Leadership Essay
A leader is a person who is able to take charge of a situation in a responsible and organized manner to get something done. In order to be a leader one must have people to follow and support them in that ranking position. Henry Miller said “The real leader has no need to lead—he is content to point the way. ” Leaders can be born or made. Many people try very hard to be “in charge” and to become a leader that people will follow and listen to. While others have a natural qualities of a leader. One could be in a classroom and observe the students and pick out the leaders from the followers.
Parents can pick out future leaders sitting on a park bench at a playground. Good leaders have many different and common qualities depending on the type of leader needed for the situation. There are more qualities needed to be an effective leader other than being organized, honest, and responsible. Granted those are important aspects they are not the only aspects. Effective leaders must be respectful to the people following and looking up to him/her. Respect goes both ways, if the leader does not give it, then he will not be getting it either, therefore that leader most likely will not be the leader of much of anything.
An effective leader must be able to show appreciation to the people getting his job done. Also a leader needs to be able to follow through on the commitments he makes by actually doing what they say they will do. Effective leadership is when a leader is chosen, nominated, or somehow put to power and in a high ranking position is actually able to get something effective done for the common wealth while have higher decision power than the people following him/her. Now, there are different types of leaders for different situations.
For example one would not need the same type of leader to run a government as to run a book club. There are different types of leaders for different types of situations called situational leaders. The four main types are the telling, selling, participating, and delegating leaders. A telling leader literally tells each person in his group how to go through a job. A telling leader doesn’t care so much about feelings or the relationships within the group. The selling leader is the type of leader who needs to persuade everyone into getting things done or for thing to go in his or her direction.
The participating leader is a leader such as the U. S president because this type of leader listens to what his/her followers say as the president listens to the other branches of government to make decisions. Lastly the delegating leaders does not lead to much of anything because he trusts his group or followers to be responsible enough to handle duties. Leadership is developed in only a couple of ways. Now there has always been a continuous argument about if a leader is actually born or made.
A lot of people believe only a leader can be born, while other believe a leader has to be taught to lead. But in reality, one is either born a leader or taught to be a leader. Leadership can be developed as a child while being raised. For example, a child that has a lot of younger siblings is a born leader because he or she has been leading around those sibling for a long time. Also if I child is born into a military home many of those children are natural leaders just because of where they were raised. Though not everyone is born a leader, leadership can still be taught.
Therefor leaders can be made. For example, a shy teenager goes into the military. The military will make him into a drill sergeant or company commander. A leader was just made by the military. Another example of a leader being made is people go to law school and graduate leaders every year. You cannot be a lawyer if you were to shy away from a case. No, a lawyer must lead his client through though trials and arraignments through a winning case. Both military people and lawyers of all sorts go to school and learn how to be leaders as well as earn spots to a higher leading position.
