Leadership

This is a paper (journal) I turned in for my Leadership class at school. It is just a sample of my writing.

As this class progresses, I find myself digging deeper into the whole concept or process (as the book references) of leadership. I am looking up articles on the internet, searching through my old books on leadership, and absorbing all that is said in the classroom. It makes me wonder if everyone doesn’t have all sorts of different factors inside them that if combined properly would consist of leadership in some way, shape, or form. Is there really a leader in all of us in some area of our lives?
Our church has been so “vision”, and “purpose” focused for several years now. We are being taught that there is a leader in all of us, and all we need to do is discover our gifts and talents to determine which area we should be leading. They have even gone as far as having you form what is called a “lead team” based on the team leadership model, where you raise up six or so people under you in your particular area. For instance, if you are the praise and worship leader, you would find people with that gift or talent, have them join your team, and you mentor, train, and teach so that in your absence they can lead. The goal behind it is, when you are not there, you should have people under you to do such a great job that your absence is not necessarily missed. We are taught that you become a great leader when you become unnecessary. This is all well and good, however is everyone actually meant to lead? What about when circumstances change? Everyone’s roles eventually change. Are the followers prepared for this change to suddenly take on the role of the leader when they have been the follower for so long?
If everyone at one point were a leader, then who would we be leading? A leader generally has followers. This takes me back to the chapters we have studied. I understand that the concept of person + situation + relationship = leadership, however it does not take into account the followers. I am coming to conclusion that we just can’t all be leaders. If we were all chiefs with no Indians there would be conflict of a catastrophic level!
Leadership has to be more than skills, traits, and style. To me, those are just factors, attributes, and personality. Leadership is not a method or a technique. I think it is more of an attitude or a mind-set. For example, in the situation portion of the leadership equation, a true leader would not let the environment influence him/her; a true leader would influence the environment. It is not the followers in the relationship portion that change the leader, it is the leader having an impact on the followers because of the leaders ability to see things differently. My point is that there is so much more than even the leadership equation has taught us.
Another problem I have is with the style approach to leadership. In the leadership grid, different styles of leading are broken down for us and the leader is then categorized into one or perhaps more of those styles, falling somewhere on that grid. My question regarding that study would be as follows: Was the study conducted with certain leaders in certain jobs, and if those same leaders were placed in different jobs, say a career change, would their style of leadership change?
I say this because again going back to my church experiences, I used to be what was considered Authority-Compliance. However, as I became a leader in the church, I was much more team oriented based on the training I underwent. So does that now put me in the opportunism category? If it does that for me, what about all the leaders that were a part of the study? Just wondering, and of course I will continue to research this area.
Finally I will give my opinion in the area of traits and skills. When it comes to traits, the whole being born a leader theory has some merit. The person who may have been born with certain character traits that we would call leadership traits is plausible, but that person must become a leader. With the question I proposed at the beginning of this paper, we all may indeed have certain factors or traits in us that mix together to formulate a leader. However, if the desire to lead is not there then those factors probably just lie dormant.
I also do not believe that there is a certain amount of skills that one can acquire that suddenly makes that person qualified to be a leader. I can earn my CPA and work for an accounting office but never become an accountant , or a manager, or even own my own business. I may be happy as can be doing a mundane job, and working for someone else with no desire for promotion whatsoever- and be the smartest one in the company thanks to college. Just because of my learned skills, I am not a leader. If I am not pursuing leadership, I can have all the skills in the world but the end result is that I will be a follower.
In conclusion, I will go back to what I stated earlier, the more I study, the more I am beginning to see that leadership is more of an attitude than anything else. I think the difference between leaders and their followers is attitude. I think a large portion of our lives follow our thought patterns. Our thoughts basically determine who we are. That is also scriptural, as the Bible states “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7). When we think differently, we become different. We can compile all the traits, skills, and styles together and still not make a good leader.
It was Winston Churchill that said “attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.” In his contribution in saving England from Nazism, it was his inner conviction of what he thought about it that drove him to be a lone voice of warning. It started with a thought though. He developed and matured it from there and went on to become a great leader. This was not an overnight happening based on his traits, it was not based on his abilities, nor was his style determined in whether or not he was a good leader. Although all of those may have contributed in some way, without the proper attitude and mind-set, Churchill may not have gone as far as he did.
I look forward to the continual study of this subject as we go deeper into the book. As we get into the next three chapters, I may eat my words and change my opinion. I am not defining leadership by attitude alone, but I am simply stating we cannot rely strictly on the equation we learned these past few weeks. It goes much deeper.