Read the title of the text and decide which area of business education it belongs to.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 367.

Energetic conscientious irritable creative self-confident moody brave trusting

Decisive charismatic motivating ruthless open passionate modest balanced dominant

Which personal qualities below will you expect to find in a leader?

Leading People and Organisations

Leadership and management are inextricably linked. Highly successful organisations need great leaders and managers at all levels, from team leader to the CEO. Equally, being an effective leader in the 21st Century also means having the skills and aptitude to be an effective manager. But, while leadership and management are closely connected - both are about achieving results through others - there are important differences:

· Managers get things done. They set the operational direction, and facilitate and organise resources in order to optimise the performance of people, allowing them to carry out tasks and achieve goals efficiently and effectively. They create the space that allows people to collaborate together; they provide the clarity and accountability that enable teams to meet their objectives.

· Leaders look at the horizon, set long range goals, and provide strategic direction and context, outlining their vision and objectives. Great leaders help build an organization's human capital, inspiring people to follow them and motivating individuals to take concerted action.

Thus, leadership may be defined as the act of influencing others to work toward a goal. Leaders exist at all levels of an organization. The important questions that have attracted scholarly attention in the past several decades are: what distinguishes people who are perceived as leaders from others, and what makes leaders effective.

The earliest approach to the study of leadership sought to identify a set of traits that distinguished leaders from nonleaders. General mental ability, which is often called IQ in everyday language, has been related to a person's emerging as a leader within a group. In addition to having high IQ, effective leaders tend to have high level of emotional intelligence (EQ). People with high EQ demonstrate a high level of self-awareness, motivation, empathy, and social skills.

Extraversion is strongly related to leadership. Extraverts are sociable, assertive, and energetic people. They enjoy interacting with others in their environment and demonstrate self-confidence. Because they are both dominant and sociable in their environment, they often emerge as leaders in a wide variety of situations. Very few introverts can be found in leadership positions.

Self-esteem is an important aspect of one's personality. The degree to which people are at peace with themselves and have an overall positive assessment of their self-worth and capabilities seems to be relevant to whether they will be viewed as a leader. Leaders with high self-esteem support their subordinates more, and when punishment needs to be administered, they punish more effectively.

There are also some traits that are negatively related to emerging as a leader and being successful as a leader. For example, agreeable people who are modest, good natured, and avoid conflict are less likely to be perceived as leaders. However, the main limitation of the trait approach was that it ignored the situation in which leadership occurred. Therefore, it is more useful to specify the conditions under which different traits are needed.