Thursday, January 10, 2008

Leadership Defined

Leadership is the process of guiding the behavior of others toward the achievement of some common objectives. It is encouraging people to get things done – readily! To a standard and quality above their norm to achieve a shared stretch goal. As an element in social interaction, leadership is a complex activity involving a process of influence; actors who are both leaders and followers, and a range of possible outcomes – the achievement of goals, but also the commitment of individuals to such goals, the enhancement of group cohesion and the reinforcement of change of organizational culture.
What is Leadership? Three simple one-line answers by Paul Taffinder
· The easy answer: leadership is getting people to do things they have never thought of doing, do not believe are possible or that they do not want to do.
· The leadership in organizations answer: leadership is the action of committing employees to contribute their best to the purpose of the organization.
· The complex (and more accurate) answer: you only know leadership by its consequences – from the fact that individuals or a group of people start to behave in a particular way as result of the actions of someone else.
Effective Leadership as a Source of Competitive Business Advantage, Leadership is imperative for molding a group of people into a team, shaping them into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage. Leaders know how to make people function in a collaborative fashion, and how to motivate them to excel their performance. Leaders also know how to balance the individual team member's quest with the goal of producing synergy – an outcome that exceeds the sum of individual inputs. Leaders require that their team members forego the quest for personal best in concert with the team effort.Super-leaders help each of their followers to develop into an effective self-leader by providing them with the behavioral and cognitive skills necessary to exercise self-leadership. Super-leaders establish values, model, encourage, reward, and in many other ways foster self-leadership in individuals, teams, and wider organizational cultures.

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