Leadership and Motivation: Skills, Approach and Personal Traits

This essay provides an in-depth analysis of leadership and motivation, exploring various aspects crucial for achieving goals. It discusses the situational approach, highlighting its adaptability to changing circumstances and its relevance to the author's leadership style. The essay identifies key leadership traits, including honesty, self-management, foresight, and positive thinking, and emphasizes the importance of a leader's approach in influencing others. Furthermore, it outlines goals for enhancing leadership skills, such as improving motivation and communication skills, setting realistic objectives, and self-assessment. The essay concludes by emphasizing the importance of experience and knowledge in acquiring leadership skills and the significance of structured action plans in achieving leadership goals, particularly through the situational approach.

Running head: LEADERSHIP AND MOTIVATION
Name of the student:
Student number:
Title of the paper: Leadership and Motivation
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Date:

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Introduction
The concept of leadership is omnipresent in contemporary times. The study of leaders
and leadership skills provides an in-depth analysis of various aspects with the help of which
an individual could achieve goals that he or she aims for. Nowadays, in the business
communities the terms of ‘leaders’ and ‘leadership’ is highly popularized as these define and
shape the structure of a business or a company for the long run. Many believe that leaders are
born and not made; however, some of the concepts present differ with this statement (Fischer,
2016). In my opinion, the leadership skills can be developed over the period. Thus, it can be
rightly said that leaders and leadership skills can be acquired. Hence, leaders are born and
made as well.
Situational Approach
Situational approach is the most widely popularized approach. It describes me best as
a leader since it believes in the fact that a leader can adapt with the changing circumstances.
Hence, any situation that comes in the way, a leader has to act according to it. In order to
accomplish the goals one has to evolve and amend his or her approach and style with the
ever-evolving business environment. The core idea of this approach is how the varied nature
of followers affects the style of a leader and how rapidly a leader amend his or her leadership
skills with the varied nature of the followers. This approach heavily depends on the way a
leader functions in handling his or her followers. The theory developed by Hersey and
Blanchard have gone through various substantive amendments and thus making this approach
slightly unreliable (Thompson, G., & Glasø, 2015). However, the approaches central idea has
remained the same, which have practical and realistic ideology to it. This makes this
approach widely used. Leaders have to be flexible enough to change their style in order to

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handle distinctive circumstances. In my opinion this approach describes me the best as a
leader.
Distinguished Leadership Traits
A leader does have some traits in him or her that makes him or her take the position of
an in charge and take the entire crew towards the road to success. Some of the key leadership
traits that I possess are as follows:
 Honesty is something, which in recent times is not found abundantly. Many believe
that honesty is not a trait that is significant in the field of business. However, I stand
to oppose this statement, as I believe that many great leaders road to success was with
the implementation of honest intentions that they had towards achieving their goal.
An honest opinion as well as feedback shall refrain the future drama that might give
rise to chaos and conflict in the group or team (Nichols, 2016). Honesty is one of the
distinguished leadership trait that I possess.
 Self-management is one of the significant attribute, which in my opinion is necessary
to be present in a leader. A leader manages and holds together the varied
characteristics of followers together and strives forward towards fulfilling the goals. If
a leader is not able to manage his or her own self then it is impossible for him or her
to manage the others (Northouse, 2017). Self-management involves prioritizing the
goals and act towards fulfilling those goals.
 A leader’s vision should be able to look into the future as well. This simply means a
leader should have a vision to foresee the future. This involves predicting the
possible threats that the company may face (Furtner, Rauthmann & Sachse, 2015). It
also involves taking necessary precautions while performing the current task. In
addition to this, a leader must always have a backup plan prepared. I as well have the

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tendency to foresee and predict the possible threats that might affect my followers and
me and according to it, I plan my actions.
 Positive thinking is what makes a leader unique and distinguished than others. A
leader must always stay positive no matter how hard of a situation he or she faces.
This positive attitude not only helps the leader to overcome the tough situations but
also boosts the followers’ moral spirit. I always have a positive approach towards
handling a situation. This attitude helps me to achieve my goals efficiently.
A Leaders Approach
As a follower, I would prefer my leader to take the way of Situational approach, as I
believe that it is an extremely realistic approach. The core idea of situational approach states
that a leader should always amend his or her style according to the changing circumstances
(Ghasabeh, Soosay & Reaiche, 2015). I believe that in any business it is evident that a
situation varies and hence the approach to deal with each distinctive circumstances should be
different as well. It would not be justified if a leader takes the same style for handling each
and every distinguished situations. In addition to this, a team never comprises of a like-
minded individuals. Each member has his or her unique nature and characteristics. In my
opinion, a leader with help of situational approach would be able to handle the varied range
of unique characteristics of team members (Gonos & Gallo, 2013).
In any business environment, it is quite evident that there are multiple situations,
which are distinguished from each other. For instance, one circumstance might be such that
the company is facing degrading image in the market and as a result of which the employee
retention issue is arising. Now in this scenario both, the circumstances are contrasting from
each other and a leader has to adapt himself to both the situations. He or she has to deal with
these contrasting circumstances by applying distinguished styles that would affect both
efficiently (Roy, Sato, & Calò, 2015). It is impossible that a strategy that would work for

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image building would as well work for managing employee retention. Thus, an efficient
leader who adopts situational approach would be able to handle this situation efficiently
without any hesitation.
Leadership Model influencing others
The situational approach, which is also known as contingency approach is in my
opinion have the capacity to influence others. The central idea of this approach is the
efficiency to cope with changing situations. The flexibility a leader requires in order to deal
with distinctive tasks is what influences others (Schultheiss & Schultheiss, 2014). The varied
situational hazard may arise simultaneously and a leader would have to take care of such
contrasting circumstances at the same time. He or she also have to be efficient enough to
multi-task. Time management is a trait that would come handy if one has to deal with multi-
tasking situation (Kirillov, Tanatova, Vinichenko & Makushkin, 2015). All these attributes in
a leader influence others. A great leader possess these traits. For instance, leader possessing
all these attributes can handle any situation without any hesitation. Observing such leadership
skills will influence others as well since this will impress and motivate them to strive to work
hard for achieving their goals.
Goals to enhance Leadership skills
In order to enhance the leadership skills one must have to set specific goals and have
to abide by it. These goals are as follows –
Motivator
A leader has the power to motivate and influence others. This helps in boosting the
teams’ morale spirit and ultimately gaining its position towards the road to success. Thus, a
leader must possess the quality of a motivator. A leader should develop his motivating skills.
When the team members lack in motivation it affects their spirit and naturally hampers the

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productivity level (Fiumara, 2016). Hence, it is extremely important to set a goal for a leader
to become a better motivator.
Communication skills
It is significant that a leader must always have an excellent communication skill and
have the efficiency to communicate with anyone. Hence, it is important that a leader should
set a goal to improve his communication skills. Inter personal communication always have a
significant impact on the team members and a leader should always be efficient in
communication (Hagan & Thompson, 2014).
Realistic objectives
A leader should always be able to make a distinction between a realistic objective
and irrational aim (Rangapuram, Bühler & Hein, 2013). A leader should always make a goal
to establish a realistic objective. This will help the leader to progress with valid action plan
and motivate his or her followers to work according to the realistic objective.
Keeping a check on an individual’s skills
It is extremely essential that a leader shall set a goal to keep a check on his or her own
skills (Botvin & Griffin, 2014). Sometimes it is observed that an individual taking in charge
forgets to keep a check on one own skills this hamper the teams effort to work hard. Hence
setting a goal to keep a check on individual skill is important.
Action plan for developing Leadership skills
In order to achieve the goal of an efficient motivator one must take the following
actions and these are –
 Gaining the knowledge about motivating others.
 Books on the subject topic.

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 Researching on the specific subject topic.
The second goal in the list is to enhance communication skills –
 Expanding the knowledge of vocabulary.
 Practicing on a regular basis.
 Knowledge of varied languages.
The third goal is to set realistic objectives and in order to gain that the following procedures
should be taken into action –
 Have a clear vision of the aims that is needed to be achieved.
 Practical approach towards situations.
 Analyzing the situation or circumstances thoroughly.
 Prediction of possible threats.
The last goal that needs to be achieved is self-assessment and the following are the action
plan –
 Regular self-assessment of skills.
 Enhancement of skills that needs to be developed.
 Expanding the knowledge in order to further enhance those skills.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be said leadership skills cannot be acquired in a single day and requires
experience and knowledge. In order to establish oneself as an efficient leader in any field, an
individual has to have a set of goals. These goals should be achieved through a structured
action plan. The approach is also efficient in order to develop an individual’s leadership skill.
The above discussions mention that how situational approach is best suited for me. The core
idea of the approach is related to my style. The above discussions also efficiently states that

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how leaders and leadership skills are not born but are acquired over the time. An individual
gains leadership skills through his or her experiences that he or she accumulates while
working in any field.

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