Being a Leader

BEING A LEADER

Leadership is the process of motivating others to work to meet specific goals and objectives. "Leadership is deliberately causing people-driven actions in a planned fashion for the purpose of accomplishing the leader's agenda". A leader motivates others to action. Thus, it is the motivation of others and their actions that defines a successful leader. In other words, leadership is the art and science of getting others to perform and achieve a vision. Therefore, leadership is not only reflected in performance, no matter how good that performance is, but in accomplishment.

As a leader one's focus should be on accomplishing those leadership goals, whether in a personal, community or charitable, business, political, or industrial forum. In the business world, managers have a great responsibility of leading employees working under them. In order to achieve successful leadership, a leader or a manager should possess certain principles and essential skills.

Leadership Principles, Objectives and Problems

There are several principles a leader should follow to be successful. A few of the principles are as follows:

1) Listening and Understanding:

The most important principle of leadership is 'listening'. Active listening shows that the leader cares, is interested and wants to be involved, enabling the n leader to benefit from the experience. The primary objective of a leader would be to adapt the principles of 'listening' into their own life. If the leader is not a good listener, then he/she should learn how to really listen. In addition to listening and carefully understanding what a team member is saying, leader should also make sure that every team member gets leader's undivided attention. Unfortunately, as a listener, leaders have their own problems to face with. Listeners frequently have too many sound and visual signals reaching them at the same time. It is difficult for the listener to pay attention to multiple speakers all at once. Also, there could be a number of other problems the leader could be facing in their own life. The leader as a listener will never listen with understanding until other matters are forgotten for the moment and attention is given to the speaker. Another problem involved with listening is the leader not being able to understand the words being spoken. Hearing what is being spoken is just a part of listening, but understanding some of the words could be tricky sometimes.

To avoid problems involving listening, the listener should use good eye contact so that he/she can concentrate on the particular speaker. That helps the listener pay attention on the subject too. Leader should also learn the meaning of the words the speaker is using and if he is unable to understand, he needs to ask questions. This also lets the speaker know that the listener is unable to understand and the listener is paying attention.

2) Planning

Planning is determining what you want to accomplish, working out beforehand how it is to be done, deciding who will responsible for each step, and having every phase written down.

One of the leader's objectives is to be able to appreciate the value of careful and complete planning. Good leader applies the steps of good planning to each part of life. The leader should visually plan the steps involved to reach a certain goals.

The biggest problem with planning is it is time consuming and involves a lot of thought. In addition, it involves paperwork and other systematic procedures. Many people hate paperwork and following systematic procedures, which makes the planning process inefficient.

To achieve good planning results without any problems, the leader should set a broad goal or objective and decide what form the project will take. Then develop a step-by-step course of action to completion. Keeping all the other objectives in mind, the plan should then be put into effect while readjusting the plan as necessary.

3) Managing Time

Most important of all the leadership principles is to be able to effectively manage time. The leader must determine not only how he will use his own time, but also how the group's time will be used. Managing time effectively will allow the leader to achieve success, happiness and pride at the workforce.

As a leader, personal time management is one of the chief objectives. At work place, the leader should manage meeting time more effectively. The leader should develop and follow his own personal plan for the effective use of time.

Often times leaders find having trouble with managing time. Due to poor organization and lack of planning, time management becomes a tricky task. There are several ways to manage the group's or organization's time effectively. The leader should provide a job description to each person. To save more time, the leader should train or take key people further and commit to these key people when things need to be done immediately. These key people should be kept informed and the leader should have these key people take initiative to report back. The leader should utilize only the time needed for successful completion of the group project, event or activity.

4) Knowing the person:

Every individual working in the team is important and every individual has varied talents and not to mention problems of their own. Knowing the person, understanding the person and identifying the strengths and needs of the individual are vital for the leader in order to be most effective with the person. Leader's objective is to perform more effectively as a leader by getting to know and understand individual members of the group. Leader should be able identify the characteristics and needs of the members of a group. The leader should be able to look for and accept the strengths of each individual. Getting to know a person is a very complex skill and there are several problems involved during this process. People are complex. An individual is like a mixed bag with different