotting the things well in advance and quickly than anybody else makes him earn respect of
his employees and also create business opportunities for his business(Covin & Slevin, 2017).
Steve Jobs for example was really smart at picking up the future of computers; it was his vision
which translated into Apple becoming the number one tech company of the world. In my
opinion this is one of the qualities of leaders which benefit them the most in delivering result for
the business organization. Leaders also believe that feedback is extremely important for the
business organization, thus they promote the culture of feedback in the organization and value
the feedback of all the business stakeholders, it helps them to not only improve the business
policies and practices, but also empowers the employees (Tourish, 2014).
Another quality of leaders is their understanding of the importance of employees in the
business organization. Effective leaders not only value their employees but they do everything
possible to keep them happy and satisfied at work. They are always involved with the HR team
of the business organization and work towards increasing the job satisfaction factors and
eliminating the hygiene factors which affect the motivation of the employees. The leaders
empower their employees and involve them in various strategic decision making, this high
degree of involvement with the employees help the leaders not only to win the trust of the
employees but also create a hyperbole of positive synergies at the workplace (Komives, 2016).