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1. INTRODUCTION
2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
5. FUNCTIONS OF A LEADER
6. LEADERSHIP APPROACHES
7. LEADERSHIP STYLES
9. CONCLUSION
10.BIBILIOGRAPHY
11. SUMMARY
LEADERSHIP SKILLS
INTRODUCTION:
“At the age of seven, a young boy and his family were forced out of their home. The boy
had to work to support his family. At the age of nine, his mother passed away. When he
grew up, the young man was keen to go to law school, but had no education.
At 22, he lost his job as a store clerk. At 23, he ran for state legislature and lost. The same
year, he went into business. It failed, leaving him with a debt that took him 17 years to
repay. At 27, he had a nervous breakdown.
Two years later, he tried for the post of speaker in his state legislature. He lost. At 31, he
was defeated in his attempt to become an elector. By 35, he had been defeated twice
while running for Congress. Finally, he did manage to secure a brief term in Congress,
but at 39 he lost his re-election bid.
At 41, his four-year-old son died. At 42, he was rejected as a prospective land officer. At
45, he ran for the Senate and lost. Two years later, he lost the vice presidential
nomination. At 49, he ran for Senate and lost again.
Leadership has been a term, which has been written about, researched, and discussed very
much for a long time. Throughout history it has been recognized that the success or
failure of a war, political movement, business or games can be largely attributed to
leadership. We often talk about the success of a political movement or the loss of a team
in cricket game due to good or absence of leadership. It is known to exist and to have a
tremendous influence on human performance. But its inner working or its specific
dimensions have not been very clearly brought out. Hence a clear definition of the term
has not been given any authority.
DEFINITION:
According to Koontz and o’ Donnell “it is the art of including the subordinates to
accomplish their assignments with zeal and confidence. Zeal reflects ardour, earnestness
and intensity in execution of work; confidence reflects experience and technical ability.”
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
2. Responsibility:
3. Understanding nature:
4. Precedence:
Effective leadership sets itself as an example for the followers. Since the leader
influences the behavior and the activities of the followers he should be endowed
with the technical competence and personality traits. He should also be well
aware of his own preferences and limitations to impress upon his followers.
Technical knowledge and personality helps him in granting confidence,
conviction and self awareness leading to faith and determination to pursue a
course of action successfully to its end. Unless the leader is certain and positive
of the results he cannot inspire others in following him.
5. Situation:
Leadership patterns changes according to the type of group and the situation in
which the group is operating. It is not something which is followed abstractly
without consideration to the people and the environment. Their education,
experience and training levels only determine the pattern of leadership, along with
tradition of the company, nature of operations, conditions in which operations are
carried out etc., which have considerable influence on the role to be adopted by
the leader in different situations.
FUNCTIONS OF LEADERSHIP:
3. Enlists co-operation:
By a mutual process of understanding, the leader not only influences the
subordinate but also gets influenced by their problems and feelings. Through his
skills of sympathetic contacts, careful listening and correct diagnosis their
confidence is won which paves way for their voluntary co-operation.
4. Performances:
Through proper motivational techniques and guidance understanding subordinates
and securing their co-operation leadership creates a climate for performance, by
enabling the followers to apply their full capabilities for work accomplishment
and obtaining their unselfish support. The extent to which the leader understands
and uses these techniques the more effective he is likely to be in getting things
done.
LEADERSHIP THEORY:
Due to the importance of leadership of all kinds of group action, too many numbers of
theories have been propounded from out of voluminous research done over a long period
of time. The various approaches to the theory of leadership are the trait approach,
behavioral approach, situational approach.
Trait approach:
Keith davis has summarized four of the major traits which might have an impact
on successful organizational leadership. They are:
Intelligence: Research has shown that generally a leader has higher intelligence
that the average intelligence of the followers. However the leader cannot be
exceedingly much more intelligent than his followers
Social maturity and breath: Leaders tend to be emotionally stable and mature and
to have broad interests and activities. They have an assured, respectful self
concept
Human relations attitude: Successful leaders recognize the worth and dignity of
their followers and are able to emphasize with them. According to research
studies leaders possess consideration and are employee centered rather than
production centered.
Behavioral approach:
This deals with behaviour patterns of the leader than their personal traits. Emphasis is
given to what the leaders do rather than what they are perceived to be
Situation approach:
Stagdill and his associates through their research in the 50’s came out with a new
approach. It was based on the premise that leadership is strongly affected by the
situation from which the leader emerges and in which he operates. According to
their research findings the leadership ability was heavily affected by such
situational factors like their job, the organizational environment in which they
operated history of the enterprise, community in which the organization operates
psychological climate of the group their characteristics, group member
personalities and cultural influences and so on.
Initiating structure meant that the leader organized and defined the relationship
between him and the subordinates by which he defined the role he expected each
subordinate to assume and established well defined patterns of organization,
channels of communication and ways of getting jobs done.
The two dimensional approach reduced a gap between the task orientation of the
scientific management movement and the human relations emphasis which had
taken from the human relations emphasis which had taken form at that time
The Michigan university study was continued and further refined through
extensive research by Rensis Likert. On the basis he proposes four basic systems
or styles of organizational leadership.
The systems of 1 and 2 leaders are more autocratic in nature with the 1 very
severe and 2 some what considerate. System 3 manager is some what
consultative in nature. He allows is subordinates to participate in discussion but
retains the ultimate right to make decisions. But the system 4 leader is an
absolute democrat giving total participation and deciding on the basis of
consensus.
Thousands of superiors and managers were contacted through questionnaire as a
back up study. This confirmed their theory that high producing concerns were
under system 3 or 4 leaders and low producing concerns were under system 1 or 2
leaders.
Likert went further to make refinements to this mode whereby he wanted to
establish the variables that affected the relationship between leadership and
performance in an organization. These variables are divided into three broad
classes. They are
a) Casual variables: these are the independent variables that determine the
course of development and results of an organization. Only those
variables which can be controlled by the management come under this
category.
b) End result variables: these are the dependent variables leading to the
outcome in the organization. They are productivity, costs, service, profits
etc.
Fred fielder is the proponent of the situational theory whereby he claimed that
there is no inherently good or bad leadership but the effectiveness of leadership or
otherwise was a matter of situational factors. In his research he used a novel
method for measurement of leadership effectiveness. He tried to indicate scores
by measuring the Assumed Similarity between Opposites (ASO) and Least
Preferred Coworker (LPC)
On the basis of these scores he classified leadership styles into two.
a) The Human Relations or Lenient style:
In this the manager do not exhibit great difference between the most and the least
preferred coworker or he gives a very unfavorable report of the least preferred
coworker
b) Task-directed or hard nosed style:
In this the scores are such that the leader exhibits a great difference between the
most and the least preferred coworker or he gives a very unfavorable report of the
least preferred coworker
Though, critics have been against the over dependence of the model on LPC
scores and questionnaire method, as a result reliability has been questioned by
many. In spite of this even now further developments have been made to this
model to serve as an important basis for human resource management. It is only
based on the situational approach that Fielder suggest that better results could be
obtained by engineering positions so as to fit managers than that of the traditional
way of selecting the manager and training and developing him to fit the job.
Hence it is now almost accepted that Fielder has made a very important break
through in the study of leadership effectiveness.
This style even though was formulated originally by researchers at the University
of Michigan; it was developed later by Martin Evans and Robert House
independently. The distinct feature of this theory is that it recognizes the positive
relationship between leadership and motivation.
The Ohio state studies and Blake and Mounton made use of two aspects to explain
leader behaviour namely the concern for people and concern for production or
relationship orientation and task orientation. According to Reddin, effectiveness
of leadership is highly related to using an appropriate style depending upon the
situational factors. He takes the four basic leadership styles by combining the two
basic behaviour factors namely
a) High task and low relation, dedicated
b) High task and high relation, integrated
c) High relation and low task the related
d) Low task and low relation separated
These four styles may be effective or ineffective depending upon the situation.
Reddin stresses that the leader should have an adoptive style that leads to
effectiveness. In fact he identified the type of style which would be effective or
ineffective, by naming them separately. Listed below are the basic styles and their
corresponding effective or ineffective styles.
Self Esteem
When you make someone feel important, you gain their willingness to work for you.
• Ask their advice. Even though you may feel you have the answers to a problem,
ask for their help. This makes the employee feel that you think their opinion is
worth considering.
• Remember the name of the person you are dealing with, and use it often in your
conversation. Remember the most important thing to a person is their name.
• Discuss subjects; but do not argue about them. Arguing infers that you think the
other person is wrong, therefore bringing the person down, and hurting their self
esteem.
• Sincerely compliment them occasionally. You can surely find something to praise
someone about.
• Be more willing to listen than to talk. Pay close attention, and show interest in
what they are saying.
• Be interested in the person. Keep people well informed on all matters that may
concern them.
• Show respect for a person's knowledge by repeating a remark of theirs that will
reflect favorably on them.
Generally people do not know how to be good listeners. People usually only remember
about half of the information they are told. Below are some points on becoming a good
listener.
• Be ready to listen. Stay alert in your posture and in your facial expression.
• Try to avoid distractions.
• Eliminate bias in your thoughts about a person; otherwise you will never
comprehend what they are saying.
• To ward off boredom, try to stay ahead of the speaker by anticipating what she
may say next.
• Try to group thoughts or points to make it easier to remember.
• Look for key words in what the person is saying. It makes recalling the
conversation easier.
Planning
Planning is one of the key management tools. Certainly all of our companies have short,
and long range plans. Through planning, we decide a course of action to achieve goals
and accomplish objectives. Planning prepares us for how to perform in the event certain
things happen.
• Planning requires getting facts and data. The more information you can gather
together, the better equipped you will be to make decisions.
• Policies and procedures are either originated or examined and brought up-to-date
when planning.
• Objectives are also reviewed when a planning process is implemented.
• Planning helps to unify an organization by getting others involved.
• Change is accepted more easily when the plans are known throughout the
organization.
• Planning brings attention to dangers or pitfalls. If the planning is thorough,
disadvantage as well as advantages will be uncovered.
• Decision making skills of the staff can be strengthened, through proper planning.
Motivating
People at all levels must feel they are needed. You cannot motivate a person if they do not
feel essential to the process.
Show enthusiasm about your work and that will help to set a work ethic thus
motivating others.
Set goals for those you supervise. Also, help them achieve the goals by giving them the
opportunity to get things done. Do not set unrealistic goals.
Disciplining
The art of dealing with people when they fail to do their job or they behave abnormally.
The better you know an individual, the better job you can do of disciplining him. With
some people, you need to be firm, or even demanding. Others, just a hint of a suggestion
for change is all that is necessary. Here are a few strategies on making one of the most
distasteful acts of supervision a little more palatable:
• Try to discuss the situation as soon as possible after the incident. That way, the
situation is fresh on everyone's mind.
• Usually, time only makes matters appear worse.
• Talk to the individual in private. Try not to let other people see or hear you.
• Don't embarrass the person
• Try to be friendly, and listen to the person tell their side of the story first.
• Weigh and decide the facts before you constructively discipline.
• Do not nag or harp on the subject over and over again. This will only cause
irritation.
• Do not argue.
• Control your emotions and try to control the other persons'.
• Try to have the person see the seriousness of the situation, and why they should
change their attitude or performance.
• Attempt to determine the reaction to your discipline.
• See if the individual feels they are being treated fairly.
• Try to get a commitment from them to do better in the future.
Delegating
A skill that really requires disciplining yourself that will in turn allow you to supervise
better.
• Could much of the work that you do be done by those you supervise?
• Do you frequently find yourself overloaded with detail work?
• Are you taking more and more work home with you at night?
• Are you working longer hours?
• Are those important jobs you are asked to do getting done just in time or a day or
two late?
• Is too much of your time being spent on unimportant jobs?
• Have the things that you do become routine in nature?
If the answer to most of these questions is "yes," then maybe you have not yet adopted
one of the KEY skills of managing, the art of delegation. This is particularly important if
you have hopes of moving up in the organization. Your skill in delegating could be a
major factor in deciding whether you can handle greater responsibilities and a greater job.
A SUCCESSFUL LEADER gets things done through others.
• That credit for the job being done will go to someone else.
• That it will become known that others know more about a particular job than you
do.
• That someone may do the job better that you have been doing.
• Make it known that you are now doing more top level decision making and
possibly researching new techniques and ideas to better the operation.
• Effective delegating requires proper planning and thought, and also proper
follow-up.
A leader who loses contact with her team or group will fail. Therefore, it is important for
any leader to remember that he must maintain close contact with the group if he is to
function as a coach or supervisor. Many leaders fail not because of limitations on their
own general ability; but, on their inability to delegate, listen, plan, motivate, discipline,
and empower.
BIBILIOGRAPHY
• Remember, you can be a great influence on the initiative and drive of those you
coach or supervise.
• Be enthusiastic and continually look for ways to maintain morale, build
confidence, and motivate.
• Be a good listener. Talking about a situation or a problem expands communication
so that understanding is improved.
• Do a good job of planning and scheduling. Keep your team informed so they will
understand their role in the organization and will tend not to be confused.
• Keep people busy. Generally, people would like to have too much to do than not
enough to do. They lose self esteem if they are not kept busy, and then
productivity falls off dramatically.
• Try to solve problems promptly. Letting bad situations go tends to only make
them worse.
• Give people a chance to do their work without "annoying" them. Leave them
alone unless they need you for something, and let them work.
• Provide the tools, environment and most importantly support for your team to
perform at its peak.
• Show your human side. Demonstrate that you care about someone by visiting
them when they are in the hospital or on extended sick leave. Wish someone a
happy birthday. Remember their employment anniversary.
• Be fair. Do not favor people. Praise them when it is due and constructively
criticize when it is due.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We express our sincere thanks to Dr. K. Nirmala Prasad, principal of M.O.P. Vaishnav
College for Women, Autonomous, Chennai-34, for giving us an opportunity for doing the
presentation skill project.
I take this opportunity of thanking our Presentation Skill Faculty Ms. Bonnika
Saraswathi.K, M.B.A., M.A., PG Diploma, Lecturer in Management and also our Head
of Department Ms. Malarvizhi, M.A., M.Com, M.Phil, and our Faculty Advisor
Ms. R.A. Rabika Begum, M.Com, M.Phil, .