Personality Factors for a Leader

Nature of Leadership:

Laurie J. Mullins states that ‘Leadership is a relationship through which one person influences the behavior or actions of other people’ (Mullins 2010: 373).

He says that Leadership is all about determination, personality and innate ability at the right time for a particular competitive situation. Many effective business leaders have no formal academic qualifications and each has their own individual leadership style. Leaders can motivate their followers and can design organizational contexts and make them function effectively.

Criterion of leadership:

Though there are lot many criterion for leadership, we in our group selected a few of them.

VISION:

A good leader should work hard at communicating their vision for the organization to all staff at all levels. He has to understand that their vision must appeal to the staff at both an emotional and practical level. Basically a leader has to understand the culture and values of his organization and its impact on its future development. He has to recognize blind alleys.

MOTIVATION:

A leader has to understand that every member has a different set of motivational stimuli, motivate them accordingly. He has to explain his decisions in terms of their benefit to the organization and its members. Most importantly a leader has to find out the flaws if any or celebrate and reward individual and team achievements.

EMPOWEREMENT:

An empowered leader should believe that people generally respond well when given greater responsibility for their own performance without disturbing the organization’s model. For that he has to allocate sufficient resources to training and development and get a buzz when staff set and achieve their own goals. He should realize that the organization would still function if you were not there.

COMMUNICATIONS:

One of the most important criteria for a leader is communication skill. He has to use his communication influence to encourage two way communications at all levels in your organization. He has to encourage personal contact rather than written, mechanical or technological alternatives. Finally has to encourage a diversity of opinion and constructive criticism and walk the talk.

RELATIONSHIPS:

A successful leader should work hard at countering a ‘them and us’ culture within your organization and maintain relationships inside and outside his team. He has to set clear codes of acceptable conduct and take action against breaches of them and stress that everyone contributes to the success of the team(s) they belong to. One of the most important qualities of a leader is that he should be able to admit a mistake when you make it.

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE:

Mullins describes emotional intelligence as abilities such as being able to motivate oneself and persist in the face of frustrations; to control impulse and delay gratification; to regulate one’s moods and keep distress from swamping the ability to think; to empathize and to hope. (Mullins 2010: 144).

Emotional intelligence is the ability to think, handle situations either in frustrations or success emotionally. A leader should have this emotional intelligence so as to lead his team in critical situations.

ATTITUDE:

Attitudes are learned throughout life and are embodied within socialization process. They can be defined as providing a state of ‘readiness’ or tendency to respond in a particular ways.(Mullins 2010: 145). A result oriented leader should have knowledge, should be expressive, should be instrumental, and ego defensive.

TEAMWORK:

A good leader is the one who has to create an understanding of working in groups and teams. It is necessary for him to recognize the nature of human relationships, functions, roles and factors that influence team performance and effectiveness.

TIME MANAGEMENT:

Time management is one of the key factors for a good leader. They should not only manage their own time but also manage their staff or team’s time. They have to establish key tasks, set objectives, identify performance standards, check for constraints and decide on action plans.

PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS:

Problem-solving is the removal of the barrier. A result- oriented leader should have good problem – solving skills as the success of his mission depends on the problems they face and the way he solve. It may be an internal weakness, or any external threat.

Group Feedback and My Capabilities:

The group members in our group say that I have good visionary qualities and they say that I always plan for the future. I think that whatever plan I am making should be useful not only to me but for others and my plan should be like a generalized theory and have proofs. Coming to motivation, our group members feel that I can motivate them with my verbal skills and also induce confidence into them. One of the group member reviews me that I also reward and always give them a good feedback.

My group members have trust on me and are able to rely on me and I feel that I have good empowerment skills. Whenever I lead them I don’t feel authoritative rather I feel responsible which makes me a successful leader. I feel that empowerment should not be taken by yourself; members around you should choose you.

I use my verbal skills and my body language in an effective manner so as to put on my thought in front of them. They will be always encouraged and convinced with my presentation skills and so I can make use them for the maximum extent so as to accomplish our mission. In any context whether it may be in formal situations, informal situations, in an organization, in completing a group activity, I feel the most important part is maintaining relations within a group. I have won my group members and they vote me positively in these criteria. I feel that as a leader, whatever I do should be convinced among my group members and the plan should be transparent. I feel that no group member should be in dark side. One of my group members states that I possess a bit low emotional intelligence. I don’t agree with them completely because there are no such relevant situations where I got a chance to exhibit them. I have a few real time examples where I was chosen to convince people and I succeeded in that.

When coming to attitude, each person in our group has different viewpoints regarding this criterion. One says that I am egoistic. It might not be a false judgment but it’s true in some issues. I am a bit EGOISTIC person, but the way I exhibit it depends on the situations and circumstances.one more member in our group says that I calm down when things doesn’t go well and look for a chance or a solution. That is also true and it happens most of the time when handling worthless issues. The other member says that my attitude is good and positive always. I feel that attitude varies accordingly with people’s mindset and it is the way how they receive. Team playing is one of the best qualities which I possess. My group members also agree with this statement. They say that I am always ready to help them irrelevant of the situation. I feel that in a team di

Coming to time management, I am a bit lazy person which is a drawback for being a leader. But my group members except one, praise me that I am good at managing time. May be, only one member found out my drawback and it is true. Actual reason is I need a small push up to start of my work which I am trying to rectify it. I am good at allocating time resources but poor at implementing it within given constraints.

When I deal with any problematic situations, I come out of the situation and analyze the problem, find the causes, starting from the basics, question myself and solve the problem and my group members accessed me the same. But I feel every time that I have to improve my problem solving skills. I don’t get satisfied at any point of time and thinks of a better way to solve a problem. I give feedback to myself most of the time. Conclusion:

Overall there are lots of important qualities like VISION, MOTIVATION, RELATIONSHIPS, and COMMUNICATION SKILLS in me which make me to emerge as a successful leader, though I have a few qualities like ATTITUDE, TIME MANAGEMENT which needs to be improved. In this present scenario one should have to develop lot many qualities other than these mentioned and emerge out as a Good Leader in this changing world.