How to be a Good Leader – What makes Leadership Effective?

Leadership is a significant aspect of management. In order to ensure organizational success, co-operation from subordinates as well as greater efficiency, it is important for a manager to be a great, effective and a true leader. An effective and true leader is one who does not put himself before others. He/She is very humble, deferential and altruistic.

The required aspects of effective leadership are as follows:

• Motivation
• Commitment
• Self-sacrifice
• Honesty
• Determination
• Resourcefulness
• Daring
• Knowledge
• Good communication skills
• Passion
• Responsibility
• Judgement

Leadership is boosting an individual’s performance to a greater benchmark, the developing of an individual’s personality crossing its standard boundaries. It is a combo of mindframes, traits, skills, and knowledge. Leadership means adhering to the following principles:

• Respect your followers.
• Acknowledge the followers efforts if there is success, and do not blame them for any failure.
• Encourage participation of all in decision-making.
• Make the goals clear to all.
• Support the followers in accomplishing the objectives and in reaching their potential.
• Discover efficient and economical ways of performing the task.
• Ensure proper and effective communication with the followers. There should be no place for misunderstanding and misinterpretations.
• Be a trainer and not an opponent/critic.

An effective leader is one who meets the job requirements, team requirements as well as individual requirements. While concentrating on the job, a leader would synchronize the departmental goals with the organizational goals.

An effective leader will ensure that the employees have the required skills and competencies for performing the job effectively and efficiently.

He/She would provide the employees the essential resources for performing the job such as time, knowledge and equipment. He/She would ensure that employees have no difficulty in performing the tasks assigned to them. And finally, an effective leader would review progress and give the employees a feedback of their performance.

When a leader is focusing on people, he must be compassionate and empathic. He/She should listen to the employees with understanding. He/She must respect their views and ideas. He/She must train and coach them and make an effort to eliminate unnecessary obstacles from the employees’ work responsibilities.

Finally, when an effective leader focuses on team, he should coordinate team’s efforts. He/She must celebrate team’s success. He/She should review and promote friendly and social environment. He/She should develop a team spirit and achievement sense among the employees as a team.