“The captain goes down with the ship” is an idiom in Maritime tradition that a sea captain holds ultimate responsibility for both his ship and everyone embarked on it. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

There are a zillion research studies, training, books, trainers, leadership coaches, leadership hiring consultants and experts who specialize in leadership programs.

Leadership (Textbook Meaning)

Leadership is seen as a process by which one individual influences others toward the attainment of group or organizational goals. It is a social influence process, which involves voluntary action on the part of followers and it is always purposeful and goal-oriented. Leadership deals with influence and is not the same as management, which includes planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling.

Ethical Leadership

Ethics have a central role in the practice of leadership, as leadership normally causes interpersonal and moral problems. A leader always has to examine the concepts of right, wrong, good, evil, accountability in every decision made. Ethics is one leadership quality which exposes the practical side of a leader more than their theoretical knowledge. What I have seen and believe strongly is that both disciplines Leadership and Ethics meet in an attempt to establish the connection between the art of leading and ethical values.

Women in Leadership

The gender differences in leadership have triggered long speculative and contradicting approaches of a lot of organizations in the world. I believe that we will have more women leaders than men in future. Also looking at the changes in the world, with the improvement in access to education and the professional experience will result in the increase in the number of women in leading and diverse management positions with unique leadership styles. Every organization has to start finding more or atleast equal number of women leaders to break the social stereotypes.

Charismatic Leadership

Charismatic leadership is the ability to lead others with personal charisma and associated skills that generate devotion among teams in the organization. The most important thing to remember here is that charismatic leaders often bring transformational changes in the environment they operate in. Most of the charismatic leaders have direct connection with their audience (it can be their teams, peers or the organization itself). As per my experience charismatic and inspirational leaders always create an aura of faith in a better future for their team / organization.

Challenges and ever increasing complexity

Even before we start categorizing and put on our scrutinizing glasses on to examine leadership styles and results, we should look at the everyday complex challenges If you are looking for a leader he/she should be able to face challenges head-on. They should possess the uncanny expertise of problem solving. Hhowever effective the leader might be to fight these challenges, the results will start kicking in after 6 months depending on the size of the change in question.

So what is the right answer to Leadership?

Prior to examining leadership directly, it is important to first look at the challenges faced by the organizations and their leaders. It is clear that the challenges are becoming more complex and therefore more difficult to solve. Rarely do you ever pick up a book or an article on leadership in which the question “What is leadership?” that is answered with a firm resolve. Even if you spend a good several hours / classes / sessions in reading / getting trained about what leadership is and what it is not, you wont get a clear idea than you did when you started and it will remain a little fuzzy. That’s probably why there are so many different methods, styles, articles like this one and books about leadership. Hence we can safely say that the debate continues on the perfect Leader and his ‘Ship’.

Conclusion

So when did it start getting really so complicated? If you are in the market to find a potential leader for a position what you will see are all text book solutions. Does this really help an organization / department / team to find the real leader? How do we really identify leadership qualities and find the right leader for the goal of a team / organization?

So if you are a manager or a potential leader think on what would you do differently ?

Ya its is one of my articles on LinkedIn and I thought its good to add it to my blog tooo :).

Until Next one….

Luv,

KC.