Leadership Skills-
Here we must first describe the terms “leader”, “leadership” and the “personality development” which makes a person a successful leader. The person who leads or commands a group, organization or country is “leader”. Also, we can say a leader is the one who is in the charge, who convinces other people to follow and inspires confidence in other people and moves them for action.
The words "leader" and "leadership" are often used incorrectly to describe people who are actually managing. These individuals may be highly skilled, good at their jobs, and valuable to their organizations, but that just makes them excellent managers, not leaders.
The word "leadership" can bring variety of images in mind. It could be a political leader, an explorer or an executive. Whatever may be the case, we can say that leaders help themselves and others to do the right things. They set direction, build an inspiring vision and create something new.
Here we will focus on the leadership skills and how to improve it. An effective leader is a person who does the following:
- Creates a clear and inspiring vision.
- Motivates and inspires people.
- Manages to fulfill that vision.
- Builds a team for achieving the vision.
Leadership brings together the skills needed to do the above-mentioned things. We will discuss each of these in details.
Creates Vision-
In business or in any organization, a vision provides a direction, sets priorities, and provides an indication, so that the organization can achieve its goal. To create a vision, leaders first try to find the organization's strengths. To find this, leaders may use some tools such as PEST Analysis, USP Analysis, Core Competence Analysis and/or SWOT Analysis. Let us discuss these in brief.
A PEST analysis is a strategic business tool used to find out, estimate, sort out, and track the economic factors which can have an impact on business in the current situation and in the future. This analysis normally examines the opportunities and threats due to political, economic, social and technological forces which influence the business of any organization.
USP Analysis or Unique Selling Proposition is an approach which is implemented on the features of a product that is marketed to find out the uniqueness of the product to make it special. Normally this analysis focuses on the product's elements that distinguish the organization from other competitors in the industry.
Core Competence Analysis is the process of identifying a company's fundamental strengths and attributes that are unique and serve to differentiate it from its competitors, as well as how to capitalize on these core capabilities to build sustained competitive advantage.
SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis is a framework used to evaluate a company's competitive position and to develop strategic planning. SWOT analysis assesses internal and external factors, as well as current and future potential. In other wards it is a study undertaken by an organization to identify its internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as its external opportunities and threats.
The leaders normally try to find out, about the measures how to improve the performance of their business or organization. They test their visions with appropriate market research and also by assessing major risks factors using one important technique say Scenario Analysis.
Scenario Analysis is a process of analyzing the future events by taking into consideration all possible alternative outcomes. This is also called "alternative worlds". Scenario analysis, is a form of projection, but cannot be the exact picture of the future. This only gives an alternative of the vision.
Considering the above, we can say leadership is one proactive problem-solving idea by looking ahead. Leaders are never satisfied with whatever they have or are, rather they always try to improve the current condition of the business or the organization. Leadership combines the passion with analytical side of vision to create something that would be really meaningful and helpful to the people belonging to the business or the organization.
Motivation-
A powerful vision always provides the foundation for leadership. A vision may provide the success for the business or an organization, but sometimes it is also failing. There may be many different factors for such failure. However, it is the ability of the leader to motivate and inspire people who are involved in the organization to accomplish that vision.
Leaders can also motivate and inspire people who are involved or part of the business or organization through their natural personality and appeal. They also do things that inspire people, such as the power to pay bonuses or assign interesting tasks. However, good leaders do not rely too much on these types of power to motivate and inspire others.
Managing Vision-
This is the area of leadership which is directly related to the term management. Leaders must ensure to fulfill the vision of the business or organizations either by themselves, or by a dedicated manager or team of managers. Leaders need to ensure that the vision created by them is easily understood by their team. To fulfill that vision the team members need to be dedicated to their job and honest to their leaders. Leaders also need to make sure that, they manage changes effectively whenever it is required. This helps to ensure that the changes needed to deliver the vision are implemented smoothly.
Building a Team-
Team is the backbone of any organization. Building a team is an important activity carried out by leaders. To develop a team, leaders must first understand the strength of the team. A leader must then ensure that the team members are skilled enough and have the abilitie to do their job to achieve the vision. To improve team’s performance, they do this by giving and receiving feedback of their work regularly and also by providing training as well as coaching staffs to improve individual as well as team’s performance.
Personality Development-
It is always heard that the leaders should have a good personality. As far as personality is concerned it refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character is known as personality.
The personality is the typical pattern of thinking, feeling, and behaviour that make a person unique. When we say that, someone has a "good personality", we mean that they are likeable, interesting and pleasant. Personality development helps us to develop and makes us stand apart from the rest. Personality development also plays an essential role in improving communication skills.
A positive attitude, a balanced extroversion and confidence have been revealed as the most attractive qualities. The most important thing which makes a person unique is that his/her ability of willingness to present oneself and stand out from the crowd.
Personality is influenced by mostly three factors. These are heredity, environment, and situation. Heredity refers to the influences on our personality that we are born with. They are in our genes and there is not much we can do to change these traits. The various things that people experience will leave imprints on and help to develop his or her personality. A bad personality truly does not exist. Whether the person says a bad word or acts in a weird way does not describe that person's personality to be negative.
Environment / people and situation can alter personality for good or bad, but we will always have original personality that we were born with. Personality is a quality that can be made but can also be influenced by genetics. While personality behaviour is relatively stable over time, they can often do gradually change across the life span. Fig. 1 illustrates this. We can say the Personality development of any person occurs by the ongoing interaction of temperament, character, and environment. Fig. 2 illustrates this.
Figure 1 Personality Figure 2 Personality Development