Leadership_Approach

Leadership Approach Jonquilla Holmes LDR/531 March 25, 2013 Leadership is defined as one who can guide, influence others, or the ability to lead. There are many approaches that exist when trying to study leadership. This paper will describe one of the earliest approaches to studying leadership and will include some of its strengths and weaknesses of the chosen approach. The paper will also provide an example in which this leadership approach is used in an organization of previous employment. Some would say that you have natural born leaders or those who were taught to lead. One of the earliest approaches that highlight personality, motives, values, and skills is the trait approach. It studies natural leaders who have precise awareness and influences to help others believe the leader’s approaches (Yukl, 2010). The trait approach emphasizes that leaders are born with leadership characteristics and that these characteristics allow for them to be great leaders. Finding people with tireless energy, penetrating intuition, uncanny foresight, and irresistible persuasive powers are what every employer wishes for (Yukl, 2010). When researching different approaches, there will always be some strengths and weaknesses for that approach. As stated above personality is one of the characteristics that are highlighted with the trait approach. This characteristic can be strength and a weakness to the trait approach. Personality can be a weakness to this approach, especially in the workplace as it can set the tone for the environment. If you have a leader or manager who is not having a great day, it can reflect on the way on how they interact with their employees, which in turn can affect the employee’s mood or environment. For example, I use to be a Resident assistant during my undergraduate degree. My role was to coordinate activities for residents but also use my communication skills by dealing directly residents’ problems and by addressing concerns on a daily basis. When I had a negative approach when entering an activity with the residents, or for example trying to tell the resident their music is too loud, the outcome was not great. I had residents who would not want to participate in that activity or anything moving forward or give push back of why they shouldn’t turn down their music or not having residents listen to me at all and continue to play loud music. That did not look good on my part as a representative of my school or as a resident assistant because it looked as if I had no leadership over my residents. When I had a positive attitude and approach to the residents, I would get full participation with the activities and residents were happy to turn down their music because I approached them in a positive manner. When employees are happy and working in positive atmosphere or in my case residents, achievements and goals can be accomplished. As stated earlier, great deals of approaches exist when a person is studying leadership; therefore, he or she has options to choose from. What type of approach do you use' Works Cited Yukl, G. (2010). Leadership in Organizations (7th ed.). Pearson Education.