Great Business Leaders 
 There have been a lot of great business leaders in our society that we can look up to.  Great leaders like Bill Gates who is not only an successful and wealthy business but is also respected by everyone.  He is the owner of Microsoft and still is one of the leading businessmen.  His friend the great Steve Jobs who is not wit us today but was a great businessmen, who help put apple on the map and known around the world.  It is said that the i pad technology which is know to the world now was discovered by Steve jobs twenty years ago when it was hardly heard of by anyone.  Great leaders are  made not born as we all know and a great leader is someone who is willing to give  up everything to achieve what they want. Everyone has a leader within themselves all they need to do is find it and be a great leader.

Bill Gates

Steve Jobs

Use of consideration and structure in effective leadership


  Leaders use two  kind of approaches to be an effective leader. Considerate and Structure.  Considerate approach is where the leaders are worried about the  needs of there followers/employees.  They help there employees with their problems and provide solutions to them. This helps them gain the trust of their followers/employees  and be respected by them and it also shows that you care about them. Structure approach is where leaders believe that they can only get the results they want by consistently keeping their employee's/follower's busy and urging them to be productive.  This approach may result in followers loosing there trust and confidence in their leader.  Leaders who are considerate in their leadership style are higher performers and are satisfied.



Information sourced form: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadstl.html

Negative and positive approaches of an Effective Leader.

   
There are two ways in which a leader would approach its followers/employee's, positive and negative.  Positive leaders use rewards such as education, independence etc to motivate there employees/followers. Negative leaders focus on giving penalties if the work is not done the way they wanted.  Some leaders use the negative approach and it is effective sometimes, but it should be used carefully.

Negative leaders act superior with people.  Leaders who use an negative approach think that the only way to get things done faster and right is by giving penalties, such as not paying them for the day etc.  They believe that their power to control is increased by frightening everyone into higher levels of productivity.  If this force is used, what happens is that morale fails, which leads to less work done by the followers/employees. The approach that should used more often by leaders is positive approach as the gain credibility.  If negative approach is used then the leader would most likely not be respected but be feared and would loose the trust of its employee's/follower, which is a sigh of not being an effective leader.




Information Sourced From: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadstl.html

  Leadership styles
 Leadership style is a way in which the leader provide direction, implement plans and motivating people.  There are three types of leadership styles:

           Authoritarian-  In This style, leaders tell their followers what to do and how they want it done, without any advice from from its followers. An appropriate condition to use it will be when you followers are motivated, you have everything you need to solve the problem.  If you have the time and want to gain more commitment and motivation of your followers, then you should use this style.

           Participative-   In This style, leader including one or more employees in decision making process.  No matter what the leader is still going to make the final decision. If this style is used it shows that the leader respect the ideas of others and gain credibility. So using  participative style is a sign of strength.


          Delegative-  In this style, the followers/employee's can make the final decision. No matter what decisions are made, leader is still responsible for the final decision.  This style should be used when you trust your followers because your followers are making those decisons even though you are respnsable for them   This is used when your followers are able to analyze the situation and determine what needs to be done and how to do it.

Particpative Leadership Style

Authoritarian Leadership Style

Delegative Leadership Style

Information sourced from:   http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadstl.html

Some principles of Leadership


-  Know yourself and seek self-improvement:  in order to know yourself you need to know your own attributes. Seeking self improvement means always trying to improve yourself no matter what.  This can be accomplished through self study, reflection etc.
 -  Be technically proficient: As a leader you need to know your job and familiar with your employees and followers.
 -  Set an example: Be a good leader for your followers because they look up to you.  If you don't do what you are suppose to, then how would they do it.
- Keep your workers informed:  need to know how to communicate, this is where your communication skills come handy because not only you need to know how to communicate with your employees but also other key people.
- Ensure that tasks are understood, supervised and accomplished: again communication is the key in this principle. That's why communication skill one of the key skills needed for being an effective leader.
-  Use full capability of your organization: By developing a team spirit, you will be able to employ your organization, department etc, to their fullest capabilities.

 How an effective leader handles Group Discussions


 When you are the leader of a team, you have a lot meetings, you tell people what should they do and how should they do it .  The majority of work is accomplished through group discussions.  Group discussion is actually more beneficial to your organization/team then when an individual is working on a project.  Discussion time within a meeting is also the time when frustration builds.  As a leader you want to avoid being frustrated. To avoid being frustrated you need to identify the reason for discussion.  There are always three reasons why you have a discussion: to gather information, to exchange ideas and solve problems.  if you know why you are discussing the issue, its easier to participate, keep the discussion on track and get results.  As a leader you always need to beware of where the discussion is going.  Two things that can happen during a discussion is one the development of information, ideas or issues and evaluating the information, ideas or issues.   Usually devolving and evaluating get mixed up. This is where you can run into problems and get frustrated. To avoid this scenario,  you need to get the ideas out first or develop the the information, ideas and issues.  After the ideas are out, then evaluate.  This keeps the group moving in the right direction and avoids having similar debates for each idea or comment.  




Information Sourced from:  http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex1334

 FEEDBACK


Giving feedback
As we know being a leader comes with a lot of responsibilities. Giving feedback is one of them.  The way you give you give feedback could be the difference between success and failure. If you give no feedback to your follower/employee work they could loose their confidence because they don't know if the work that the have done is right or wrong  . When a leader tries to stop unwanted behavior they may result in criticizing  a member. When you criticize your follower/employee, they loose their confidence and loose their trust in the leader.  When you tell  a member what behavior or results you want and how you would like them don, you improve the persons confidence and your relationship with them.



Accepting Feedback
 As a leader, you also need to Know how to accept feedback. Knowing how to accept feedback is a  leadership skill that will teach you a lot about your leadership. It will teach you a lot about your leadership style.  Don't explain, defend or deny, Listen silently to try to understand clearly what the other person has to say.  You don't have to agree with the feedback you get, but be respectful.

 










Information sourced  form: http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex1334