Practices of Exemplary Leadership
As defined by Kouzes (2007), leadership is the ability to mobilize a group of people to work together in order to achieve specific goals of an organization. It involves demonstration of strong intrapersonal skills and a good personality that would help model, inspire, challenge, encourage and give others opportunities to act independently in an attempt to obtain a great achievement of organizations goals. An exemplary leadership is based on five specific best practices including; inspiring a common vision, enabling others to act, encouraging the heart, modelling the way and challenging process. These practices help to motivate employees and encourage teamwork in the organization.
The first practice is modelling the way. This includes two commitments, clarifying the values and affirming shared values. Clarification of values enables leaders to find their own voices, preventing them from just imitating others (Truesdell, 2011). This makes them unique and able to gain the integrity required to lead. Different teams have unique values that they need to recognize and maintain. Therefore, the leaders must identify these values and work to protect them. This requires creativity and dedication in constantly identifying the shared goals and ways of achieving them: PLAGIARIZED SAMPLE: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
The common values enhance teamwork and loyalty. In real life situation, these values are used by leaders to personalize their shared values, evaluate their instructions and general speeches in the organization, ensuring their actions match how they actually act, and enforcing the positive behaviors in the organization (Spillane, 2012). Leaders should therefore work to affirm the shared values to be achieved by their teams so as to encourage confidence among the team members.
The next leadership practice as stated by Smutkupt (2015) is inspiring a shared vision. This aspect contains two commitments. The first commitment is envisioning the future and the second is enlisting others. Envisioning the future involves evaluating the strengths and capabilities of a group of persons in the organization. This can be based on the past performance of the particular group. The leader is then able to judge future performance of the group based on this (Smith, 2015). This aspect enables proper goal setting in the organization. It ensures that the goals set to be achieved are sensitive of the abilities of the employees in the organization. The employees will therefore get motivated if they find it easy to act on the set goals. In real life situation, leaders are charged with the responsibility to study the past, recognize the present and reflect on the future of the organization. To achieve this, the leader must listen to all the members of the organization and identify the strengths and weaknesses of each member.
Enlisting others in the organization entails trying to find the expectations of the group members, enlisting them and comparing them with the expectations of the leader. Leaders should take into consideration all the views of the group members and compare them with their own views in order to arrive at a tentative conclusion on the best goals to set, (Posner, 2015). This ensures that all the interests and aspirations of the members are aligned to the vision of the entity. The leader may achieve this through allowing the members to express emotions, encouraging them to be honest and open on their capabilities and using the best skills to inspire a common vision. In a real business situation, the leader uses these skill to formulate attainable goals and develop a motivated team
Lindsey (2015) mentions challenging the process as another vital practice in leadership. This is exhibited using two commitments, searching for opportunities and taking and experimenting risks. To search better opportunities a leader is obliged to search for unexploited areas and develop new methods of operation. This may be achieved through creativity and innovation. The leader should also be able to develop proper ways of communication within the organization and between the organization and the outside world. This encourages inflow of new ideas and good relationship between the group and other groups. This vital aspect can be demonstrated in real life situation where a leader is required to encourage borrowing of ideas from other groups through interaction and bench marking.
A leader must also develop a climate which allows for experimentation and trying of new ideas through risk taking. This may be achieved by accepting challenges and learning through them. Failure is a very important aspect in evaluating success (Lindsey, 2016). Therefore the leader should appreciate the successes of the group and learn from past failures. In a real life situation, this is a very important practice as it enables a leader to acquire the attributes of a risk taker, learn from mistakes and improve on the successes in order to achieve even more. Additionally, this encourages progress in the group.
The fourth leadership practice is enabling others to act. This combines two commitments. The first is fostering collaboration and the second is strengthening others. To foster collaboration, a leaders must first facilitate trust in the group, and encourage good relationships. Trust enables the team to exploit its ultimate potential, (Nielsen, 2015). This is because trust is a very contagious aspect of leadership. If the leader demonstrates trust to members, they will also follow the same trend and show trust to the leader. This results into a freely operating group without any guilt among its members. The members will be able to act without any doubt since they will adore and obey their leader. A leader can also develop a positive relationship in the group by conducting direct communications with the members and encouraging combined efforts in executing projects. This can be done by communicating face to face by the members. In real life situation, this helps to strengthen confidence, develop self-determination and competence among team members. The leader will also give team members the power to act without fear or doubt. This will enhance accountability in actions.
The leader should also constantly encourage the team members to be motivated and dedicated in performing their duties. Proper ways of providing support to the members is also a key aspect that should be formulated by the leader, (Northouse, 2015). Strengthening members will enable them to exploit their full capabilities. The members will also be able to know their weaknesses and capitalize on their strengths. This can be done through offering encouragements and proper training of the members before they start executing their duties. In a real life situation, a leader is required to strengthen their team members in order motivate them to work optimally.
The final leadership practice is encouraging the heart. This encompasses two commitments. The first commitment is recognizing contributions and the next commitment is celebrating the victories and values achieved by team members. Recognition of member’s contributions includes expecting best performances and then personalizing the results of the contributions, (Lussier, 2015). Leaders who have high expectations for their teams exhibit strong belief in the abilities of their team members. This makes the team members more motivated hence accelerating the likelihood of great performance. A leader should also constantly encourage feedback of performance. This will ignite a sense of belonging to the teammates and make them work even harder to achieve the goals of the team. When the leaser personalizes the performance of the team, the teammates will obtain a feeling that their hard work have been appreciated. They will therefore become very motivated.
In real life situation, whenever an achievement is appreciated, the members will always feel happy and willing to offer more. The leaders should therefore constantly thank their team members in special ways so as to motivate them. Even a small contribution should be recognized. Leaders who ignore small contributions by members do not exploit the full potential of their teams.
Leaders should therefore be creative and thoughtful in appreciating the work done by their teams. They can do this by encouraging the spirit of togetherness and hard work. The leaders can do this by publicly appreciating the members in magazines, in the print and visual media and in the websites of the teams, (Kouzes, 2007). A public celebration can also be organized by the leader in order to then the team members for their hard work. Additionally, the leaders can reward the group members with material gifts just to appreciate them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, for leaders to be successful, they must exhibit the above five practices of exemplary leadership. These best practices enables the leaders to promote creativity, motivation and teamwork in the groups they lead. In real life situation, these practices are vital in ensuring success of the groups by encouraging inclusive leadership and a sense of belonging among the members of the groups: PLAGIARIZED SAMPLE: ORDER YOUR PAPER NOW
References
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Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2007). The Leadership Challenge (4thed.).San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass
Lindsey, J. L. (2016). How Can Leaders Cultivate an Organizational Culture of Creativity And Innovation, Particularly In the Academy? Journal of Leadership Studies, 10(1), 76-77.
Lussier, R. N., & Achua, C. F. (2015). Leadership: Theory, Application, & Skill Development. Nelson Education.
Nielsen, K. (2015). The Role of Transformational Leaders in Wellbeing. Leadership, 0.
Northouse, P. G. (2015). Leadership: Theory and Practice. Sage Publications.
Posner, B. Z. (2015). An Investigation into the Leadership Practices of Volunteer Leaders. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 36(7), 885-898.
Smith, C. (2015). Exemplary Leadership: How Style and Culture Predict Organizational Outcomes. Nursing Management, 46(3), 47-51.
Smutkupt, S. (2015). The Key Antecedents of Shared Vision: A Case Study on an Industrial Estate Developer in Thailand. Au Journal of Management, 12(2).
Spillane, J. P. (2012). Distributed Leadership (Vol. 4). John Wiley & Sons.
Truesdell, C. (2011). The Leadership Challenge. [Review of the Book the Leadership Challenge, M. Kouzes & B. Z. Posner]. National Clearinghouse for Leadership Programs. Retrieved From Http://Www.Nclp.Umd.Edu