Leadership Exposed: Things You Thought You Knew About Leadership

Much has been written about leadership: rules, pointers, styles, and biographies of inspiring leaders throughout world history. But there are certain leadership ideas that we ourselves not to recognize and realize in the course of reading books. Here is a brief list of things you thought you knew about leadership.

1. Leaders come in different flavors.

There are different kinds of leaders and is likely to encounter more than a guy in your life. Formal leaders are those who choose to positions or offices such as senators, congressmen and presidents of local clubs. Informal leaders or those we look up under your wisdom and experience, as in the case of the elders of a tribe, or our grandparents, or by virtue of their experience and contribution in a field such as Albert Einstein in the field Theoretical Physics and Leonardo da Vinci in the field of arts. Both formal and informal leaders practice a combination of leadership styles.

Lewin three basic styles of leadership: authority, participatory, and delegative

Likert four leadership styles: authorized operation, authority benevolent, consultative and participatory

Goleman six emotional leadership styles – visionary, coaching, affiliative, democratic, pacesetting, and commanding.

2. Leadership is a process of becoming.

Although some people seem to have been born with innate qualities of leadership, without the right environment and exposure can not develop their full potential. Just as learning to ride a bike, you can also learn to become a leader and hone your leadership skills.

Knowledge on leadership theories and skills may be formally gained by enrolling in leadership seminars, workshops and conferences. Daily interactions with people provide the opportunity to see theory and practice of leadership. Together, formal and informal learning will help you gain leadership attitudes, gain knowledge of leadership and thus promote the learning cycle.

Is not to become a leader in one day and stopped. Lifelong learning is important in being a good leader for each day brings new experiences that put your knowledge, skills and attitude to a test.

3. Leadership begins with you.

The best way to develop leadership skills applicable to their own lives. As adage goes “action speaks louder than words.” Leaders are always in the limelight. Keep in mind that your credibility as a leader depends much on your actions: your interaction with your family, friends and coworkers, the way they manage their personal and organizational responsibilities, and even how to talk with the newspaper seller entire street.

Repeated actions become habits. Habits in turn form a person’s character. Steven Covey’s book entitled 7 Habits of Highly Effective People “has good ideas on how you can achieve personal leadership.

4. Leadership is shared.

Leadership is not the sole responsibility of an individual but rather a shared responsibility among members of a new computer. A leader belongs to a group. Each member has responsibilities to fulfill.

Formal leadership positions are merely added responsibilities aside from their responsibilities as team members. Effective leadership requires members to do their part. Starting as a mere group of individuals, members and leaders work towards the formation of an effective team. In this sense, social interaction plays an important role in leadership.

To learn to work together requires a great deal of trust between leaders and members of a new computer. The trust is based on actions and not merely in words. When there is mutual respect, trust and building confidence is built.

5. Leadership styles depends on the situation.

How is the dictatorship of works by Singapore, but not in the United States of America? Aside from culture, beliefs, values and form of government, the state of a nation also affects the leadership styles used by its formal leaders. There is no rule that only one style can be used. Most of the time, leaders employ a combination of leadership styles depending on the situation.

In emergency situations such as periods of war and calamity, decision-making is a matter of life or death. Therefore, the leader of a nation can not afford to consult with all departments to reach crucial decisions. The case is of course different in times of peace and order — different sectors and other branches of government can freely interact and participate in governance.

Another case in point is the leader in organizations. Where staff are highly motivated and competent, a combination of high and moderate delegative participative leadership style is most appropriate. But if the staff has little competition and low commitment, a combination of high, high support and senior management of the behavior of organizational leaders is required.

Now that you remember these things, keep in mind that there are always ideas that we think we know the things that we take for granted, but in reality are most useful in leadership.