Leadership – Effective or Defective
Leadership
Leadership in an organization and on a project is one of those absolutes that make a difference in the ambiance of which we work. Each person will have a different definition for leadership. During my undergrad studies,*Professor Peter Correa taught me that leadership is comprised of the following attributes:
- Competence
- Confidence
- Character
- Commitment
- Think
- Act
- Influence
I invite the readers to try writing in one sentence their definition of leadership.
“A leader is someone that is competent and confident, has character and commitment, can think through decisions, and takes action through influencing others to achieve results .”
Effective Leadership
Now add an adjective and derive the meaning of effective leadership.
For some of us the best way to describe an effective leader is to describe a defective leader and then invert the meaning. Everybody has an experience of a defective leader that made a task or initiative difficult or even impossible. Some people cope, some people quit to pursue other interests, but at any rate defective leaders can make for a destructive work environment.
After thinking about what makes for a defective leader, describe what makes for an effective leader. Personally, I borrowed eight points from **What Makes an Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker as a guide to effectiveness.
Substitute executive with leader and presto. An effective leader is someone who thinks of the following points:
- What needs to be done?
- What is right for the enterprise?
- Develop action plans
- Take responsibility for decisions
- Take responsibility for communications
- Focus on opportunities and not problems or would be failures
- Run productive meetings
- Use “we” and not “I”
Please leave your definition of leadership and experiences regarding effective or defective leadership.
References
*About Peter Correa click link:
http://atlanta.dbusinessnews.com/shownews.php?newsid=178200&type_news=latest
**What Makes an Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker:
http://ai.arizona.edu/hchen/chencourse/Peter%20Drucker%20-%20Harvard%20Business%202004.pdf
Jul 21st, 2009 at 12:19 pm
My single-sentence or short paragraph attempts at defining leadership usually end with frustration. My frustration is caused by my inability to define such a broad term in such a concise way. Here is today’s attempt —
A leader understands the resources internal to his organization and the challenges external to his organization sufficiently well to direct his staff to achieve the objectives of the organization.
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Travis Anderson Reply:
July 21st, 2009 at 7:31 pm
Leadership has such a broad meaning. Each culture, organization, person has a different meaning behind this term. It is good to see that you gave an attempt at trying to define leadership. The main reason we should try continuously to define leadership is for the discovery our own leadership qualities. Keep up the good work. Thanks for the comment.
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Jul 21st, 2009 at 11:04 pm
To me, leadership is creating a situation where
-your people are passionate about executing with quality,
-activities are in alignment with strategic goals,
-and you have removed major obstacles from their paths
That can be one sentence if you like, but I prefer the list format.
Reply
Josh Nankivel Reply:
July 21st, 2009 at 11:20 pm
More concisely:
Creating a situation where your people are inspired, pointed in the right direction, and protected from obstacles.
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