My Leadership Model

Entrepreneurship is essence a special kind of leadership. All entrepreneurial opportunities begin with leadership. Leadership is both a skill and process that an individual can learn. A good entrepreneur has to first understand what leadership entails if he or she seeks to build and lead an efficient and effective team in a successful business entity. My personal belief is that leadership basics are the backbone of every successful organization (Dubrin, 2012). Leaders are individual who lead while others follow. It is however important to point out that effective leaders are individuals who are not only able to cooperate with others but also pro-actively willingly offer towards contributing their energies towards causes they stand for.

As an individual, I detest following others. To some this may be considered as a form of rebellion but in essence it is hard for me as an individual to follow orders from other especially when my personal opinion in following such directives is that such directives are ill advised. I usually follow orders in a wholehearted manner if I fell that directives are made on a sound basis. This has been as a result of personal experiences which I have gone through working for a number of organizations. I learned that in an organization, it is best to apply a lot of emotional intelligence when dealing with other workmates, be they peers, junior staff or the senior staff members. In many a times, I noticed that there was a lot of backlash for people who attempted to correct perceived errors in an organization as the adopted organizational culture determines it operates.

In many organizations it is perceived that following stipulated rules is much more important than doing what is right. This makes knowing the right thing to do at the right time quite complex for many staff members thus leading to operational inefficiencies. This is especially the case when an organization is young. For an entrepreneurial leader, aspects such as customer expectations and requirements are critical to understanding how to lead organizational staff and manage organizational resources (Dubrin, 2012). People are naturally inclined to decry being managed and will often do what seems most appropriately to them without taking into consideration the effects their actions can have on an organization.

Basic model of leadership

What leaders expect

Looking at the above leadership model, it is most appropriate to explain it from the ground up. Every successful leader’s core interest is to lead a winning team with winning outcomes. From an entrepreneur’s perspective, a successful leader ultimately intends to win an increasingly significant market share over which his or her organization holds. A successful leader in this regard will also consider better profits or greater operating efficiency as win for the organization he or she leads (Fong & Snape, 2014).

Leaders: can they win alone?

A leader can only realize exceptional entrepreneurship outcomes if he or she leads an exceptional team of individuals who also have the desire to make an organization win. To achieve success, an organization’s leader will have to have individuals under him or her with the willingness to cooperate towards realizing their leader’s vision (Komives & Wagner, 2012). A leader can realize this either through coercion, material exchange or through the free will of his or her followers. In the past, coercion has been favored as the best possible means with which to get organizational staff to cooperate. Coercion is ineffective in the long run as it entails constant monitoring. Material exchange, on t other hand is also a popular means with which to get organizational members to cooperate. It entails offering an individual some material object in return for his or her services.

This is also ineffective means with which to seek staff cooperation as there is no guarantee a leader can get the level of cooperation he or she desires. Only through willing cooperation (morale) can effective and efficient organizational outcomes be achieved.  Among team members, when the level of morale is at its highest, they cooperate since they feel that they are obligated to do so for the betterment of the team effort (Fong & Snape, 2014). Thus in successful organizations, it is easy to see that members are both highly motivated and highly committed. As such, members in a successful organization can be aptly referred to as co-operators.

The key role of co-operators in a successful organization

Leaders thrive on co-operators. In the instance that the leader tends by human error to make a wrong turn, cooperators are those members of staff who will boldly grab their leader by the arm and warn him or her of an impending danger (Komives & Wagner, 2012). As such, leaders depend on members of staff regardless of the organizational structure and more so depend on their feedback and unwavering cooperation so as to be effective leaders.

Organizations need members who will be more than followers to procedures set by management. Organizations require co-operators who proactively contribute towards the realization of organizational goals.

Developing Co-Operators

A successful leader is passionate and enthusiastic about his or her vision. Passion drives effective leaders. It is a leader’s source of energy, persistence and perseverance required for organizational success (Fong & Snape, 2014). It is important to note that passion is as contagious to other organizational members as the lack of it. A leader has to be able to sell his or her vision to co-operators as it is common to find that members of staff cannot become co-operators if they fail to take heed of the essence of a vision as envisaged by their leader.

Leadership basics

As shown in the figure above, professional leadership and personal leadership are critical to an enduring leadership. Professional Leadership entails formal leadership that is setting a vision as well as a mission for an organization. It also entails the formulation of a process towards the achievement of organizational goals, aligning procedures and processes, staff members and infrastructure, in an effort to realize organizational goals (Komives & Wagner, 2012). By providing an organizational direction, leaders instill in staff members a common sense of purpose thus their co-operation.

Professional leaders also have institute systematic processes towards the attainment of organizational goals (Komives & Wagner, 2012). Coordination is also a role played by professional leaders and involves pooling together of all essential elements key to the effective and efficient running of organizational processes. Coordination entails strategically aligning an organization, its resources as well as its members. Coordination is therefore a key component towards realizing organizational goals.

Personal Leadership

Personal leadership relates to the personal behavioral characteristics of leaders during the performance of the responsibilities as professional leaders. It can also be considered as people’s perspective on a given leadership process (Komives & Wagner, 2012). It is considered as the most influential in the development of cooperators. Leaders must therefore realize that they hold positions which call for a high degree of interdependency and thus have bear the ability construct effective relationships on an internal and external level. Personal leadership essentially begins with building relationships.

References

Dubrin, A. (2012). Leadership: Research findings, practice, and skills. Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Fong, K. H., & Snape, E. (2014). Empowering Leadership, Psychological Empowerment and Employee Outcomes: Testing a Multi‐level Mediating Model. British Journal of Management.

Komives, S. R., & Wagner, W. (2012). Leadership for a better world: Understanding the social change model of leadership development. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.