Leadership Theory - Purpose and Goals of Leadership

Purpose and Goals of Leadership

After completing the course in Leadership in Organizations, my opinion about the duties of a leader has changed. Earlier I felt the purpose of a leader was to motivate the followers to work towards achieving a common goal. But after understanding the various theories that have been proposed over the years about leadership, I now believe that a leadership role is not only confined to achieving a common goal of the group but also involves the responsibility of linking the individual goal of a follower to the common goal. The leader should also focus on individual goals of a follower so that they remain motivated to work towards a common purpose. Much of this can be done by being a coach to them in not just technical tasks but also in management work. But the coaching should be done in a direction that can benefit the organization by making the follower a valuable resource within the organization. This does not mean that the leader must micromanage the employees but instead be available for coaching when obstacles come in the way of achieving personal or a common goal. In one of the articles that I had read on LinkedIn about employees quitting the companies, I came to know that in majority cases an employee quits the boss, not the company. Hence, leaders should play an important role in making employees feel valuable and assign them tasks that can challenge them to grow personally and professionally. When only a follower feels accomplished in a task, they remain motivated to work on the task. The task should be performed for achieving the vision of the leader. Hence, linking the vision of a leader with the growth of a follower should be the goal of a leader. As Dale Carnegie stated, "People work for money but go the extra mile for recognition, praise, and rewards." It is important for a leader to not only motivate followers to accomplish a task but also praise those accomplishment, so they feel they are growing with the organization. Hence, the purpose and goal of a leader should lie not only in achieving the credo of the organization but also of the individual followers.

Roles and Responsibilities of Effective Leadership

The roles and responsibilities of an effective leader should be Integrating and reconciling the personal goals with organizational goals. This may involve duties of mentoring, coaching, delegating, evaluating, norming etc.  I believe all this is only possible if there is shared values, shared objectives and shared activities within an organization. Also, whenever an individual goal is linked to the company goal, the performance of a follower enhances. As an example: if a company plans to sell a product and needs a group of people to work on the sales presentation, the best delivery of the presentation can happen not only because of a shared activity between all team members but also because of the shared objective of selling the product so that each member could be rewarded for being a part of a successful project. The other responsibility of an effective leader is to reward accomplishments and encourage feedback. Such kind of behavior not only motivates the employees to work harder towards achieving the goal but also creates a system which is fair for everyone. A place where fairness is rewarded also plays an important role in removing favoritism that can affect the overall morale of a follower. In other aspects, a leader has the responsibility to lead by an example. A leader should follow practices and values that he or she expects to see in the followers. Majority of the leaders fail to do so and hence are not successful as they are unable to create a team that wants to share the same journey to achieve a goal. Lastly, the leader has the responsibility of being accountable for the decision he takes or influences others to take. A leader who steps back at the time of crisis is not a true leader as it is the responsibility of a leader to take criticism on behalf of the team even if leads to a personal loss. As an analogy, a leader should act as an armor for the soldiers and withstand the worst of the defeat if it may arise.