This is the latest of the Blog series from KCO. This blog is written by Mr. Atif Jan, Associate Audit and Assurance. Please read this blog to understand the view point of Atif Jan regarding the Leadership.
Leadership means to lead and direct others. It is a key quality needed at all level of organization. How you lead others will define whether you are a good or bad leader. The difference between these two categories is effectiveness. A leader who can lead effectively is an effective leader. An effective leader is a person who guide and direct others in organization to achieve their and organizational goals and make best use and development of knowledge, skills and talent in the organization.
There are certain factors which influence how a leader can lead a team effectively.
The leader himself – his personality, character, and also his leadership style.
The subordinates – the personalities of individual in the group, the character of group as a whole, their preferences for a particular leadership style.
The task – what are the objectives of the group’s tasks and what methods of working are used?
The environment – the environment covers a wide range of possible issues including the organization structure, culture and norms, technology used in organization operations and tasks performed by subordinates in the group.
Some people are of the view that leading others depend upon certain qualities which are God gifted so they consider leadership something charismatic. Other believe leadership as a skill which can be learned and thought according to them circumstances in the organization create and developed a leader. They put forward different styles of leadership for different circumstances and set the guideline that an effective leader will be the one who choose a right style of leadership for a particular situation. let’s have a brief discussion of those leadership styles.
Authoritarian leadership style – A leader continually giving orders without offering consultation. Authoritarian leaders gain objectives but value of their output is not as democratic leaders have.
Democratic leadership style – A leader offering guidance and actively participating in organizational activities.
Laissez faire leadership style – A leader giving knowledge to their subordinates but do not participate in organization activities.
The democratic style of leadership is the best resulting into value added output, increase in subordinates productivity and high satisfaction of team members. A leader is faced with problems and issues that will require the use of above leadership styles.
Leadership must not be mixed with management. Leaders and managers are complete different as for as their role is concerned. The role of leader is to administer, maintain and focused on systems and structures of organization while leader develop, innovate and focused on people. In short management is all about “doing things right” on other hand leadership is concerned with “doing the right things”.
Atif Jan
