Leadership Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Leadership - Term Paper Example There has to be an individual in which the team can place its complete confidence and on whose instructions, they can work irrespective of their individualistic differences for the greater cause i.e. the achievement of the goal. That individual is leader. Leadership is manifested in the thinking and ideology of the leader. For some reason, the leader is superior to the followers. â€Å"Plato proposed that leadership requires a special talent, and only those few who possess such talent should be trained toward its proper utilization. Having rigorously developed this talent, the philosopher-kings, the guardians, should rule† (Cawthon, 2002, p. 10). This superiority may come from greater experience, knowledge, skills, or some other quality that is of great value and significance in the achievement of the goal that the leader and the followers are mutually interested in achieving. In the absence of leadership, the team becomes just a crowd or a bunch of people with conflicting vie ws and ideas. They might have all the skills required to achieve the goal, but their skills cannot be put to the right use without proper leadership. There are certain skills that are extremely important for an individual to attain to be effective as a leader. Some of these skills include; knowing where to draw the line between the leader and the followers, maintaining integrity as a leader, carrying out negotiation effectively, the ability to constantly motivate the followers, and emotional intelligence. A leader has to distinguish himself from the followers in order to retain his status as a leader. If he does not know where to draw the line while interacting with the followers, he may practically weaken his role as a leader even if he theoretically is supposedly a leader. This skill is more in-born than taught. It requires right decision-making while dealing with the followers. The leader should know how to interpret his strategy for the followers, how much information to give to the followers, to what extent can the followers be involved in the decision making, and where the relationship between the leader and the followers transforms from casual to strictly professional. This line is difficult to draw particularly in the social networking age of today where the leader and the followers come at the same level being friends at the social networking websites. Leadership is a full time job. One cannot be a leader just at the workplace and not be a leader outside the premises of the workplace. What an individual does elsewhere sends messages and signals to the followers about the philosophy, ideology, and character of their leader. Followers tend to judge the leaders from their dealing with others in everyday life and not just at work. This makes maintaining integrity as a leader difficult since one is prone to making mistakes as a human being. No individual can succeed as a leader without having sound negotiation skills. The most important skill that makes an individual an effective leader, in my opinion, is the negotiation skill. In the present age, a leader faces many challenges with respect to negotiation that are embedded not only in the differences of views, personality traits, and cultures of the leader and the followers but also in the limits on language competences while working in a culturally diverse environment. Cultural diversity is one of the most fundamental features of the workplace in the contemporary age. In order to understand the followers

The dimensions that determine the quality of services Term Paper

The dimensions that determine the quality of services - Term Paper Example There are three dimensions that determine the quality of services which are: responsiveness, empathy and assurance. This paper will describe the dimensions. To avoid confrontations, most clients do not make direct complaints to businesses when not satisfied with their services. A more significant reason is that they are not accorded a convenient channel to complain and believe a complaint will not yield effective results in terms of a solution (Goetsch, 2010). To improve service quality and retain clients, attract new ones, and generate more business with the existing ones, service managers should encourage them to complain when things go wrong. This will clear the clients’ perception that organizations do not care to correct mistakes while demonstrating the willingness of the service providers to be helpful (Goetsch, 2010). Many organizations rely on the traditional, reactive recovery problem solving methods, where the process is initiated by the clients. However, the proactive methods where the organization initiates the process are more effective. Clients should be asked questions on how services may be improved and encouraged to use suggestion boxes and comment cards. With this approach and attitude from the providers, clients will have the comfort of knowing they are dealing with an organization that is willing to be helpful and responsive towards meeting their expectations (Goetsch, 2010). Organizations that do not display a willingness to help through effectively responding to complaints add to their service failures by failing the clients repetitively. Business organizations need to respond to clients’ requests and complaints by providing prompt and efficient services (Bhat, 2010). Timely deliveries convey a sense of responsibility and urgency and help build a client’s confidence and encourage repeat orders. Punctual responses also demonstrate to clients that their concerns are also the organizations concerns and they are given priority