What is Leadership? How You Can be An Effective Leader?

"What makes a leader?" has been a key question asked throughout the organizations of this century. Although there is a tremendous research in the subject, however no clear blueprint of effective leadership has emerged that strongly relates to the success in variety of organizations.

However there are times when a leader and leadership are considered to be the same which actually is not true.a leader is a person who has a vision, a drive and a commitment to achieve that vision, and the skills to make it happen.

To elaborate more on the concept of leader we need to understand the role of a leader. The most fundamental role of a leader is to define the organizational goal, formulate plans and organize people to achieve the goals through the execution of plans. The function of a leader depends on the kind of the group, which is being led. It depends on the structure and the goal of the group. Political, social, or religious leaders have different functions to perform. The general of an army has to perform a different function from that of the priest in the church.

So technically a leader could use social influence to just organize the efforts of others, but leadership is about maximizing the effort. It’s not, "Hey everyone, let’s line up and get to the top of that hill someday." But rather, "Hey, see that hill? Let’s see how fast we can get to the top…and I’ll buy the first round for anyone who can beat me up there."The latter explains leadership whereas the former is the role of leader.

So what exactly is Leadership? Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. It means leadership is a presumption about recognizing qualities of a specific sort of leader. Work forces need the leadership of skilled and experienced individuals to provide guidance and a single direction for all employees to follow. The leadership process is the ongoing relationship between leaders and followers to accomplish company goals. The process of leaders and followers working together is different for each business. Companies nurture leadership at every level by providing activities such as team building workshops. The concept of a team is extremely important in the leadership process, as the focus should be on the followers as well as the leader.

The leadership role often changes significantly in a High Performance organization. This is true for executives and supervisors alike. All too often, leaders consider changes to High Performance as a technique or program which others must implement, but fail to realize the extent to which they must be personally involved and change themselves.

Blanchard Research and Training India LLP is the India partner for the Ken Blanchard Companies. The Ken Blanchard Companies is a global leader in workplace learning, productivity, performance, and leadership skills training. We help companies improve their performance, productivity, and bottom-line results.