Leadership

Lashun Pollard

Leadership

Bethel University

MOD 340 Leadership

Angelo Lamar

September 25, 2014

Leadership

What is a leader? What motivates a person to lead? Is it power, achievement, and affiliation or is it a culmination of the three? According to Kevin Kruse (2014), Douglas MacArthur’s famous leadership quote describes, “A true leader as one who has the confidence to stand alone (power), the courage to make tough decisions (achievement), and the compassion to listen to the needs of others (affiliation). He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent”. Leadership and the responsibilities there of brings awareness to ever changing organizational dynamics as it relates to interacting with followers and in various situations presented to reach organizational goals. Leadership development is a process, which involves a clear understanding of the three major components of leadership norms, which are the leader, the follower, and the situation (Bethel, 2011).

A leader’s first responsibility is to assess the overall functionality of the organization including himself in order to determine the leadership style required to function in the given environment. The assessment gives an overview of the organization’s structure and the people. It enables a leader’s ability to look at different options as to restructuring the organization to fit the needs of current situations, thereby formulating an empowered workplace and team (Bethel, 2011).

An example of assessing the functionality of an organization would be to examine the organizational chart to see who is responsible for what function within the organization. From inception, organizations have some form of structure that is in place that generates operational flow. The people within the organization govern themselves according to that structure. However, if the structure places barriers that hinder the operational flow, then the leader...