Leadership: Qualities, Styles, Economic Impact, and Global Context

This essay provides a comprehensive overview of leadership, defining it as the ability to guide groups towards achieving predetermined goals. It emphasizes the importance of leadership across various sectors, including corporate, political, and entrepreneurial ventures. The essay highlights key leadership qualities such as integrity, decision-making power, communication skills, and conflict management. It explores different leadership styles, including autocratic, democratic, transformational, and cross-cultural leadership, discussing their attributes and impact on organizational outcomes. The essay also examines the roles of managerial and entrepreneurial leaders in driving economic development, creating employment opportunities, and fostering innovation. Through references to scholarly articles, the essay underscores the significance of leadership in navigating challenges, motivating subordinates, and contributing to global economic growth and employee wellness.

Running head: LEADERSHIP
Leadership
Name of the Student
Student ID:
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Author Note

1LEADERSHIP
Leadership can be defined as the qualities of certain people to lead their groups of people
towards achievement of predetermined targets. Leadership finds application is various fields like
corporate sectors and politics. The leaders are expected to have certain qualities which help them
to lead their groups. Integrity, decision making power, focus, communication skills, conflict
management skills and contingent management skills are some of the qualities successful leaders
are expected to posses. Leaders are of various types like the managerial leaders lead corporate
teams while the entrepreneurial leaders lead new business ventures. They contribute towards
high market performances of the companies which generates more tax for the governments. They
over here lead the countries towards economic development. The importance of leaders, their
qualities and their contribution have become so important for the global economy that it has
attracted attention of scholars like Peter Drucker.
Drucker(2017) in his article ‘The Theory of the Business’ defines leadership as the
quality among men to set difficult goals and lead men to achieve them. Drucker states that
today leadership has become so important to achieve the organisational goals that scholars today
are showing renewed interest in studying leadership and its themes like leadership qualities,
leadership styles, managerial leadership and entrepreneurial leadership. Bienen (2015) in
his article ‘Tanzania: party transformation and economic development.’ states that
importance of leadership in bringing about positive transformations in the organisations and
economic development cannot be underestimated. The managers lead their teams towards
achievement of their targets which contribute towards achievement of organisational goals which
contribute towards the growth in competitive market. This development of the organisations
leads to increase their profitability and competitive advantage. The corporate organisations today
are among the top employers and tax payers in the world, thus contribute greatly towards the

2LEADERSHIP
development of the economies where they operate. Thus it can be inferred from the discussion
that the leadership in the organisations are responsible for global economic development.
Goetsch and Davis (2014) in their work ‘Quality management for organizational excellence’
add to these two articles and state that essence of leadership is not restricted to corporate sector
alone and in fact, it plays a very important role in politics, economics and entrepreneurial
ventures. The importance of leadership in achieving goals in every field has attracted the
attention of scholars towards studying the qualities which go into making a leader. Bottomley,
Burgess and Fox III(2014) state in their article ‘Are the behaviours of transformational
leaders impacting organizations?’ that leaders have certain qualities which enable them to lead
their followers towards achievement of goals. Some of these qualities are integrity, decision
making power, analytical power, focus, motivational power and conflict management. The
leaders showcase their qualities in several leadership styles like authoritative, democratic and
transformational leadership styles while leading their followers. Each of these leadership styles
have their own attributes and contribute towards achievement of goals. The leaders of today
often combine several styles of leadership while leading(Goetsch and Davis 2014).
Leaders exhibit several styles of leadership while leading their subordinates towards
achievement of predetermined goals. Pawar (2014) in his work ‘Styles of
Leadership. International Journal of Research in all Subjects in Multi Languages’, mention
several styles of leadership. The autocratic leaders emphasis on giving orders and do not take
the advice of the subordinates. These leaders do not encourage participation of the team
members in formation of strategies and relies on formally laid organisational hierarchy of
authority to be able to carry on the decisions successfully. This type of leadership often gives rise
low level of motivation, conflict and lower productivity in the work teams. The directive

3LEADERSHIP
leadership which is prevalent among the human resource departments of the organisations
emphasise on giving directions to the subordinates. This type of leadership like autocratic
leadership does not encourage employee empowerment and often demotivates employees
resulting in poor performances. The constitutional or participative leadership style is
characterised by managers encouraging participation of the team members. Missionary leaders
are the leaders who lead followers driven by same goals or mission as them. The Laissez faire
leadership style is characterised by the managers giving their subordinates minimum guidance
and gives them complete freedom to take decisions. This creates lack of coordination among the
teams, results in conflicts and usually leads to either faulty or negative achievement of targets.
The article by the author does not contain mention about some other styles of leadership. A
democratic leader encourages his team to participate in the strategy making but reserves the
final decision making power. The strategic leaders lead organisations and provide guidance to
deal with tough situations by making strategies. Transformational leadership styles involve
motivating subordinates in over achieving their targets. The leaders of this category encourage
subordinates to perceive that they can over achieve targets and drive them towards achieving
them. Liu et al. (2014) state that cross cultural leaders lead subordinates coming from various
cultural backgrounds and having diverse perceptions about things like traditions and body
language. It can be pointed out that today global organisation function in multiple nations each
having their set of culture and beliefs. It can also be pointed out that political leaders too, lead a
huge population of following with diverse political perceptions. Thus, it can be construed that the
corporate managers and the political leaders apply cross cultural leadership style to lead groups
with diverse cultural backgrounds.

4LEADERSHIP
Bottomley, Burgess and Fox III(2014) state that leaders play so important role in multiple
field like politics and corporate sector that researchers delve into studying their leadership
qualities. They state that leaders are believed to have certain qualities which help them to lead
their subordinates towards achievement of goals. For example, the transformational leaders are
charismatic and they have good influential power. They make their subordinates believe that they
can achieve the targets. The article also states that the transformational leaders should be
sustainable to be able to sustain their subordinates, themselves and their organisations. Jin, Meng
and Berger(2017) strengthens the article on leadership qualities by Bottomley, Burgess and Fox
III by pointing out to a very important leadership quality, communication skills in their article
‘The Influence of Communication Leadership Qualities on Effective Crisis Preparedness
Strategy Implementation: Insights from a Global Study’. They state that then leaders should have
strong communication skills to manage crisis situations. An analysis of these two articles shows
that the leaders should be resource and have very strong decision making power to lead their
teams through tough situations. A review of the articles also show that the leaders should have
the qualities like focus, integrity, motivational powers and conflict management capabilities
to lead their teams through challenging situations.
Tuberville and Danehower (2017) in their article ‘Using Experiential Learning
Concepts in New Course Designs: Experiential Learning in “Managing Employee Wellness
And Managerial Leadership state the significance of managerial leadership in leading
departments and organisations towards achievement of the business goals. The authors while
discussing the importance of managerial leadership point out that employees today are
considered the most strategic assets of the organisations and are often regarded as business
partners by the apex management bodies. They further state the managers today lead their

5LEADERSHIP
respective departments towards achievement of business goals which ultimately leads to
organisational growth and increase in profitability. This allows the organisations to provide their
employees with more salary, incentives and career growth opportunities. These facilities help the
employees to achieve work life balance which enhances their wellness. This analysis shows that
the managers play a very role in helping employees to attain healthy lives. Gifford et al.(2014)
while discuss the varied applications of managerial leadership in the professional world states in
their article. They state that managerial leadership find application not only in the corporate
organisations but in other types of organisations like nursing, health care and non-profit sectors.
Renko et al. (2015) in their article ‘Understanding and measuring entrepreneurial
leadership style’ study the importance of leadership in entrepreneurial ventures which is known
entrepreneurial leadership. They state that entrepreneurs foster innovation, generates new ideas
and creates new business. Stephens, Partridge and Faggian (2013) in their article ‘Innovation,
entrepreneurship and economic growth in lagging regions.’ state that entrepreneurs initiate
business ventures to lead human resources to conduct business operations to earn profits. The
articles states that such business initiatives even if small creates employment opportunities and
lead to economic development of the areas which do not have presence of multinational
companies. The entrepreneurs introduce new ideas, goods and services responding to the
requirement of a particular region. Thus entrepreneurs lead the local markets towards
development by introducing new products and ideas according to the needs of the people. Thus,
it can easily be pointed out like managerial leadership entrepreneurial leadership too plays a
very significant role in bringing about economic development in countries by creating
employment opportunities.

6LEADERSHIP
Leadership plays a very important in leading people, organisations and countries towards
achievement of their goals. Leaders have qualities like integrity, charisma, focus and strong
communication skills which help them lead their subordinates towards achievement of their
goals. There are several styles of leadership which leaders can follow to lead their subordinates.
The managerial and entrepreneurial leaders not only lead their followers and also create
employment opportunities in the markets they operate. It can also be concluded that leaders
today combine various leadership styles like transformation leadership styles and autocratic
styles to lead their teams of followers.

7LEADERSHIP
References:
Bienen, H., 2015. Tanzania: party transformation and economic development. Princeton
University Press.
Bottomley, K., Burgess, S. and Fox III, M., 2014. Are the behaviors of transformational leaders
impacting organizations? A study of transformational leadership. International Management
Review, 10(1), p.5.
Drucker, P.F., 2017. The Theory of the Business (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard
Business Press.
Gifford, W.A., Holyoke, P., Squires, J.E., Angus, D., Brosseau, L., Egan, M., Graham, I.D.,
Miller, C. and Wallin, L., 2014. Managerial leadership for research use in nursing and allied
health care professions: a narrative synthesis protocol. Systematic reviews, 3(1), p.57.
Goetsch, D.L. and Davis, S.B., 2014. Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: pearson.
Jin, Y., Meng, J. and Berger, B., 2017. The Influence of Communication Leadership Qualities on
Effective Crisis Preparedness Strategy Implementation: Insights from a Global
Study. Communication Management Review, 2(01), pp.8-29.
Liu, S., Hu, J., Li, Y., Wang, Z. and Lin, X., 2014. Examining the cross-level relationship
between shared leadership and learning in teams: Evidence from China. The Leadership
Quarterly, 25(2), pp.282-295.

8LEADERSHIP
Pawar, D., 2014. Styles of Leadership. International Journal of Research in all Subjects in Multi
Languages, 2(7), pp.12-14.
Renko, M., El Tarabishy, A., Carsrud, A.L. and Brännback, M., 2015. Understanding and
measuring entrepreneurial leadership style. Journal of Small Business Management, 53(1),
pp.54-74.
Selvarajah, C., Meyer, D. and Donovan, J., 2013. Cultural context and its influence on
managerial leadership in Thailand. Asia Pacific Business Review, 19(3), pp.356-380.
Stephens, H.M., Partridge, M.D. and Faggian, A., 2013. Innovation, entrepreneurship and
economic growth in lagging regions. Journal of Regional Science, 53(5), pp.778-812.
Tuberville, K. and Danehower, C., 2017. Using Experiential Learning Concepts in New Course
Designs: Experiential Learning in “Managing Employee Wellness And Managerial
Leadership”. CONGRATULATIONS!, p.98.