A Good Leader Needs to Have the Spirits

In the oxford thesaurus it states “in good humour: frame of mind, mood, sprits, state of mind, temper. Also in the oxford dictionary morale is explained as: ‘state of a persons or groups sprits and confidence’. A good leader needs to have the sprits of his team high in order to get the best out of them. Also humour is one of the best ways to handle stressful scenarios, it relaxes the group and helps them the mind to except it. Also a good sense of humour means you can take jokes and laugh at yourself, this puts others at ease around you.

In the National Health Service (NHS) a good sense of humour will strengthen the bonds between team members, doctors nurses and ambulance drivers which is what is needed to make a good team. It also makes the tedious jobs fun e. g. cleaning the equipment or false alarms. Also when your in the situation where you see morbid scenes it is often a lot better for the mind if you just laugh at it and make witty comments to make others laugh. But as with all cases it is important you don’t cross the line and offend one of your team mates or let others concerned hear your remarks.

Honesty and integrity The oxford thesaurus it states that honesty is: ‘fairness, reliability, trustworthiness, truthfulness, bluntness, directness, plainness, sincerity, straightforwardness. ‘ In my opinion honesty is always telling the truth and not twisting the truth to suit you. You should always be able to admit mistakes and be aware of your strengths and weaknesses. When under pressure and facing discipline it is often easier to lie your way out of trouble, but a good fire fighter will own up to mistakes and take the consequences.

Also firefighters have the chance to steal when dealing with a fire, it would be easy just to take something and say it was destroyed in the fire. And a good leader in the fire brigade would be able to tell his team mates where they can improve because he wants the best out of them. Reliability The oxford thesaurus it states that to be reliable is: ‘certain, consistent, constant, dependable, devoted, efficient, faithful, loyal regular, responsible, safe solid, sound, stable and trustworthy’. This is very important in the fire brigade because you depend on your team to look out for you and you have to look after them in return.

This quality reinforces trust and strengthens the team as with honesty. Reliability also involves being punctual and getting tasks done on time or consistently. Probably the best way to lead is by example and in any public service being reliable is a good way to lead. If your reliable your subordinates will look up to you because your committed and want to do the job well. If you consistently make the right decisions in a fire drill say when you’re the leading fire-fighter, your team will trust you in a real life situation because you were reliable in practise.

It also means doing what you say you will and being their for team members when they need you. Courage and bravery The hyper dictionary states it as: ‘a quality of spirit that enables you to face pain or danger without showing fear. ‘ In my opinion courage is the ability to make a good decision when under pressure and bravery is the ability to control your fear. i. e. risking your own life to save someone else’s. Fire fighters are always being courage’s and brave in the face of danger, its part of their job.

A good example of this would be a fire-fighter that goes into a house where he is looking for a baby he doesn’t know where it is and searching in dangerous conditions in the hope he might just find it. Another example would be the September the 11th incident when fire-fighters had to go into an unstable building knowing that their life would probably end. I am just like everybody else, I have strengths and weaknesses to my leadership skills. Its how much better they are than everybody else that makes a leader stand out from the rest.

A good leader needs to be able to identify their strengths and weaknesses and decide what will help improve them. During one of my class discussions my peers and I carried out an exercise where every body said positive and negative aspects to my leadership qualities. I was very pleased with the results because they showed I have good leadership skills even though I don’t think of my self as a natural leader. People often have a different idea to what you have of yourself so this exercise helped bring out some truths I was both glad and disappointed to hear.