Leadership The Role of Leadership in Excellence Initiatives

Leadership is often thought of as a quality that is innate to certain individuals, such as CEOs and Presidents who have demonstrated their tireless commitment to a specific cause. This belief is not entirely true, however, and must be examined so that what leadership entails can be fully understood. (Bennis, 2010) There are two theories of leadership, the trait theory and the process theory. The trait theory teaches that leadership 'resides' in people, and is based on a certain mixture of intelligence, extroversion, fluency, and even physical stature. The trait theory of leadership teaches that having these innate traits will directly contribute to one's ability to lead, and therefore the best leaders will combine the highest amount of these aforementioned traits. The process theory of leadership, however, teaches that leadership comes as a result the interactions of individuals in a group. The process theory does not specify any natural born traits as aiding leadership, rather only the framework of the relationships involved in the leader-follower system. (Teal Trust, 2012) Leadership has been essential to human progress since time began, and is utilized constantly to control an assembly of individuals around one common goal.

Quality Assurance is the practice of forming planned and systematic activities in order to meet minimum quality requirements for a product or service. Leadership plays a crucial...

Leaders are shouldering the burden of seeing that top quality standards are being met, and followers are the ones who are taking their lead in what to measure and how. The two principles of quality assurance are 'fit for purpose', meaning that a product or service should be adequate for the intended purpose. The other principle is that of 'right first time', which means mistakes should not be accepted, but always eliminated. Together, meeting the purpose of a product or service, as well as removing mistakes in the process, takes a leader to see everything properly executed.
Excellence Initiatives are actions taking above and beyond those required by quality assurance, and can only be reached through the positive action of a skilled leader. Leadership teaches one to be acutely aware of the entire process of a product or service from beginning to end, in order to be able to break down that process into individual parts that can be accomplished by followers. (Myatt, 2012) Every project goes this way, whether it's the Great Pyramid of Giza or a simple spot check of a small business' operations. Excellence initiatives are small steps that are discovered and pushed by leaders at various levels of a process that can improve the quality or efficiency of…