It is important and precise that there is a person who has the qualities and characteristics necessary to channel and motivate other people to achieve all the objectives proposed by an organization. This manager must inspire his followers so that, under his command, people are willing to collaborate and carry out all activities. That person is the leader, so we will explore the Leadership Concept and the characteristics of those in charge of leading the organization.
Leadership is the subject of this unit, which contains the information necessary to analyze the essential aspects of the leader. With the aim of deepening these characteristics, the style that the leader should use to motivate his people is studied.
Among the topics to be addressed are the concept, characteristics, classification, and styles of motivation and leadership. It is important to mention that the typology is one of the most extensive, from various points of view, so that we will have the opportunity to enrich our knowledge regarding the types of leaders that exist.
CONCEPT AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LEADER
First we will quickly analyze the conceptualization that defines these leaders:
- The leader is, in the organization, the individual who develops skills and teams: encourages, teaches, listens and facilitates the execution of all the people under his command and makes his people become champions. The leader is the person responsible for the life and destiny of his people, he has the responsibility to promote how to ask for high performance from his followers. Leader is a person who acts as guide or leader of a group.
According to the above, the leader is that person, whose qualities allow him to influence others, to carry out tasks or activities. Characteristics are qualities that distinguish one person from another. Leaders have or possess well-defined and specific qualities.
The way in which a leader can act according to his powers, can be reflected in the following powers:
Leader Competencies
It is important to mention that leaders are best understood not by their characteristics, but by the relationship they have with their followers.
LEADERS CLASSIFICATION
Currently there are various classifications that describe this individual. The leader by himself is unique because he has defined characteristics, but they are studied in a classified way by the way they exercise their authority, work or behave.
According to the obtaining of the power they exercise, the leaders are divided into
- Formal. The term describes that person who is selected by the organization itself, respecting its statutes. Informal. The word describes a person who emerges from a group or who makes himself known without going through organized procedures.
Due to the relationship that exists between leaders and their followers, the most common classification presents the following possibilities:
- Authoritarian leader. He is the only one who makes decisions in a company and does not communicate anything to his subordinates, he is the one who has the last word. Democratic leader. In making a decision, take into account the opinion of the employees. Liberal leader. He leaves power in the hands of his followers; You have a lot of freedom to work and make decisions. Your group uses the leader's support only if they need it.
- Transactional. Provides resources to employees and these in turn; grant recognition and work; that is to say; there is an exchange. Transformational. He is the one who has the capacity to transform attitudes, beliefs and values of the people who work with him. He has a strong desire for change and knows how to get his staff excited about pursuing their own dreams.
In cyberspace there are opinion leaders who enjoy prestige and popularity; therefore they exert influence on their followers. These people include:
- The Celebrity The Trend Maker The Expert The Thought Leader The Network Builder The Activist
Cyril Levicki, in his book The Gene of Leadership; offers the following classification:
- Charismatic leader. He is the person who has talent and the ability to be credible, to be followed by others. With superior intelligence. They are generally leaders who intimidate people, due to their high IQ; some of them know how to handle this particularity and combine it with their emotional intelligence. This skill is very useful when they have to spend a lot of time explaining to people what they want, since others do not have the same capacity for concentration and analysis. Pastor. He is someone gentle; understands others, cares for them with care and patience. These qualities make him a very dear person. Army general. He is a disciplined individual, who cares about being an example to others and wants them to obey his orders without question. Leader of royalty. Due to his aristocratic origin, he is a person who was born to lead. He has great intuition, he knows exactly what to do in any situation. Natural. This describes those individuals who are very comfortable in a leadership position, as if they have too much experience in the position. From their attitude, it seems that they were born to be leaders.
According to their orientation and interest, there are two types of leaders:
- Focused on the task or production. People oriented.
The classification provided by Juan José Huerta and Gerardo Rodríguez, in their book Development of managerial skills, is as follows:
- Destroying leader. He is egotistical, authoritarian, aggressive and without feelings; it is very easy for her to take advantage of others. Desidious. He is the person who leaves everything for later and always finds reasons to be inactive. Cautious. He always lives by applying the same methods and procedures, because he is sure that success is repeated. This certainty makes him unaware of the present. Preparer. He is the leader who always plans what he is going to accomplish, so he learns from others and always tries to increase his knowledge towards progress. Winner. All of your business relationships are successful; people are proud to work with him, since he applies appropriate strategies to the reality in which he lives, communicates and organizes them.
It is also important to analyze the humanistic aspect of leaders; Below is a categorization according to self-esteem, which inclusion, by control or by openness. It is important to read the following dimensions, related to the behaviors of a leader, which are due to his desire to belong or not to a group, to influence others and to know how to express himself.
Inclusion
This is classified as the relationship-oriented dimension that the leader wants to maintain, who usually belongs to a group because someone else included him or vice versa: it is the leader who chooses the people he wants to integrate into his group. It can be said that it is the leader, it is by inclusion.
Control
Second dimension that refers to influence, power and authority. A person has the freedom to make decisions, create new things or reject those that are uninteresting, but can also influence others or be influenced, it all depends on their level of control. It is clear that the dominant part in this leader will be the one that seeks to exert more influence over others.
Opening
It is the last dimension that relates to the degree to which the leader can show himself to his followers. The level at which the leader shows himself to others varies: he can be very open or closed when expressing himself to others.
THE LEADERSHIP AND MOTIVATIONAL STYLE
In psychology and philosophy, motivation is the series of stimuli that move the person to carry out certain actions and to persist in them for their culmination.
In simpler words, motivation is the set of strength, desires and dreams that a person has and that make it possible to work until they are carried out.
A leader must be a good motivator and to influence others he must know the needs of other people. In general, to motivate, three positions are adopted that affirm: "the man is bad", "the man is neutral" and "the man is good", but a leader cannot be motivating according to these expressions, he must be more open and flexible. Leaders generally must consider three important factors:
- Recognition. With this motivational means, the leader surprisingly delivers a present to his best employee, thus recognizing how important that person is to him. Participation. In this case, the leader allows employees to get physically and mentally involved; that is to say; through manual work or the contribution of new ideas to improve processes, procedures, products and services. Reply. Every human being needs to be listened to, so the leader must give feedback to all his communication. This motivational aspect costs nothing and is very important for people. As an example it is possible to mention: permission to leave for a moment, be late, the possibility of changing shifts, the opportunity to study, leave earlier and intervene in a project, even if the employee does not belong to that area.
Some studies argue that there are at least two styles of motivation:
- People motivated by homework. People motivated by the ego.
One style always prevails over another, but a single individual can use both in different circumstances. With these styles they catalog their level of success or failure.
In a motivational process, you should always consider elements such as the interpretation of success as overcoming your own goals, the setting of personal and real goals; the knowledge of one's own limits and attention to anxiety and stress, in addition to reinforcing self-confidence and self-efficiency.
On the other hand, there are leadership styles that leaders use to motivate and use them at the appropriate times. These styles are as follows:
Different styles of Leadership
In conclusion, a leader stays with the style that best suits him, according to the motivation that prevails in him. The modality must be coordinated with the pressure exerted by the same company or medium in which it operates.
Effective leaders know how to use each style at the right time, since combinations can also exist.
DECISION MAKING
The decision implies a way to achieve a specific and desired purpose, according to what in more administrative terms is known as planning. There are two types of decisions:
- a) Scheduled or structured: Basically they are routine and are constantly repeated. An example is the complaints and suggestions mailbox in any business. The monitoring of this communication between the client and the company is usually the same way all the time. b) Unscheduled or unstructured: They focus more on situations that are not routine, that are novel or truly complex. In this case, there is no specific procedure to solve certain problems whose solution is almost totally unknown. For example, in teleconferences sometimes carried out by some managers with their closest collaborators to reduce certain operating costs, it may happen that at the time of transmission, there is a system failure and that the meeting or assembly is delayed.
To make decisions, a certain rational process or procedure must be followed, which is detailed below:
- a) Identify and define the problem. Making a decision implies that there is a problem, and sometimes the most difficult thing is, precisely, the analysis and understanding of it. Many times a correct diagnosis of the problem is not made, which can result in it being mistaken for a symptom. It may be that an organization claims that its problem is falling sales, when it comes to a consequence caused by the low morale of human resources. It is there, in that area, where you have to define the problem. b) Establish priorities.It is a matter of ordering the problems to be solved according to the criteria for this. In the event of having very complex situations, they must be resolved immediately, because the more difficult, the greater the consequences for the company. c) Consider causes. Finding the causes of the problem helps to define it better. Organizations have great challenges regarding this issue, since the larger it is, the more difficult it is to determine the causes. As an example, it can happen that in a bank many people withdraw their money and when the manager asks customers about the reason, they reply that the tellers or executives are not very friendly. Finding similar initiatives helps to resolve the situation. d) Develop possible solutions.This is the previous step to decision making and it is very important to carry it out. During this step, possible alternative solutions should be drawn up as a list. e) Evaluate the solutions. It can be carried out quantitatively or qualitatively; that is to say; You can weigh each of the solutions or simply analyze advantages and disadvantages. f) Select. It is the moment of the election. If what is qualified in the previous stage is taken into account, it is important to remember that any decision is a means to an end, so the selection of a single alternative should not be done in isolation, but rather be a dynamic process so as not to make mistakes.
As a final point to this procedure, the solution taken must be implemented and it must be followed up to ensure positive results.
This decision-making process, which contemporary leaders face, is applied consistently over a long period, to guarantee success in management, in what is called strategic planning.
