The ability of a person to guide
others, be it individuals or group, to get an activity done in a
desired way. Leadership is an art by way of which a leader can
mould, direct and inspire others with a vision to create either
something new or to realize the goals in more efficient and
smoother way. Innovation is one of the important criteria of good
Leadership. There are various approach to leadership by different
Leaders with an aim to achieve the predetermined objectives.
Certain leaders are reluctant to work with a big team of
participants while some other leaders are uncomfortable holding the
office of responsibility.
Let us take an example of academic
institutions to explain the concept better. Depending upon the
functional aspect of leaders in bringing about an innovative change
in academic institutions, leadership styles could be classified
into different types such as Autocratic, Democratic, Laissez Faire,
etc. However, it is observed that when it comes to the Academic
institutions, the lowest level of Leadership face the utmost
challenges in the academic institutions with hardly any amount of
attention given to it. Such challenges could be as under:
- To create and effective
organizational structure in the academic institutions, leadership
plays a significant role. However, in most of such institutions,
various other factors are place more importance with little or no
attention towards leadership. Thus in long run, lack of leadership
may lead to poor decision making process in terms of infrastructure
or syllabus structuring, which may in turn hamper the prestige of
the academic institution in concern.
- The academic society has become
more demanding with the customers, students and stakeholders
demanding higher quality of teaching and training modules, active
participation with community activities, transparency in funding
system, proper auditing and monitoring activities, rapid footprints
into the International arena, etc. has given rise to various
challenging activities than the academic governance and leaders
need to undertake.
- Unlike in older times, where the
academic leaders were concerned more with daily administrative
processes, in the modern era, there has been a shift of leadership
style from administration to higher quality of research and
teaching processes, thus setting challenging benchmark for the
modern leaders to remain updated in the academic field.
- The concept of strategic leadership
has thus emerged with the top-level governing team deciding and
formulating the strategies while the middle and lower level leaders
are expected to implement the same even in the academic
institutions just like in any other Organizational structure.
- Now the next challenge is to
striking various balances between the academic courses and research
activities or with the staffing and administrative challenges.
- The challenge of adopting
flexibility in the running of the Academic organization by the
top-level governance is a cause of concern due to the paradigm
shift of traditional collegial approach of management of academic
institutions to the modern outlook of adaptation of Management
approach from the Private sector to ensure more efficiency in the
academic institutions. The rigidity of the old schools of thoughts'
leaders need to be removed in order to overcome this
challenge.
- It is an irony that although the
leadership styles and approach are first taught in the higher
education academic institutions, the academic institutions
themselves fail to undertake the same. This reluctance poses as a
challenge in such institutions.
- Another challenge is to define the
'Effective leadership' module in case of Academic institutions.
Where on one side, various performance evaluation systems are put
to place to analyze the results of adopting a leadership style in
an Organization, the same cannot hold true in case of Academic
institutions. Hence, to measure the effectiveness of leadership in
an academic institution, is a matter of question.
However, in spite of the above
challenges, an blatant top level management can influence the lower
level leaders to direct them in certain way to achieve desired
results. A distributed leadership within an institution can help
reaching out to the students and third party stakeholders in more
efficient and desired way.
Now let us look into the qualities
that a leader should possess. The leader should possess:
- Ambition and energy
- The desire to lead
- Honest and integrity
- Self-confidence
- Intelligence
- High self-monitoring
- Job-relevant knowledge
The Team Leadership Role needs to
act as liaisons with external constituencies and serve as
troubleshooters. The leader should also be able to manage the
conflicts within the team mates and provide coaching to improve
team member performance. Thus, In order to effectively lead teams,
following are the four most critical elements:
- First is the role of mentoring.
This would involve to present ideas clearly by listening to those
well; and by empathizing the team mates and sharing their
experiences, mentoring activity helps to build a bond with the
fellow team mates. By sharing experiences and acting as their role
model, a leader can effectively lead a team. Further, sharing of
contacts and providing political guidance is equally
necessary.
- Next element would be the self
leadership. Self leaders are created by encouraging the employees
to create self-set goals and encourage them to use the self-rewards
system. Further, a leader needs to create a positive thought
patterns among the team members and a conducive climate of
self-leadership. Self-criticism should also be encouraged.
- The next critical element would be
the implementation of Ethical leadership in the team. A positive
work environment should be created to change the attitudes and
behaviors of the members. A leader needs to be engaged in various
socially constructive behaviors with his teammates and not abuse
the power or use any improper means to attain goals.
- The next very important element of
leadership would be trust building. The lack of face-to-face
contact in electronic communications removes the nonverbal cues
that support verbal interactions. There is no supporting context to
assist the receiver with interpretation of an electronic
communication. The structure and tone of electronic messages can
strongly affect the response of receivers. An individual’s verbal
and written communications may not follow the same style. Writing
skills will likely become an extension of interpersonal skills
An example of effective leadership
would be that of US’ former President Barrack Obama. In the year
Feb 2007, the Presidential campaign was announced. Later, in the
month of June, Obama got nominated to contest for the elections. By
Aug 27, 2008, Obama was declared the President of US. He was
regarded as a very effective Transformational leader due to the
following:
- Obama was very focused with his
post-election campaigns’ objectives. While selecting his advisors,
he made them sure that he wanted the creation of such a political
scenario that is away from any kind of cheating or fraud, seeking
undue advantages of the press releases, etc.
- As a transformational leader, he
first ensured to acknowledge all his fellow organizers upon the
podium who were the part of his success team. This motivated the
organizers to vouch for the President in every possible way.
- Apart from acknowledging the
organizers who were public-friendly, he would also encourage such
organizers who would shy away from speaking up in Public, to also
try to bridge the communication gap.
- As a leader, his campaigns followed
a great amount of discipline.
- Obama believed in counting upon his
strengths by boosting the same in his way of working while in case
of his weaknesses, he also worked upon tackling the same.
- As a transformational leader, he
had always believed that success arrives when one is indebted to
the contribution of the teammates as well. Hence, with any positive
impact that he would dream to bring in the world environment
platform, he would urge his fellow teammates to come along as
well.
Finally, let us conclude the topic
by describing the mindset of a highly effective leader which would
be as under:
- The mindset is very prominent in
nature such that it motivates the subordinates to undertake an
activity in certain desired way.
- The mindset impacts the various
bonding that the leader has established with the employees as well
as with other stakeholders.
- The mindset helps to relate the
overall Organizational values with that of the subordinates through
effective leaders.
- The mindset can influence people to
work more upon the channels of both revenue earning and production
and sales growth. It urges the employees to direct all their
activities into the overall growth of the business lines.
- It enables the creation of such
employees who stay motivated and work more constructively to obtain
the desired results.
- Being committed is one of the
important mindset of the effective leader who works round the clock
in the Organization to boost the morale of the employees to strive
to achieve the Organizational goals.
- The mindset would also ask for more
accountability so that such leaders work into the Organization with
more dedication to achieve the targets through effective teamwork
and leadership skills.
- The mindset also requires the
leaders to set challenging targets for themselves to achieve as
well so as to be able to set a benchmark or lead by example for the
others.
- The mindset also requires the
leader to be so visionary that the leader can at least anticipate
the threats that the Organization is exposed to in the near future
and to design a work culture to be adaptive to such changes.