Leadership a Necessity for Success

Leadership in an Organization / Leadership: A Necessity for Success Leadership Styles Supervision and Motivation In the current global competitive environment, leadership plays a key role for the survival of businesses. As Peter Drucker popularly declared, the difference between leadership and management is that the former refers to doing things right, while the latter refers to doing the right things. Great leaders possess a passion for change, higher social intelligence and most importantly, a vision that allows them to concentrate on the things that truly deserve to be prioritized.

For one to be an effective leader, he or she must possess a number of skills. Skills, such as the ability to interact with others in such a way to develop mutual respect, and to inject passion and motivate others, are usually highly sought after by executives. These skills enable one to effectively lead others. Different workplaces have many different leadership roles. Even outside the workplace, there are many situations that require leadership roles, including social situations and even family settings.

Ideally, people become leaders because they are credible and because others want to follow them. In organizational settings, leaders are usually the people doing the right thing. They are not only the ones who are setting the pace for the others, but they are also creating a vision and encouraging others to believe it (Skills you need, 4-5). Leadership Styles Almost everyone has a different style of leadership or a mix of styles that can help to enhance an organization's current performance.

Laissez-Faire This leadership style is characterized by a leader who not only doesn't directly supervise his workers, but also usually doesn't provide constant feedback to the people under his supervision. The kinds of employees who are best suited for this kind of leadership are those who are highly skilled or experienced, and require very little supervision (Johnson, 1). Autocratic Autocratic leaders are those who make decisions without incorporating the input of other individuals. Such leaders have total authority on their employees (Johnson, 2). Participative A participative leader is a democratic leader.

He or she is almost the opposite of the autocratic leader in that they allow input from peers and team members, but still play the role of the final decision maker. Transactional A transactional leader is one who ties his or her workers performance with punishments or rewards; this kind of leadership often lead to better business performance (Johnson, 4). Transformational A transformational leader uses effective communication to inspire workers to meet the company targets. Such leaders motivate workers to see their visions and to work towards attaining it (Johnson, 5).

Supervision and Motivation Supervision The act of supervising another is defined as guiding a person who often doesn't have the full knowledge of what he or she is doing. This doesn't mean to control another person, but rather to monitor and provide feedback where necessary on the performance of workers that the supervisor is in charge of. Leadership skills necessary in a supervisor is to motivate those below him to follow his or her vision (Kokemuller, 2). Motivation Motivation is the process of initiating, inspiring, steering and helping maintain goal-oriented behaviors.

Motivation is the ingredient that causes workers to work. It often combines cognitive, social, emotional and biological forces to initiate behavior. In day-to-day usage, the word motivation is often used to mean what is driving a person to act in a certain way. This is true for the workplace too, in that, effective leaders are driven towards what they want. Whether it is the need for power as defined by McClelland, or the need for self-actualization as explained by Maslow, leaders are in one way or another driven towards achievements.

Leaders can also utilize both monetary and also non-monetary benefits to reward performance in their organizations since rewards help motivate employees to achieve greater objectives and goals within organizations. Workers who are motivated by external factors, such as job perks, benefits, supervisors, shared profits or pay, are said to be extrinsically motivated, while those who are motivated by the task at hand are said to be intrinsically motivated. Most people, however, are often both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated (Btcrd.gov, 2-5).

According to Abraham Maslow, human beings have 5 sets of needs in a hierarchical manner. Maslow argued that individuals often begin by first meeting their most compelling/basic needs and progressing to the most fulfilling needs, such as Esteem needs, self-actualization needs, relationship needs, and physiological needs. It also seems that the more an individual progresses towards the fulfilling of higher needs, the more his or her motivation becomes less extrinsically motivated, and more intrinsically motivated. Hence, it becomes increasingly difficult to motivate such individuals.

Thus, there is a need to recognize the individual needs that every individual worker wants to satisfy and give them opportunities to do so (Maslow, 2-5). Conclusion Even though leadership means different things for different people, it is primarily.