The leadership principle

The leadership can refer to: "To lead is to serve. After all, that's what a leader's job is, and people look to the leader to set the course and establish standards. But once that direction is provided, servant leaders turn the organizational structure upside down. They focus on giving employees everything they need to win, be it resources, time, guidance, or inspiration. Servant leaders know that providing for people and engaging hearts and minds foster a workforce that understands the benefits of striving for the greater good. The emphasis is on building authority, not power; on exerting influence, not intimidation."

The World's Most Powerful Leadership Principle by James C. Hunter

Generalize three basic functions that a leader performs:

Organizational
Interpersonal
Decisional

The organizational function involves the organizational structure and the selection of people who operate within this structure. It involves various units or segments and the control of internal and external communication flows. The leader has to make certain that the participants in the organization and related groups external to the organization are knowledge and working well together.

The interpersonal function involves the morale of the organization. It reflects the degree of concern about the humanness of the organization. It requires that the leader pay attention to individual concerns.

The decisional function involves the making of decisions that must be made in order for the organization to achieve its goals. This is the traditional function that has been associated with leadership.

Although there is no single definition of leadership, these three functions are clearly part of any definition of leadership. And more to this point, creating a compelling vision that can be constantly reshaped is the hard task of a leader. The leader is the captain of the ship and the vision is the means by which the leader steers the organization. But there are many people on the ship and if this ship is to reach its final destination depends on the behavior of these people.

Leadership is the process where a person exerts influence over others and inspires, motivates and directs their activities to achieve goals. Effective leadership increases the firm's ability to meet new challenges.

Leader: The person exerting the influence.

Personal Leadership Style: the ways leaders choose to influence others. Some leader's delegate and support subordinates, others are very authoritarian. Managers at all levels have their own leadership style. Leadership styles may vary over different cultures. European managers tend to be more people-oriented than American or Japanese managers. Japanese culture is very collective oriented, while American focuses more on profitability. Time horizons also are affected by cultures. U.S. firms often focus on short-run efforts. Japanese firms take a longer-term outlook.

How a leader work on a management system:

From the above mentioned processes we find that a leader can achieve his goals by using two processes. Firstly, set up his vision then develop some strategy on the basis of vision then tactics should apply to execute the system by this way leader can achieve his goals.

On the other hand without developing the strategy only operating the system then performance can be achieved utilizing the behaviour of the management system.

Quality of a leader

Fortune Magazine has called Warren Bennis the father of modern leadership. So no short course on leadership would be complete unless we grasp some of the contemporary thinking of Warren Bennis. Bennis makes several observations about leaders:

Leaders pull rather than push.
Leaders empower and trust others to act.
Leaders have a clear vision and communicate that vision.
Leaders work through teams and not through hierarchies.
Leaders possess a strong doss of self-esteem and positive attitude.

Leaders have a good grasp of self - they realize their strengths, develop their skills, and identify how to use their talents to meet organizational needs. Even more so, leaders evoke positive feelings in others - Bennis refers to this as an "attitude of positive other regard." This gives leaders creditability in the eyes of the follower. Bennis describes four essential qualities of leaders - Vision, Trust, Communication, and Management of Self. These qualities apply to everyone throughout the entire organization. Therefore, leadership does not reside in isolated places, but is infused and threaded everywhere - everyone must become a leader. Bennis also argues that leaders have a responsibility for making sure people get a kick out of what they are doing - people believe in the cause and purpose set forth.

A leader an organization possesses the following qualities.

Talking with a person in a way that helps a person to solve a problem or helps to create conditions that will cause the person to improve his behavior, character, or values. Providing basic, technical, and sometimes professional assistance to employees in order to help them with personal and work related problems.
He has the ability for personnel development
Goal setting
Compensation plan
Strategy development
Policies for the organisation

Leadership and Vision:

Many definitions of leadership involve an element of vision except in cases of involuntary leadership and often in cases of traditional leadership. A vision provides direction to the influence process. A leader (or group of leaders) can have one or more visions of the future to aid them to move a group successfully towards this goal. A vision, for effectiveness, should allegedly:

Appear as a simple, yet vibrant, image in the mind of the leader
Describe a future state, credible and preferable to the present state
Act as a bridge between the current state and a future optimum state
Appear desirable enough to energize followers
Succeed in speaking to followers at an emotional or spiritual level (logical appeals by themselves seldom muster a following)

For leadership to occur, according to this theory, some people ("leaders") must communicate the vision to others ("followers") in such a way that the followers adopt the vision as their own. Leaders must not just see the vision themselves; they must have the ability to get others to see it also. Numerous techniques aid in this process, including: narratives, metaphors, symbolic actions, leading by example, incentives, and penalties.

Difference between leader and manager:

Leadership is about setting a new direction for a group; management is about directing and controlling according to established principles.
Leaders envision possibilities; Managers calculate probabilities.
Leaders focus on the ends; Managers focus on the means.
Leaders focus on the what; Managers focus on the how.
Leaders prepare beyond the limits; Managers focus execution within limits.
Leaders generate energy; Managers preserve energy.
Leaders are the first ones onto the battlefield; Managers are the last ones off.
Leaders amplify strengths; Managers reduce weaknesses.
Leaders provide vision; Managers provide execution.
Leaders do the right things; Managers do things right
Leaders drive change; Managers maintain consistency.