Importance of Leadership in Present Business Scenario

By

Amit Kumar Srivastava
Lecturer
Gyan Institute of Management & Technology
Lucknow
 

Abstract

The three skills that people in an organization have are leading, managing, and working. Every person has a combination of all three. I refer to a leader as someone who is strongest in leadership, a manager as one who is strongest is management and a worker as one who is strongest in workmanship.

Leadership is different from management in several aspects. While a person can be a good leader as well as a good manager, the two are two different talents. a president and CEO needs to be both a leader and a manger. The chief Architect can just be leader. A project manager can be just a manager. a programmer  can just be a worker. a manager often needs to make others do things ,but rarely needs to do those things her/himself. This does not imply that a manager's role is less significant. The manager does the important work of making the workers successfully do their work.

To be a leader does not mean being a high and mighty boss. A leader is a servant as much as a commander. a good leader cares about others a leaders must lead others to success. if a leader's goal was to achieve success only for one's own self, then I'd call him or her a climber, for one who climbs to success, but not a leader. a leader who does not benefit others serves no purpose in an organization or in society.
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Concept of leadership

Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing.

The very essence of leadership is that you have to have a vision.
Good leaders are made not born. If you have the desire and will power, you can become an effective leader. Good leaders develop through a never ending process of self –study, education, training, and experience.

To inspire your people into higher levels of teamwork, there are certain things you must be, know and do. These do not come naturally, but are acquired through continual work and study. The best leaders are continually working and studying to improve their leadership skills.

Before we get started, let's define leadership. Leadership is a complex process by which a person influences others to accomplish a mission, task, or objective and directs the organization in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. A person carries out this process by applying her leadership attributes (belief, values, ethics, character, knowledge, and skills).Although your position as a manager, supervisor, lead, etc. gives you the authority to accomplish certain tasks and objectives in the organization, this power does not make you a leader...it simply makes you the boss. Leadership makes people want to achieve high goals and objectives, while, on the other hand, bosses tell people to accomplish a task or objective.

Words of Mr. Narayana Murthy on "LEADERSHIP"
'Leadership is all about courage to dream big.'

Leadership is all about courage, courage to dream big, to take tough decisions, etc. Second, it is the ability to raise the aspirations of people and third, to be open minded and to accept great ideas from different countries and culture across the world.

Two Most Important keys of leadership

Hay's study examined over 75 key components of employee satisfaction. They found that:

Trust and confidence in top leadership was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction in an organization.

Effective communication by leadership in three critical areas was the key to winning organizational trust and confidence:

Helping employees understand the company's overall business strategy.

Helping employees understand how they contribute to achieving key business objectives.

Sharing information with employees on both how the company is doing and how an employee's own division is doing relative to strategic business objectives.

So basically, you must be trustworthy and you have to be able to communicate a vision of where you are going. Notice how the "principles of leadership "in the next section closely ties in with this.

The process of great leadership

The road to great leadership (5) (common to successful leaders):

Challenge the process-First; find a process that you believe needs to be improved the most.

Inspire a shared vision-Next, share you vision in words that can be understood by your followers.

Enable others to act-Give them the tools and methods to solve the problem.

Model the way-when the process gets tough, get your hands dirty. A boss tells others what to do…a leader shows it can be done.

Encourage the heart-Share the glory with your followers' heart, keep the pains in your heart. 

Impact of leadership in organization

Leadership and human behavior

As a leadership, you need to interact with followers, peers, seniors, and other people whose support you need to accomplish your objectives. To gain their support, you must be able to understand and motivate them. To understand and motivate people, you must know human nature .Human nature is the comman qualities of all people have similar needs .As a leader you must understand these needs because they are powerful motivators.

Leadership and Communication

Many of the problems that occur in a organization are the direct result of people failing to communicate. Faulty communication causes the most problems. It leads to confusion and can cause a good plan to fail. Communication is exchange and flow of information and ideas from one person to another. It involves a sender transmitting an idea to a receiver. Effective communication occurs only if the receiver understands the exact information or idea that the sender intended to transmit.

Studying the communication process as important because you coach, coordinate, counsel, evaluate, and supervise through this process. It is the chain of understanding that integrates the members of an organization from top to bottom, bottom to top, and side to side.

Leadership and motivation

A person's motivation is a combination of desire and energy directed at achieving a goal. Influencing someone's motivation means getting them to want to do what you know must be done. A person's motivation depends upon two things:

The strength of certain needs. For example, you are hungry, but you must have a Task completed by a nearing deadline. if you are starving you will eat. If you are slightly hungry you will finish the task at hand.

The perception that taking a certain action will help satisfy those needs. For example, you have two burning needs-The desire to complete the task and the desire to go to lunch. Your perception of how you view those two needs will determine which one takes priority .If you believe that you could be fired for not completing the task; you will probably put off lunch and complete the task. if you believe that you will  not  get  into trouble or perhaps finish the task in time, then you will likely go to lunch .

LEADERSHIP SECRETS

1. DECISIVENESS IS KEY
(LALIT KHAITAN, Chairman and Managing Director, Radico khaitan)

The most distinguished trait that defines a good leader is the willingness to make decisions that are need of the hour no matter how difficult they may be. And the most significant component of such decision-making is self-confidence.

2.VISIONARY LEADERSHIP
(B.MUTHURAMAN, Managing Director, Tata steel)

The ability to create a shared vision among team members is the primary trait of a true leader.

3. RELATE AND RULE
(N.LAKSHMI NARAYAN, CEO AND President, Cognizant Technology Solutions)

Good leadership is the ability to recognize all the factors that would make the leader succeed in motivating the group.

4. TAKE RESPONSIBILTY
(R.V.SHASTRI, Chairman and Managing Director, Canara bank)

A leader is only as good as his team. Leadership involves two steps: helping subordinates take advantage of their talents, and then fine tuning their performance. Good leaders always take responsibility for both the success and failure of their teams

Conclusion

Leadership has paramount importance in present competitive business environment, because with the help of leadership a company will face all the problems very efficiently.
 

Amit Kumar Srivastava
Lecturer
Gyan Institute of Management & Technology
Lucknow
 

Source: E-mail July 29, 2008

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