subject: Leadership Skills-- [print this page] Leadership Skills-- Leadership Skills--
Leadership has been described as the "process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Definitions more inclusive of followers have also emerged. Alan Keith of Genentech states that, "Leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen." According to Ken "SKC" Ogbonnia, "effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals."
New methods and measurements were developed after these influential reviews that would ultimately reestablish the trait theory as a viable approach to the study of leadership. For example, improvements in researchers' use of the round robin research design methodology allowed researchers to see that individuals can and do emerge as leaders across a variety of situations and tasks. Additionally, during the 1980s statistical advances allowed researchers to conduct meta-analyses, in which they could quantitatively analyze and summarize the findings from a wide array of studies. This advent allowed trait theorists to create a comprehensive and parsimonious picture of previous leadership research rather than rely on the qualitative reviews of the past. Equipped with new methods, leadership researchers revealed the following:
* Individuals can and do emerge as leaders across a variety of situations and tasks
* Significant relationships exist between leadership and such individual traits as:
* Intelligence
* Adjustment
* Extraversion
* Conscientiousness
* Openness to experience
* General self-efficacy
While the trait theory of leadership has certainly regained popularity, its reemergence has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in sophisticated conceptual frameworks.
Leadership development can be a great way of improving the skills of a person in a leadership position. Leadership training tends to involve an enormous range of different activities that work to develop different areas of a person's ability to lead a team. The way in which these abilities are imparted to the people that are seeking development differs greatly. The courses can range from academic classroom lessons that teach about the theories behind leadership to outdoor courses that encourage people to get into the great outdoors and push themselves to achieve something that bring out the leadership qualities within them.
Much of the training that takes place works on the attitude of the person seeking leadership skills. Leadership is very much about having a good positive attitude and making correct businesses decisions. People inevitably value leaders that get results and making the right decisions will therefore eventually lead to an individual becoming respected in a business and staff members are as a result more likely to listen to what they say and follow their subsequent decisions.
For more information on Leadership Skills you can visit http://www.first-level-leadership.com
