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Leadership
• Four necessary attributes of a good leader
include:
– Vision
– Accountability
– The ability to delegate responsibility
– The ability to communicate effectively
Leadership
• Vision
– Vision describes the goals that the leader has for the
company or organization and the personal approach
or philosophy that he/she adopts toward making
decisions concerning how to achieve those goals.
Because strong leadership requires a certain level of
decisiveness, it is impractical to delegate every
decision to a decision making committee or team. In
addition, the ability to make a decision and be
accountable for the consequences is the hallmark of a
strong leader.
Leadership
• Accountability
– Obviously related to vision, accountability is
the second necessary attribute of a good
leader. The consequence for having a strong
sense of vision is that the outcomes of
decisions that have been guided by that vision
are the responsibility of the leader. Because
leaders have the capacity to add, eliminate or
adjust variables within the organization, all
outcomes can be interpreted as resulting from
those changes/lack of changes.
Leadership
• The ability to delegate responsibility
– A manager who is uncomfortable delegating
responsibility and, instead, attempts to
“micromanage” or involve him or herself in every
aspect of the operation of the institution fails to take
advantage of the tools at his/her disposal. Such a
manager is like a Quarterback in a game of football
who is unable to trust any of his receivers to catch the
ball. Even if he is a superhuman athlete, exhaustion
will soon set in and other members of the team will
begin to feel useless and demoralized.
Leadership
• The ability to delegate responsibility.
– Delegating responsibility requires the ability to
recognize talent, expertise, and ambition in individual
employees and then provide appropriate levels of
both guidance and autonomy to the employee. This
doesn’t require the manager to know how to do the
job better than (or even as well as) the employee.
The job of the manager is to focus on directing the
employee in such a way that his/her skills are
optimally utilized and are in step with the larger goals
of the organization.
Leadership
• The ability to delegate responsibility.
– It may be necessary, especially for upper level
managers in large organizations, to not only delegate
a technical position, but a position of leadership as
well. In such a situation it is necessary to be able to
recognize good leadership qualities in potential
candidates. In addition, however, it is essential for an
upper level manager to select a subordinate manager
who has a “vision” similar to his/her own. This is not
to say that the subordinate should be a “yes person”
or a carbon copy, but drastically conflicting visions
can lead to confusion and dissatisfaction among
employees.
Leadership
• The ability to communicate effectively.
– Management leadership is expressed solely
through communication. Therefore ineffective
communication will result in ineffective
leadership. There are two broad categories of
managerial communication: formal and
informal.
Leadership
• The ability to communicate effectively.
– Formal communication includes
documentation (e.g. performance review
form), official correspondence and
memoranda, conference speeches, verbal
communication during meetings, etc.
Leadership
• The ability to communicate effectively.
– Informal communication includes daily
conversation, unofficial emails or phone calls,
dress, mannerisms, etc..
Leadership
• The ability to communicate effectively.
– Two general messages that effective
managers convey congruently in both their
formal and informal communication are
• “who we are” – the identity of the employee, their
role and importance and the identity of the
organization, its role and importance.
• “what we do” – the employees responsibilities and
the responsibilities and ambitions of the
organization.
Leadership
• Meetings
– Meetings are a valuable formal means of
communication especially for groups or teams
of employees. However, meetings have a
strong tendency to squander time and waste
potential productivity. Wicks et al. (2004)
suggest that “meetings should have an
agenda, time limit (20 to 40 minutes is ideal),
and provide follow-up information about
decisions made during or following the
meeting” (p. 31).
Leadership
• Communication across culture.
– When doing business internationally it is important to
take into consideration the special challenges
presented by cultural norms.
– When managing employees of different ethnicities or
nationalities it is important to consider cultural
differences between or among them that may be
sources of miscommunication, conflict or hindrance to
productivity.