Leadership the Role of Leadership in Excellence

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 role in quality assurance because the process of testing every aspect of a product or service can lead to misleading or poor performance without a leader being present to ensure that all quality requirements are being met. 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 a desired product or service. The usefulness of excellence initiatives are only fully realized when a skilled leader is capable of influencing his followers enough to be able to push their performance in a new direction that improves the desired outcome in some way. A large aspect of excellence initiatives is the idea of customer focus. Being able to, as a leader, translate the wishes of the customer to the process creators in the line of the product creation or development is crucial, so that the final product or service is tailored specifically to the customer ahead of time.

Leadership is different than being 'the boss', largely due to the fact that a constituent individual grants leadership through voluntarily relinquishing of control. (Oxford University, 2012) The boss-employee relationship, however, is not voluntary, and the boss is not necessarily always the leader, rather it is a more permanent arrangement in order to advance a business related goal over a long period of time. When a boss takes charge of a situation based on his position rather than his influence, then he is using a form of 'assigned leadership', rather than 'emergent leadership'. Neither form is superior to the other, they simply change based on the topic at hand. Leadership also is not about a one time decision or a great idea, but rather about the gradual evolution and improvement of a leader and his followers or employees. Being able to gradually improve means that no enterprise is standing still, and therefore at risk to losing a competitive edge to outsiders.