Benefits Of Efective Leadership in 21st Century Organisation Dissertation

Benefits Of Efective Leadership in 21st Century Organisation - Dissertation Example Directive behavior focuses on such tasks as monitoring, instructing, goal-setting and scheduling, while supportive behavior revolves around activities along the lines of encouraging employees and hearing them out on their concerns (Wart 2007). 46 Leadership The dictionary meaning of leadership is â€Å"the ability to lead† (Rost, 1993, p.41). â€Å"Everyone talks about it; few understand it. Most people want it; few achieve it† (Maxwell, 2005, p.1). This phrase may be true for some who have the desire to be a leader and thus when one tries to define this concept; he/she gets emotional and develops a definition that is more specific to his/her own though process. As a result, there are several definitions for leadership that reflect different views of the researchers. In this respect, James C. Georges from ParTraining Corporation has said, â€Å"What is leadership? Remove for a moment the moral issues behind it, and there is only one definition: Leadership is the abilit y to obtain followers† (Maxwell, 2005, p.1). However, this definition was opposed by others as they do not consider leadership mere the ability to get followers; for them it is the ability to achieve position. Such thinks correlate leadership with rank, position and title. According to them a person who has achieved a status in the organisation/society is a leader. In the real world such definition suffers with two major problems: a person who considers him/herself as a leader because of the status, he/she has to face frustration of some of the followers. Again, there may be people who do not enjoy high status and thus they don’t even try to develop leadership qualities in them. Edwin H. Friedman explained that â€Å"leadership can be thought of as a capacity to define oneself to others in a way that clarifies and expands a vision of the future† (Robinson & Rose, 2004, p.2). As per this definition, leadership is not a position; rather it is a role to be played by the leader. It should be regardless of one’s education, experience and position within the organisation. A leader should act like a facilitator and assist the followers to achieve the common goal. Different types of leadership There are several leaders who possess contradictory characteristic and leadership style. One such example can be Adolf Hitler and Mahatma Gandhi. Both of them had a very different leadership style but no doubt they both were successful leaders. Therefore, leadership can be of different type. On time to time, researchers proposed several theories and explained different types of leadership as per these theories. Before explaining different type of leadership style, it is essential to discuss theories of leadership. Some of the vital theories related to leadership have been discussed below. History of Leadership The history of leadership is years old; from early days human were interested to identify the factors that results in a famous and successful le ader. Out of this curiosity people conducted different research and identified some factors that can be easily noticeable