What is Leadership?

                                                                what is Leadership?
Introduction

The accomplishment of educational objectives and goals has been the most imperative aspect of every existing institution and model researchers are not only indicating  the qualities of school leader but also the influence of specific leadership style on the performance of schools and as well student motivation. Leadership style can be defined as the methodology adopted by a leader to achieve a particular objective. Recently, many scholars have examined the contributions of leadership and its relationship between academic achievement and student motivation. John & Taylor 2014, Aquino (1985) stressed that, leadership in school is the extent to which educational leaders act to create a school atmosphere that is characterised by teacher productivity, student motivation and leadership style. School leader’s attributes and characteristics determine the extent on how the followers think or feel about their school (Bruggencata, Luylen, Scheernens & Sleegers, 2012).

Leadership style can either directly influence or hinder student motivation (performance) and teacher’s commitment. John et al (2014) stated that leadership styles is conceptualised as a leadership that depends on power and relationship.

Definition of Leadership

The dynamism of organisational institution is creating the needs of appropriate use of leadership style that will motivate and increase academic performance of schools. The variables related to enhance students’ motivation and institutions as whole have been the focus of many scholars and it is observed that the styles of leadership adopted by school leaders can positively or negatively determine the school’s motivation (performance) and academic result of students. Therefore leadership has been defined in many ways according to author’s perception. Silcox, Boyd & MacNeill (2015)defined leadership as a complex that takes into account the aspiration of the organisation. For Arash and Azadeh (2016) leadership is the process that deals with vision and motivating group of people to meet common purpose. This attribute requires effective knowledge of leadership that will enable a good leader to initiate great ideas to his followers

Accordingly, Dave & Norm (2012) leadership can be define as the ability to build group future leaders who will have the capacity to positively influence organisational culture and make opportunities for accomplishment of organisational goals. Mei-Hui & Tsai-Fu, (2013) the performance of any organisation can be shaped by the attribute of a good leader. These stipulate that, if the quality of a leader is high, the achievement of his group will be high as well. Loh (2015) believed that leadership is the capacity to a control, motivate and co-ordinate people within organisation to attain specific goals. Therefore, leadership has to do with ability of leaders to use his or her influence to enable to group of people to achieve stated objectives

 Lees (2014) agreed that leadership is a mutual process by which an individualis selected by group of people as the leader in a certain situation to influence others to act knowingly, willingly in accordance with agreed motives. This definition indicated goals of affective leadership in organisation, good leader should be able to direct and organise a particular group of people to achieve common goals.( Nohria, N., &Khorana, 2013)

Key Attribute of Successful Leader

Many authors have been debating for long decade in under to understand what really makes a good leader in organisation and many qualities of a leader has been identified by them as follows…..

1.Leader must understand Leadership Style: understanding of current leadership styles by a leader is very essential. Good knowledge of leadership styles gives leaders idea to understand their strength and the area of enhancement. According to Yusof & Razimi (2016), it is the duty of leader to ensure that the management of workers is efficient and effective in order to gain quality leadership. And the only way to evaluate your skills as a leader is to take into concentration the vital features of leadership styles (Holcombe, 2016)

2. Encourage Creativity: Intellectual stimulation is the one of imperative attributes of leadership that explicit transformational leadership subordinate need to be encouraged to share their initiative (Chen & Hou, 2016). It is obvious that effective leader should create opportunity for his followers to excise their opinion or ideas in the accomplishment of company’s goals. Scholar like Mittal &Dhār (2015) confirmed this in their study transformational leadership as the only style of leadership that promote employees creativity.

3. Serve as a Role Model: Idealised influence is the major component of transformational leadership. Transformational leaders showcase the behaviours and features that enable them to encourage their followers. Antje, Deanne & Frank (2016) transformational leaders stimulate and empower workers to bring out their hiddenknowledge;they inspire or motivate their followers to perform beyond their expectation (Antje et al, 2016). As a result of this subordinate love transformational leaders work to learn their behaviours.

4.Listen and Communicate Effectively: This is another imperative attribute of transformational leaders. To be a good leader there is need to engage on one-on-one conversation with team workers. Bista, Bhattarai, Reza & Ogot (2016) advocate that good leaders should show care and concern for his or her group member both verbally and non-verbally. By keeping steady interaction, the leader will be sure that the followers are free and able to make positive contribution and be recognised for their contribution.

The mentioned characteristics of good leader, demonstrate the validity of modern leadership style that create high level of change, build and nurture followers to become a great leader in organisation (Bormann, Schulte-Coerne, Diebig & Rowold, 2016). Change is main attribute of transformational leadership. For instance Shin & Zhou (2007) confirmed that transformational leadership and education correlated to affect students’ creativity. That is to believe that high level of transformational leadership in schools improve creativity. It is necessary for school leaders to acquire transformational leadership attributes that are fundamental in this leading changing of educational institution (Ling et al, 2016).That can transform both teachers and student behaviour to enhance their performance.

Read next article for (An evaluation of Transformational Leadership Approach )