Effective Leadership as a Source of Competitive Business Advantage

Leadership is imperative for molding a group of people into a team, shaping them into a force that serves as a competitive business advantage. Leaders know how to make people function in a collaborative fashion, and how to motivate them to excel their performance. Leaders also know how to balance the individual team member’s quest with the goal of producing synergy - an outcome that exceeds the sum of individual inputs. Leaders require that their team members forego the quest for personal best in concert with the team effort.

Text 4 Role, Task, Responsibility, and Source of Power of a Leader

· The role of a leader is to create followers.

· The task of a leader is to bring about constructive and necessary change.

· The responsibility of a leader is to bring about the change in a way that is responsive to the true and long-term needs of all stakeholders.

· The greatest source of power available to a leader is the trust that derives from faithfully serving followers.

Learning to Lead

Effective leaders recognize that what they know is very little in comparison to what they still need to learn. To be more proficient in pursuing and achieving objectives, you should be open to new ideas, insights, and revelations that can lead to better ways to accomplishing goals. This continuous learning process can be exercised, in particular, through engaging yourself in a constant dialogue with your peers, advisers, consultants, team members, suppliers, customers, and competitors.

Leading others is not simply a matter of style, or following some how-to guides or recipes. Ineffectiveness of leaders seldom results from a lack of know-how or how-to, nor is it typically due to inadequate managerial skills. Leadership is even not about creating a great vision. It is about creating conditions under which all your followers can perform independently and effectively toward a common objective.

James O’Tool, a noted management theorist proposes a new vision of leadership in the business world - a values-based leadership that is not only fair and just, but also highly effective in today’s complex organizations. It is based on:

· your ideas and values;

· your understanding of the differing and conflicting needs of your followers;

· your ability to energize followers to pursue a better goal that they had thought possible;

· your skills in creating a values-based umbrella large enough to accommodate the various interests of followers, but focused enough to direct all their energies in pursuit of a common good.

Building Better Leaders through Attributes

Leadership attributes are the inner or personal qualities that constitute effective leadership. These attributes include a large array of characteristics such as values, character, motives, habits, traits, motives, style, behaviors, and skills.