Leadership

1. The Concept of leadership. Leadership qualities. The difference between a manager and a leader

What makes a great leader?

Leader is a member of group, who has the right to accept critical decisions in difficult situation. It’s the most authoritative person who plays the central role in the organization.

To my mind, there are a list of characteristic which make a great leader, such as: decisiveness, charismatic, open-mindness, thoughtfulness and so on. Often these personal trait of leaders can help them succeed in career.

To run a large company effectively, real-leader needs to do three tings:

First of all, it is developing teamwork with defined roles and close personal relationship. Everyone can allow the expression of different ideas. For example, Some leaders used an interesting method for pulling a team together. They asked everyone of their command to come in turn to the ship and he encouraged them into informal open discussion. While always knowing who was in charge, their common understanding grew so great that later.

Secondly, providing clear, shared and understandable goals.

Thirdly, great leaders manage to inspire the people that they work with.

Leader and manager are seems to have the same meanings, but it isn’t so. The word “manager” is associated with controlling, keeping people in the dark, wasting their time on trivia, and breathing down their necks. The word “manager” has too often come to be synonymous with control – cold, uncaring, passionless. But we never associate passion with the word “manager” and we have never seen the leader without it. The manager usually sticks to established channels. As for leaders they don’t stick to established channels, they are open, straight with people. They go up, down and around their organizations to reach people. One of the things about leadership is that you cannot be moderate, balanced, thoughtful, careful articulator of the policy.

Managers are the people who can make the number dance. But the world will belong to passionate, driven leaders - people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.

Leaders and managers are both made and born. Of course, you have basic qualities but you re-invent yourself as you go into new situation. So people who were never leaders at school become the great business leaders of our time. So mostly the leaders and managers are made but you have to use what you are born with.

Nowadays there are different styles of managing. One of them is authoritarian. It is ruthless, formal. Such manager is uncaring; he breaths down the necks of his employees, he can be aggressive when they can’t manage their targets. Another style is democratic one. A manager of this style is open, balanced person. He is thoughtful to his employees.

So most of leaders can be managers, but not every manager can be a leader.

2. The founder of ikea as an example of a leader.

Leader is a member of group, who has the right to accept critical decisions in difficult situation. It’s the most authoritative person who plays the central role in the organization.

To my mind, there are a list of characteristic which make a great leader, such as: decisiveness, charismatic, open-mindness, thoughtfulness and so on. Often these personal trait of leaders can help them succeed in career.

I know not ordinary example of leader- this is Ingvar Kamprad- the founder of IKEA, the home furnishing retail giant. He set up his own business in 1943, which began as a mail-order business. He has been running his business for many years. Nowadays he is one of the richest person in the world. The concept behind Ikea’s amazing success is unbelievably simple: make affordable, well-designed furniture available to the masses. And of course a big part of success IKEA has thanks to Mr Kamprad’s himself - he is charismatic, humble, private, cost-conscious, informal. It is his ideas and values that are in the core of Ikea’s philosophy. The founder of Ikea furniture empire travel by economy class (he said that he couldn’t never accept that he should travel first class, when his colleagues sit in tourist class), drives a 10-year old Volvo and buys his fruit and vegetables in the afternoon, when prices are often cheaper. As he walks around the group’s of stores, he expresses the feeling of “togetherness”. Physically clasping and hugging his employees. The informality and lack of hierarchy are emphasized by his dress style with an open-necked shirt preferred to a tie. One of his main characteristic is his obsessive attention to detail. When he visits his stores, he talks not only to the managers, but also to the floor stuff and customers. By Mr K own reckoning, his greatest strength is choosing right people to run his bussines.

So, in addition I want to say, that Ingvar Kamprad is a great leader! Because, as we know, business bring out the worth in people, but I. K. became a great leader without loosing the human best qualities.