Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Leadership Exercise 1.1 and 1.3
According to Nahavandi (2014), good leadership focuses on the abilities and characteristics of a leader to influence the behavior and actions of others. Good leaders must have strong human skills in order for them to interact and understand the people they lead. Good leaders must also have excellent communication skills so that they can interact and influence individuals or groups. In addition, good leaders should be good planners to set effective goals. Fourthly, good leaders must have personal traits such as honesty so that they can win the trust of their follower for them to impart their influence (Nahavandi, 2014). Additionally, good leaders should be able to manage change so as to lead their followers to the future. Therefore, good leaders should be charismatic and transformational in their influence over individuals or groups.
From a discussion with group members, several images of who a leader emerges, but there is one common focal point all the diversities. The common point is that a leader should have the ability to influence individuals and groups by possessing characteristics that facilitate this function. All the traits listed circle around the facilitation of leadership by making a leader more influential and human in his or her art of leading.
However, the personal leadership styles of different people seem to influence their image of a leader. This is because different people adopt different styles based on the organizational culture and structure. This is because different people are influenced by the past leaders in an organizational setting. What this highlights is the potential shortcomings of each of the images that are generated by different people in regard to the definition of a leader. These limitations are based on the common limitation of the influence of personal biases on the description of who is a leader.
Reference
Nahavandi, A. (2014). The Art and Science of Leadership, Seventh Edition. Upper Saddle River, New York: Pearson Prentice Hall