Leadership - Find Your Way To Lead: Motivational, #1

By Dr. Makarand Upadhyaya and Dr. Nishi Tyagi

Leaders in every field are making the world a better place to live. People with strong faith in themselves have the ability to make the change. Even though there are 18 types of leadership behaviours, every leader has a core aim to complete their vision.
The leadership style of a person depends on the field of work, followers, circumstances, and, of course, the changing world. Technology, lifestyle, and needs of the world drastically change every year. Hence, the path towards the goal might also upgrade.
Staying productive and positive in a changing environment should be your mission to be a good leader. Half of the 18 leadership styles swing towards people-oriented characteristics and the remaining half has process-oriented traits. While some leaders prefer to be open and inviting, the other leaders believe in dedicated rules. It depends on you and how you want to make changes in the world. Find your leadership style, learn new things, and make your ideas worth sharing with the world. Stories of 18 popular leaders in this book make one thing certain, you can teach yourself to be a leader. To go somewhere, you have to start first. 
The world needs more amazing leaders. Leaders can even make impossible things happen with their charm and focus. The world also needs more followers. Followers work hard to prove themselves. Some of these followers develop the potential to become a future leader. You could be the new leader, but first, you have to have a strong mission, vision, and trust in your abilities.
Leaders and followers together are the backbone of the developing world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Author Tree Publishing
• Release date: Dec 21, 2020
• ISBN: 9788194927068

Book preview

What is Leadership?

A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus. – Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights activist

W

hen you look around yourself, you see a few people who have some kind of charm, a strong vision, a defined set of goals, and an ability to do something extraordinary. You either tend to follow these people as a mentee or wish to become like them. These people are leaders.

‘Lædan’, an old English word, is the origin of the word ‘Leader’; which means to go ahead and guide. You’ll find plenty of definitions of leadership. But the essence of each definition is that leaders are capable of making things happen. They have a purpose which they pass on to their followers in different ways. The 6th U.S. president John Quincy Adams once said, If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. These people have unique traits to their personality which makes them stand out differently than the others. Followers look up to the leaders to learn and grow alongside.

The study of leadership started in the late 1930s. Kurt Lewin and the co-authors published a paper on ‘Patterns of Aggressive Behaviors’ in 1939 to address a few qualities of leaders. Since then, a lot of thoughts have been put towards leadership and its various styles. In 1940, Leadership studies conducted in Ohio State addressed that the leaders are capable of satisfying the needs of a group. Further research on leadership came up with two terms, Task-oriented leadership and People-oriented leadership. Leaders who keep the tasks at high priority resulting in timely completion of the goals are task-oriented. If a leader is giving importance to his subordinates and fellow employees resulting in increased productivity, then he/she is a people-oriented leader. Each leader is different yet somewhat similar in so many factors. 

American footballer Kobe Bryant considered inspiring people as greatness. I think a definition of greatness is to inspire people next to you. It’s not something that lives and dies with a person, Bryant had said in an interview. This means leaders leave their greatness behind for years and years to motivate people.

Leadership is an attitude, an urge to take action. Leadership has nothing to do with seniority, a person’s position in a company, or age. Leaders do not wait for others to do a certain task, they get up and do it on their own. They take quick steps to reach the goals and that’s why the leaders are important.

Nobody is a born leader, it’s something that you learn from failures and successes. Ask yourself, ‘How can I fix this?’ and if you find the answer, the failure becomes an opportunity to lead you ahead. Why do some people succeed and some don’t? Those who succeed do not break their journey in case of disasters.

They don’t give up, rather they find a solution and that’s how they reach where they are. If you ever wonder what you can do to improve yourself, contribute to society, the answer is to guide people towards their goals.

Have you ever heard a leader say, ‘I have a great idea, but let someone else do it for me?" No! People can easily hire someone to perform certain tasks, those do not count as a leader. Of course, leaders do assign a task to people, but they never stop working themselves. It’s something called a collaboration- An ability to share and receive visionary goals.

When you have a good boss, you tend to work more productively. Likewise, when a leader has an amazing group of people following them, they become the best leader. Followers are equally important to make a good leader. If you analyze your behavior, you are either a follower or a leader. Either way, you belong to a world where great things happen.

As every person has different behavioral traits, every leader has different leadership styles. Some leaders believe in collaboration or creating a community. Whereas some leaders guide others to follow specific sets of goals. It depends on the work that is being done. If an army major goes soft on his followers, the team wouldn’t perform best. And if the principal of a school goes aggressive and instructive on teachers, the school wouldn’t do well.  It is important to know what type of leadership would fit best for what type of scenario. There are 18 styles of leadership. The core of each leadership style is either task-oriented or people-oriented with a few variable traits to stand out differently.

This book will walk you through all leadership styles. If you are a leader, you will Find Your Way to Lead by the end of this book. 

2

Autocratic Leadership Style

The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things. – Ronald Reagan.

A

utocratic leadership has been in use for a long time. An Autocratic leader uses his or her authority to lead the team of subordinates with a boss-centric or centralized power approach. These leaders are a bit dominating, could be aggressive, and take little or no feedback from their subordinates. You’ll find such leaders in the army or military where a lot of discipline is the key to work efficiently. However, when a solid and determined vision needs to be followed, any field could witness an autocratic leader. 

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Characteristics of Autocratic Leadership:

These leaders have a clear set of goals and visions. They expect their subordinates to follow the instructions to complete the goals. To do so, these leaders frequently monitor everyone’s way of working. 

Autocratic leaders take control of almost everything and seek no help or suggestions. They know what they are doing and therefore do not need any guidance. 

They are confident, powerful, and are assured that the task will be accomplished as per their plans. These leaders never lose control of their dreams. They hold on to it strongly and accomplish everything at the desired time. 

The dominating and aggressive nature of autocratic leaders is what makes the organization reach its accomplishments. These leaders never stand weak in front of their subordinates. They maintain superiority. 

Autocratic leaders do not waste time in socializing or discussing inputs from others. They see the problem, make the plan, take the decision, and convey it to the subordinates with the procedure to follow. 

From the above key characteristics, you might wonder that these leaders are bossy. Well, they are bossy and that’s necessary in some cases. As a subordinate, one might not like working for an autocratic leader unless the subordinate has similar goals and attitude. 

Elon Musk, Founder and CEO of SpaceX, CEO of Tesla Cars somewhat has autocratic leadership traits. He has successfully built an empire starting from a very young age. His leadership brought SpaceX and NASA to collaborate for the City on Mars mission. The man is a genius and he had proved his visions to be realistic. 

Elon had a purpose, a goal, and confidence to build a cheaper space rocket. Even Neil Armstrong didn’t believe Elon’s idea until Elon proved it to the world. Similar case with Tesla as the company founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning was having a bit of a crisis. Tesla car’s future was uncertain until Elon came into the picture. Elon turned Tesla car’s future into a glowing victory. But how did he achieve all this?

Elon learned computer programming by himself at a very young age. He was 12 when he sold his first computer program, a space game called BlaStar, for $500. He was a leader of himself. He and his brother created online city guide software named ZIP2 in 1995. ZIP2 was a big success. After selling the company and receiving his share, Elon started another company called X.com, which was an online banking company. X.com led Musk to become a