Definition of Leadership

Discuss about the Journal of Educational Administration and Policy.

Leadership is the activity of leading a group of individuals and leadership process is involved in setting up the clear vision along with sharing the vision to the group members. The group members need to follow the leader willingly and leaders need to provide the information, method and knowledge to make understand the vision of the fellow members. In case of my opinion, I have been influenced by my private tutor whom I took tuition in my childhood. That person used to teach us about to lead everything from the forefront. I love to watch movies those contain something leadership ideas. I gather my knowledge of leadership from the motivational videos and movies also. Leadership experience is associated with the high-performance environment where the leaders are surrounded by peers who instinctively know what to do (Galston, 2014). The leaders must know about turnaround operations and the leaders should have the right mindset to lead to change and manage the crisis. The leadership experience comes from unleashing the passion pursuits by experiencing being a potent pioneer. According to Caruso, Fleming & Spector (2014), leaders can show the leadership skill through taking the classified projects that can challenge the moral compass and integrity.

According to me, I love to take the decision after discussing with my peers and fellows. My leadership style is more of democratic leadership as I like to participate in the thought process of the fellow members of the team. In my early college life, we used to organise small departmental function. I used to take the lead to organise the function where I always took the decision from all rather than forcing all to listen to only my perspective. In addition, in order to be a leader, it is important to know and utilise the strengths and be passionate about what an individual like to do. I like to share my vision with the fellow members through discussion and I want to serve as role model. I will set the definitive goals for myself and I will follow the concrete action plan to maintain the positive attitude. My communication skill is good and I want to sharpen the communication skill so that I can share my vision with the fellow members.

Moreover, I am a calculative risk taker, if my risks can take me higher and reach me desired position; I am willing to take the risks. According to Hurley & Barron (2018), risks are always associated with any venture and taking the risks empowers an individual to establish new limits and the mind. I have my set of comfort and boundaries where I like to stay when I take risks, I eradicate the thinking process. In addition, I have my own set of principles and I cannot break certain principles in any circumstances. I cannot be dishonest and I will always be loyal towards my team members. I cannot break the fairness of the system with which I am associated. The team members of my team can trust me as I am always a trustworthy person. Significant decisions in life are challenging to make and the decision-making process is complicated. I take the decision from my intuition as sometimes I don’t have any pieces of evidence to take the further decision. Before taking any decision, I slow down my thought process and I aim at integrity. I observe that my intuition is helpful and making a hard decision make my stress at the certain point in time.

Leadership Traits and Methods

As a leader, I set the objectives of the team individually. It is the vision that a leader needs to have. On the other side, I always take the decisions of an action plan to reach towards the objectives discussing with my fellow team members. Democratic leadership style provides satisfaction to the team members and it encourages creative solutions from the team members and it facilitates the innovation (McCleskey, 2014).

Biblical knowledge stated that leadership starts with the person (Clinton, 2017). I think a leader is an individual with a magnet in his heart and compass in his head. My religion teaches me that leaders always influence and develop the group of people and leaders always have the supernatural power to accomplish the purpose for the greater good. According to my perspective, leaders need to understand themselves and this will be better for the group for the mission of the group will be served by this. Therefore, I take the decision sometimes intuitively for the betterment of the group. Effective leadership happens when the team members love, appreciate, admire and accept the leader (Williams, 2017). In case my, leadership beliefs are challenged by some of my team members; I will discuss with my team members. I will comprehend my mistakes and I will also judge my decision according to their perspectives.

My leadership style matches the characteristics of democratic leadership as I always like to take the decisions after discussing with my fellow members. I cannot break my certain principles for the sake of leadership and I somehow believe in emotional intelligence in leadership. I always try to show sympathy towards my team members and my friends and want to share the pain with them.

I want to establish the relational dynamics with my group and I want to invest my time to my team members so that the team members can trust me. In my leadership, democratic leadership and emotional intelligence concepts are matched with my leadership. The democratic leadership is characterised by the distribution of responsibility, empowering the team members and aiding group decision-making process.

I want to follow the leadership style where the team members can work under the pressure and deadline. I want to do my leadership activities in order to promote collaboration under pressure. I am basically principle-based leader and in the end, my actions and words should be synonymous. I believe in team working that makes the team great. I want that my team members must be great team players and they believe that only together, they can create results. I expect my team members to be a learner and I want to encourage everyone to aspire for the strengths in work. According to my thinking, the character is the set of moral qualities where each person must be distinguished like courage, humility, honesty and perseverance.

Leadership Styles

Today’s management believes in emotional intelligence where the leaders must be self-aware to focus on the strengths and weaknesses of themselves. The leaders must show the compassion and the leaders must possess the emotional intelligence. The leaders need to show the effective communication with the employees of the organisation. The leaders need to show the respect to the employees and leaders should treat with respect to the employees (Goleman, 2017). However, in recent time, the leaders are facing the issue of lack of emotional intelligence in their leadership. As today’s leaders cannot acknowledge the people’s feelings. I did my internship in Fonterra Australia organisation in Mount Waverly. There, I observed the issue of lack of emotional intelligence in the leader of my team. The leader of my team did not understand how the emotional impact others and the leader did not recognise the role played in creating difficult circumstances. As stated by Dinh et al., (2014), action-oriented and assertive leaders don’t ignore the feelings of the people and they try to fix the issue. The leaders in recent time do not show the care and the leaders sometimes do not appreciate the team members. In this regard, employees observe the leaders’ emotion like a hawk. During the internship, I observed that the technique of showing the emotion of the leader was not extremely effective and it required the awareness or the emotion. The ability to tune with one’s emotion and the leaders must have a sound awareness of the team members’ emotion as well. Therefore, the act of knowing, responding and understanding the emotion and overcoming the stress is associated with the emotional intelligence. 

Emotional intelligence includes five principles and the leaders need to follow the components. Daniel Goleman stated about the emotional intelligence and it starts with self-awareness. The leaders can recognise and make out own motivations and moods and they must effect on others. Emotional maturity shows confidence, sense of humour and awareness of the impression. Self-regulation controls the impulses and emotional maturity starts with conscientious and adaptable. The third principle is about the internal motivation where emotional maturity shows as commitment and initiative to complete the work and perseverance in the time of adversity. The fourth principle of emotional intelligence is empathy where the leaders need to show self-awareness. Showing of empathy can be two types, perceptive and proactive (Meuser et al., 2016). The last principle of social skills is the leaders need to communicate, influence and solve the conflict management. The leaders need to identify the social cues in order to set up the common ground and build networks.

During my internship, my perspective told that each one of us should develop emotional intelligence skills and it is not empathising, understand and negotiate. The leaders have to face the issue of management and leaders are also answerable for their behaviour and decisions. However, the success of the leaders depends on the people’s signals and reaction appropriately on them. Therefore, the leader in my Fonterra Australia first needed to recognise the emotions of the leaders. These skills must allow the leaders to show the multiple emotions to show the mood swings about different points of views. The leaders need to understand the emotions and this process is associated with related chains. Managing the emotions are associated with the ability to solve the issues of the employees.

Reference List

Caruso, D.R., Fleming, K. & Spector, E.D., (2014). Emotional intelligence and leadership. In Conceptions of Leadership, 93-110.

Clinton, J.R., (2017). The making of a leader: Recognizing the lessons and stages of leadership development. Two Words Publishing, LLC.

Dinh, J.E., Lord, R.G., Gardner, W.L., Meuser, J.D., Liden, R.C. & Hu, J., (2014). Leadership theory and research in the new millennium: Current theoretical trends and changing perspectives. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(1), 36-62.

Galston, W.A., (2014). Populist resentment, elitist arrogance: Two challenges to good democratic leadership. Good Democratic Leadership: On Prudence and Judgment in Modern Democracies, 4(3), 15-31.

Genovese, M., (2017). The Presidential Dilemma: Revisiting Democratic Leadership in the American System. Abingdon: Routledge.

Goleman, D., (2017). Leadership That Gets Results (Harvard Business Review Classics). Harvard Business Press.

Hurley, J. & Barron, D., (2018). Emotional intelligence and leadership. In Emotional Intelligence in Health and Social Care,  95-108.

McCleskey, J., (2014). Emotional intelligence and leadership: A review of the progress, controversy, and criticism. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 22(1), 76-93.

Meuser, J.D., Gardner, W.L., Dinh, J.E., Hu, J., Liden, R.C. & Lord, R.G., (2016). A network analysis of leadership theory: The infancy of integration. Journal of Management, 42(5), 1374-1403.

Williams, R., (2017). Leadership for school reform: Do principal decision-making styles reflect a collaborative approach?. Canadian Journal of Educational Administration and Policy, (53), 23-25.