Leadership Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 2

Leadership - Essay Example Who is a Leader Though there are various different views and definitions about leader and leadership, to come to a specific consensus about who is a leader may be a difficult task. To be very simple, a leader is one who has leadership quality. A leader can either be a man or woman who has the ability to get other people to do what he likes them to do even if they don’t like to do it. As Howard Gardner noted, a leader is a person â€Å"who could get other people to what they don’t want to do and like it† (Parker and Begnaud , p. 3). A leader is expected to be able to create interaction between him and his followers involving a structuring or restructuring of the situation, perception and expectations of the his followers. When it comes to a bit broader view about leaders, they come in all different shapes and sizes. They may be young or old, men or women and regardless of caste, region, religion and so on. they are found in all different levels, like Church, Polit ics, Government, Business, House, Community and sports (Corcoran, p. 3). All different leaders at different levels possess more or less different qualities, like transformational, charismatic, situational etc. A leader is one who listens to his people, supports and encourages them to get them involved in decision making process as well as problem solving processes (Holbeche, p. 72). Based on this view, a leader is one who influences his subordinates or followers by supporting them and encouraging them so that they will be motivated to get involved in all the relevant decision making and problem solving activities. He not only listens to the concerns of his followers, but also suggests possible solutions and finds better ways to help them by solving their issues. A leader tries to get his people to follow him or her to a specific objective. A political leader has his own specific objectives or destination that he likes to motivate his people to move towards that destination. A busine ss or political leader has thus certain objective and his activities or leadership attempts will be largely influenced by his intention to lead his people towards the ultimate goal. Contemporary perspectives on Leadership Leadership is basically a quality, necessarily an inborn quality according to some academic researchers and not so according to some others. Though there are various theoretical perspectives regarding leadership, trait theories are widely discussed and are considered to be highly important in contemporary business and political landscapes. In recent years, Warren Bennis contributed much to leadership studies and researches and has strongly disagreed with the concept that leadership is an inborn quality. In contemporary leadership literatures, Warren Bennis is perhaps the most widely discussed name. According to him, â€Å"leadership is the capacity to translate vision in to reality† (Corcoran, p. 3). Warren Bennis is the founding director of American Leaders hip Forum and he has authored more than 26 books in leadership and its very related functional areas. Leaders (1986) and On Becoming a Leader (1989) are some of his best-selling book about leadership (Thomas, p. 4). Warren Bennis tried to avoid the traditional view associated with leadership thinking and the concepts of trait-theories. He argued that leaders are not just born, but are made or created through training, developmental program and