THE TRUE ESSENCE AND MEANING OF LEADERSHIP

BRYAN N. CALMA

Leadership is an ability to lead people in order to achieve specific goals. This is a managerial relationship between the leader and his or her followers based on an effective combination of different sources of power for the specific situation. As a rule, leadership aimed is encouraging people to achieve common goals.

The necessary requirement of leadership is the possession of power in certain formal or informal organizations of different levels and scale. These organizations may range from the state and groups of countries to government agencies, local governments, national or social movements and groups.

Formalized leader’s power is traditionally fixed by law. But in all cases the leader possesses social, psychological and emotional support in the community or in groups of people who follow him or her.

There is formal and informal leadership. In the first case the subordinates are influenced from the certain position. The process of influencing people through personal abilities, skills and other resources is called informal leadership.

It is believed that ideal leadership combines two bases of power: personal and organizational.

Leadership aims at achieving organizational effectiveness. On the one hand, leadership is considered to be a particular set of qualities attributed to those who successfully influence the others. On the other hand, this is a process of no-force achieving goals by certain groups or organizations.

Since ancient times the concept of effective leadership was traditionally defined on the basis leader’s qualities or samples of his or her behavior.

Leadership differs depending upon the scope by which a particular individual seeks to attain a goal or objective that has been set forth. Each organization functions successfully because of its leadership. It is important for each company to have a good leadership. There are many different types of leadership styles that various companies display and exhibit. Typically, when focusing on leadership and the different types, the two are noteworthy taskoriented leadership and relationship-oriented leadership. As with all leadership models, each has its pros and cons and successes and failures.

Success can be achieved using either leadership styles. Purely task-oriented leaders are likely to keep their distance psychologically from their subordinates and tend to be more cold and aloof towards them. Successful taskoriented leaders are instrumental in contributing to their groups’effectiveness by setting goals, allocating labor and enforcing rules and sanctions. They initiate structure for their subordinates, define the roles of others, explain what to do and why it needs to be done and establish well-defined patterns of organization. — oOo—

The author is SST III at Camachiles National High School, Division of Mabalacat City