Leading Is Not Just About Controlling
How do we define a leader? Does this correspond to a person who leads an organization or rather a manager of a work team? Are there any attributes that indicate a person is a leader?
From a professional point of view and at the level of organizations, certain personal, behavioral and position-related characteristics in the company have been specified to identify a leader. Are leaders born leaders or do they become leaders?
If we evoke leadership as the set of personal attributes, we could understand that a leader is born a leader. These would then be people who know how to guide and lead a group, organize, solve problems that arise and that others identify as the leader.
If we refer to a leader for the position he occupies, we should say that a leader becomes a leader. This would mean that he changes over time and experiences, over the positions he occupies, depending on the relationship he establishes with employees and the way he imposes direction and coordination. In this case, personal characteristics would therefore not be decisive and only professional characteristics would be important.
On the other hand, when we refer to a good leader for his behavior, we might be focusing on the aspects that catch his attention from a behavioral point of view. Is this person acting out of productivity for the company or for the development of social relations at work? According to the orientation of the behavior, we could therefore identify a leader according to the needs that he must satisfy.
Characteristics of a good leader
Beyond what we have commented, a good leader is a charismatic person who inspires and is followed by others. For this reason, a person who leads is not necessarily a leader. Although some personal characteristics can promote leadership, leading is a two-way process that refers to the influencing agent and the influenced agent ( Katz and Kahn ).
To lead, it is necessary that a person has the right characteristics to deal with individuals such as empathy, good communication, an ability to motivate or also favorable characteristics at the professional level. For example, knowing how to work in a group, being creative in solving problems, clarifying goals and working in different directions to achieve them.
A person may be born with facilities for leading others, but if they wish to lead appropriately, they will need to hone these facilities and develop others that will enable them to complement their leadership role. Of course, we must not forget the fact that leading requires the creation and maintenance of a good general atmosphere in which everyone is free to choose who their leader is. So leadership should not be ignored, you have to take care of it and earn it every day.
Leading requires much more than just wielding power
As we see, being a good leader requires much more than the ability to lead and guide. To lead is to influence others , to convince them to do what we propose and to go to the end. It is also allowing them to enjoy their work and to engage in their missions efficiently and effectively.
A leader is one who knows how to integrate all the attributes and who makes each member of his team grow. A leader knows his work team well, he knows each other’s strengths and knows where to improve. He identifies when he needs to be harder or when he can delegate his work to focus on employee relations.
Thus, leading is not just a matter of leading. It is planting the seed in a work team in order to give it movement. Leading is motivating and offering new points of view, it is taking risks and believing in those who believe in you. Leading is becoming the singing voice knowing that those who make you great are those who support you from the bottom.
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