How to be an Effective Leader

Aligning with the interests and concerns of one’s people is part of what helps to make a leader effective, as Calhoun and Damm (2015) point out. The other part of what makes a leader effective is vision and ability—and the two go together, just like a theory and experiment go together. The analogy is useful because, as Chait, Ryan and Taylor (2004) note, theory leads to practice; therefore, vision is to ability as theory is to practice, and both support effective leadership so long as they are rooted in a framework that helps achieve the desired goal of the organization, group, entity or community. Leadership is about leading—and leading means providing followers with both the vision of what needs to be accomplished and the ability to make that accomplishment possible. There are many different ways a leader can approach the objective: leadership styles are myriad. However, leadership must be grounded in a sense of being there to serve something that is greater than oneself because the goal must be something outside of oneself, otherwise there is no need to strive and work for it. So leadership is, in this sense, about humbling oneself enough to realize there is something greater that needs to be accomplished. To this degree, leaders like Pete Frates, Pope Francis, Beatrice Mtetwa, Bill and Melinda Gates and Sir Ganesh Dutt are all examples of people who are great leaders: they all have applied that vision and that ability towards the end goal of helping others (and themselves) to achieve that special something that is higher, that calls to them to reach out.
Leadership principles that I possess that would make me a great leader are my devotion to transparency, honesty, ethics and virtuous habits. I think the bedrock of fundamental leadership is truly in virtue ethics, because these are principles that elevate one towards achieving the ideals—the one, the good, the true, the beautiful—that the ancient philosophers used to uphold as the things worth pursuing in life. When these principles are ignored or set aside, unethical behavior can creep in—which is exactly what happened in the case of Enron. That is to be avoided at all costs, and to do so we must remember observe the guidelines that keep people focused on doing what is best and right, and as far as I can tell the best guidelines are embodied in the Golden Rule and in the virtue ethics advocated by thinkers like Aristotle.
When it comes to skills to help put these principles in play, my knowledge and my emotional and social intelligence skills (the ability to read and understand emotions and provide the support needed to help others advance towards the desired goal is a very useful skill for leaders) have served me well.
My self-assessment at SkillsYouNeed.com showed that I have 5 fairly well-developed leadership styles: 1) coercive, 2) pace-setter, 3) visionary, 4) democratic and 5) coaching. My least well-developed leadership style is affiliative, which means I do not value emotional bonds and harmony as much as I could. While I stated earlier that I have strong EI skills, I believe that I know how to use them selectively as my end goal is not always about establishing harmony but rather about getting a job done. Perhaps, I now realize, I could be more effective at getting the job done if I also promote harmony and emotional bonds among my workers. So that is one thing that I learned from this self-assessment.
The characteristics of managers vs. leaders is an interesting concept and having taken this self-assessment I begin to realize that I may actually be imagining myself to be a leader when in reality I am actually acting more like a manager, attempting to manage people’s feelings and make them workable for the job that we have to do instead of leading the people to be better together and work towards the vision I have for us. I see that there is a difference and this difference is important to consider.
For instance, a leader will help to transform and grow the team in numerous ways so that it can reach its fullest potential. The concept of growing together is important as the team is really perceived as a single entity. A manager on the other hand just looks at the end game and sees the pieces he has to work with and tries to manage them so that no one disrupts the process. It is less about growing and being all one can be with a manager. With a leader, growth and development is the core of what it is all about, because in the end these are the things that enable the team to achieve goals consistently year in and year out. A leader can be a manager but a manager does not always act like a leader. Leadership is a quality that unites, motivates, and envisions and excites. It is a characteristic that makes people want to follow and be part of something special. Managers do not necessarily have this characteristic, which means that people will show up just because they have to, just because it is their job.
In conclusion, leadership is a special skill that requires some solid principles, which allows the leader to see the potential good in others and help them to be their best selves. I have some leadership skills but in some ways I still have a manager mentality. I can develop my skills by being more affiliative and working to unite team players by promoting emotional bonds and harmony among the group. This would help me to achieve my own potential as a leader, as I already have certain styles that are conducive to effective leadership, such as visionary skills and pace-setting skills, and just need to build on them.
References



Chait, R. P., Ryan, W. P., & Taylor, B. E. (2004). Governance as leadership. Retrieved from http://headsuped.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/3050-Governance-as-Leadership.pdf

Calhoun, N., & Damm, D. (2015). One sector more poised for the future than either business or government. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/singularity/2015/02/09/stealth-rally-in-the-nonprofit-sector/

SkillsYouNeed. (2015). What sort of leader are you? Retrieved from http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ls/index.php/325444#sthash.nQ4NT3L9.dpuf