eLearning CE: Activity 3 - Niklaus Teo (19)

Leaders are people who are able to lead a group. According to Kouzes and Posner's research into leadership that was done for the book The Leadership Challenge. They state that the the five leadership traits/leadership qualities that a sucessful leader should have are: Honesty, Being Forward-Looking, Competent, Inspiring and Intelligent.

Now for honesty, As a leader, showing people that you are honest even when it means admitting to a mistake, displays a key trait that people are looking for in their leaders. By doing so, you can increase your leadership influence and thus people will trust you and they will see you as someone who is worth following

For Forward-Looking, The whole point of leadership is figuring out where to go from where you are now. Leaders can communicate their goals and vision for the future without making promises that they may not be able to keep. In order to be forward-Looking, a leader has to share his or her's goal so that the group will be able to work towards that direction of goal

For Competent, A leader need to be able to demonstrate competency. For a leader to demonstrate that they are competent, it isn't enough to just avoid displaying incompetency. Some people will assume you are competent because of your leadership position, but most will have to see demonstrations before deciding that you are competent. A way to show you are competent is to celebrate and bring attention to team achievements. In this way you indirectly point out your competency as a leader

For Inspiring, being inspiring means showing people the big picture and helping them see beyond a narrow focus and understand how their part fits into the big picture. A great example of inspiration is when Steve Jobs stole the CEO from Pepsi by asking him, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?" People want to be inspired, therefore by giving them the big picture, it can give you a significant improvement in this leadership trait.

Lastly, for Intelligent, of course a leader has to be intelligent in order to choose the direction of the group, but if you are embarking on a topic that is alien to you. It would be a good idea to do some reading up on the topic your group is doing. This is to increase your knowledge of that topic and show that you do know something. Another good way to increase general knowledge is to read the newspaper on a daily basis.

How do you think a good leader manages crisis under stressful situation?
Ans: Well generally a leader has to calm down and evaluate his choices of what to do next so that it will produce the best result as possible.

Cite:
Mark Shead Five Most Important Leadership Traits
Retrieved from: http://www.leadership501.com/five-most-important-leadership-traits/27/