Leader and Leadership

A leader is one who guides and directs each other people. Leadership is the ability of a leader to make his subordinates work with confidence and zeal. It is a quality which enables a leader to move his group towards certain goal without exerting force.

Leaders should possess the following qualities:

1. Intelligence and technical knowledge

2. Initiative

3. Decisiveness

4. Persuasiveness

5. Responsibility

Key to Leadership

The first task of a leader is to define the objective of the group clearly. This group objective has to be reduced to individual objectives. Individual objectives have to communicate to the individual members of the team. The objective should be measurable time bound, realistic, challenging and agreeable. A leader should perform the following functions to be effective.

1. Planning: He should prepare a workable plan using all available information.

2. Initiating: He should communicate the plan to his team members and allocate tasks to team members. Settings standards.

3. Controlling: He should maintain the standards of work set by him by constantly monitoring the activities of the group.

4. Supporting: He should accept the contribution of his team members, encourage groups and individuals, create team spirit, and reconcile disagreements between team members.

5. Informing: He should inform the group the plans and policies of the organization, changes in the plan and procedures.

6. Evaluating: He should evaluate the consequences of proposed plan, idea for a problem and ensure its feasibility.

Team members: He is a part of a team; effective team work is based upon effective team members. Therefore selection a team member is an important process. The following factors are considered for selection of effective team members.

1. Technical or professional competence.

2. Ability to work as a team member.

3. Desirable personal attributes.

Technical or Professional Competence

This can be ensured by considering the following factors:

1. Does he/she have alert intelligence.

2. Does he/she have professional skill.

3. Is he/she motivated to seek excellence in results and method of working together?

4. Does he/she track record reflect the above qualities.

Ability to Work as a Team Member

To access this, we can consider the following factors:

1. Will he/she co-operate with others and work with them i.e. decision making.

2. Does he/she listen.

3. Is he/she is flexible to adopt different roles in the group.

4. Can he/she influence others without being aggressive.

5. Will he/she contribute to group morale.

Desirable Personal Attributes

This can be assessed by considering following factors:

1. Does he/she have tolerance for others?

2. Does he/she have will to achieve ambition.

3. Will he/she develop feeling of responsibility for success of the team.

4. Does he/she have integrity.

5. Does he/she know about their strengths and weaknesses.