What is Leadership
Leadership is one of the key management functions that refer to the organization’s capacity to set and achieve goals. A leader is responsible for setting the tone in terms of corporate culture, giving direction for the organization and the employees since it is the leader who carries the organization’s vision.
Leadership is about the ability to create followers. But the main questions go around the word ‘how’. The ‘how’ leadership questions include the following: –
- ow do you get the followers on board?
- How do you get people aligned to the organization philosophy?
- How to set the stage and let all followers dance the same tune?
- How do you create followers from influence?
- How do you become an effective leader?
An effective leader must have some Values. It is only the effective leader who can influence others to follow his/her suit. The table below reflect the values that an effective leader must own.
Values of an Effective Leader
| I | Integrity | Doing what is right irrespective of what surrounds you. Walking the talk is what an effective leader with integrity will do. |
| N | Nurture | This is about nurturing the followers. It is all about empowering the young ones to keep on following you. Nurturing the young ones is important for the sake of ensuring sustainability. It is worth understanding that leadership is not a permanent thing. Today you are here tomorrow you are somewhere else or gone. Thus, it is important to create a group that will respect you even if you are out of the title. |
| F | Faith | The leader must have faith in the followers. It is a common phenomenon that if you have faith in me, I will also have faith in you. An effective leader has faith in his followers and return followers will have faith in the leader. |
| L | Listening | A leader must have a listening ear. A leader who listens will easily understand you. |
| U | Understanding | A leader must be understanding of the followers for them to be loyal to the leader. It is natural that if you do not understand my situation, I cannot understand yours. If you are hard on understanding your follower’s situation do not expect them to be ready to die for you. It is even more complex from an organizational perspective. |
| E | Emotional Intelligence | The suncity to the environment. The ability to be able to deal with the followers’ troubles? It is basically the ability to wear other people’s shoes. |
| N | Navigation | A leader must be able to navigate the followers through troubles. |
| C | Communication Skills | The leader must be able to communicate. Without proper communication, one can not make the other people follow him/her. |
| E | Exemplary | A leader must be an example. He/she must be a mirror from which people can see themselves. |
A leader may have faith in the followers, be a listening leader, and be an understanding leader. However, if the rest of the values do not belong to the leader in question the three elements become FLU, which is bad for the organization. In other words, a leader without integrity, a leader who can not nurture the young ones, a leader who is emotionally dead, a leader who can not navigate the followers through troubles, a leader who can not communicate properly, and a leader whose examples go to a bad leader, will remain with FLU.
From the post on leadership, integrity is the number one value. It is said that integrity is about doing right irrespective of the surroundings. My question is; As a Leader, how do you judge yourself that you are doing right?