Do you consider yourself a leader? Why or why not? How will help yourself to become a leader or better leader? “Mangers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right...

1. At the current phase of my life and career, I consider myself to a good team player. I
believe being a good team player serves as a superb foundation for emerging as a
great leader. Since a leader is one who has a unique vision for his people, and his acts
and actions ensures that people move towards accomplishing their goals. Thus the
first requisite of becoming a good leader is to know the people better and collecting as
much as information possible regarding them. Thus I will constantly look forward to
know the people in a much better way. I will also try to build upon my analyzing and
motivating skills, which will help me in analyzing various processes that will help in
taking the rights steps and in the right direction.
Further I would also like to build and improve my listening style. Since I am more
inclined towards being a people’s man, I believe I possess all the necessary traits of
the participative leadership style. Along with all the above, I believe improving my
public speaking skills is amongst the major priorities which will aid me in emerging
as a good leader.
2. There is a vast difference between the managers and the leaders. While the leaders
build excellence and work towards doing the things which are right for the
organization or the masses. While in case of managers, the path is more towards doing
a backward analysis. They move towards doing things which the organizations or
masses believe is right for them. Thus in the case of managers, it is all about doing the
backward planning, which in case of leaders the entire thinking goes into doing the
forward planning. Thus a strong leader always has a vision for its organization and
masses, for which he formulates goals (both long and short term) to achieve the end
objective. For instance: Steve Jobs had a long term vision of building a company
which makes tools and innovative solutions for the human minds that could contribute
towards the advancement of humankind. This helped his company – Apple Inc. to
develop innovative products and solutions which no one could have ever imagined.
With its products, the company has been able to carve a niche for itself in the
consumer electronics space. Thus we can see, a leader has its own vision which will
be beneficial to an organization and masses.
3. When the question of “risk taking” arises, I must confess I am an avid risk taker. I
believe I am much better off taking the risk at this phase of my life when I am
relatively younger, and have less responsibility on my shoulders. Thus I can afford
taking the risks.
Yes, I am very much comfortable in making changes if they are for the betterment of
the society or the organization I am working for. One of the significant changes that I
came across in my organization is the implementation of bio-metric attendance tool in
the organization. In the past few months many of my colleagues have used the
limitations of the previous attendance tool to their advantage. This forced the
organization to upgrade to the bio-metric tool, where each employee id was mapped
against their finger impressions. Thus the system only identifies the employees
through these impressions. This helped the organization in monitoring the employees
closely, which eventually showed up in improved efficiency of the entire workforce.
Like any other changes, this did not go well with the employees as they believed it to
be a curtailment of their freedom in the organization. As a result they resisted this step
taken by the organization. However, the management conveyed to the employees that
it was not a monitoring tool, rather than a tool which can help the employees as their
work load can be easily divided. Since there were few inefficient employees who
were hiding amongst the efficient ones, this will help in awarding the efficient ones
appropriately.
4. Transactional kind of leadership is more authoritative in nature, where the structure of
the organization is well defined, besides defining the roles and expectations of each
employee or sub-ordinates. In this style of leadership, the employees are awarded
appropriately for following the orders while they are punished if they do not abide by
the orders.
While the transformative style of leadership is more employee friendly in nature and
believes in a flat structure. This style of leadership starts with a vision, and works
towards the betterment of the...