What is Effective Leadership within an Organisational Context Essay

What is Effective Leadership within an Organisational Context - Essay Example It seems that these characteristics are not standardized. Indeed, each leader seems to have different criteria for prioritizing organizational needs and for handling organizational crises. For this reason, the description of effective leadership may have different forms, focusing on the leader’s personal characteristics (traits), the role of leadership in transforming the organizational environment and so on. The review of the theories developed in the particular field led to the following assumption: effective leadership can exist in modern organizations but not in its ideal form. This means that even leaders who are characterized as quite successful may fail in responding to all needs of their organization. This finding can be characterized as logical since leaders, like all people, can also have weaknesses and preferences. However, there is a characteristic that differentiates successful leaders from others, non-charismatic leaders; successful leaders are able to use their weaknesses as means for promoting their ideas. The lack of flexibility of Margaret Thatcher in regard to her political decisions has been also considered as a power for supporting her ideas. In other words, in charismatic leaders, weaknesses are transformed into exceptional characteristics, contributing in the success of these leaders within their environment. 2. Effective leadership – description and analysis 2.1 Nature of leadership The last decades, the development of leadership has been rapid. The reason is that the specific concept has been highly related to the organizational development. In fact, it has been proved that leaders have a key role in the success of organizations in the international market. A wide range of leadership definitions has appeared, aiming to explain the nature of the concept and its role in the organizational performance. In accordance with a well-known description of leadership, this of Bass (1990), the most appropriate description of leadershi p would refer to leadership as ‘a group of processes’ (Bass 1990, in Northouse 2010, p.2). In the context of the above description, the leader is believed to be the center of organizational processes, and that his views reflect the views of his environment, meaning the employees. However, the above description fails in explaining the role of leader in taking initiatives, a role which is quite important for modern organizations, as analyzed further in the sections that follow. From another point of view, Northouse (2010) notes that leadership can be considered as a concept reflecting ‘a combination of special traits’ (Northouse 2010, p.2), meaning that each leader has specific characteristics, which are those that make the particular leader exceptional within his environment, both the internal and the external. The trait-theory on leadership, as described above, is quite popular, focusing on the personality of leader and not so much on his role within the or ganization. It is expected that the response of each leader to his environment will be different, in accordance with his personal characteristics, meaning his perceptions, his background and his skills. 2.2 Types of leadership in modern organization As noted above, the views of theorists in regard to leadership and its role are differentiated. Most theorists consider leadership as related more to the personal characteristics of the leader, a view promoted in the traits theory of leadership. However, there are also theorists who