Leadership Case

Introduction

To be successful in managing a country, a society or any organization, leadership is one of the important factors to be considered. Ancient Chinese emperor, Qin Shi Huang, who unified China, Singapore former prime minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who engineer Singapore from a developing country to a metropolitan city and religious leader like Mother Teresa who is able to influence a huge audience. These are some example of the successful leaders.

As mentioned by Ralph Stogdill (1950, p.3), leadership is the process of influencing in order to achieve goals and objectives. There are three components in his definition. It involved influencing the behavior of others, and at social level, usually the subordinates or followers are the one to be influenced and lastly, he identified a standard for successful leadership (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007).

Leadership versus Management

According to John P. Kotter (1990), he has identified the differences between the leadership and the management functions. He mentioned that a leader usually work by motivating others, communicating, and influencing their subordinates or followers to overcome obstacles. Manager, on the other hand, deals with planning and budgeting, developing procedure and policies and also check and balance of the result against the action plans.

Leader Classification

In general, leadership styles can be classified in different ways. Mosley, et al (1996, p.395) state that it can be done in two ways. The first method would be analyzing how the leader completes the job. It can be task-oriented or people-oriented. The second method is to examine the approaches used by the leaders, which included, autocratic, democratic and laissez-faire. The last approach refers having a great tolerant and allows the followers to handle issues on their own ways.

Leadership styles may be influenced by individual’s personality. Personality can be described as “The psychological qualities that influence an individual’s characteristic behavior patterns, in a stable and distinctive manner” (Huczynski & Buchanan, 2007). People who are more easy-going may adopt the laissez-faire approach. Others who want to be in control will chose the autocratic approach as most of the time, decision will be made by them. In some case, leadership style may be dictated by the situation. For example, in the army camp, where high disciple is required, leader usually adopts autocratic style.

Ethic in leadership is critical. Mosley, et al (1996, p.392) points out that, due to the ability to influence, if decision making is not ethical, the outcome will be quite negative. The former Chief Executive Officer of National Kidney Foundation, Mr. T.T.Durai was once a highly respected figure as he leaded the organization to an extremely successful fundraising