Leadership styles and practices have evolved over the last century in response to changing work environments and employee needs.

Based on your personal experience, discuss important leadership characteristics and ways in which leaders can build effective relationships with employees.

Describe whether you believe such leadership traits can be learned, and refer to the Action-Observation-Reflection Model, the weekly textbook, and the University Library Readings for additional information to support your response.

Conclude with any additional content on the context of this discussion question.

ANSWER

Leadership

Leaders possess and exhibit unique and different leadership traits. Nevertheless, exemplary leaders possess and exhibit five main characteristics: leaders model the way for others, setting the right and emulatable example and principles, hence, being role models to their employees and followers. Second, leaders inspire a common and shared vision among the followers, where they create a futuristic image and invite their followers to work towards the vision. Third, leaders challenge processes put in place by seeking more opportunities to improve an organization. Fourth, leaders have the courage to enable others to work by inspiring, fostering collaborative work, and building dynamic employee teams (Kouze & Posner, 2013). Finally, leaders recognize and award other people’s efforts, encouraging them by heart, and believe in working hard and smart to attain the set goals and shared vision. Leaders can build effective relationships with employees, mostly by having cordial relationships characterized by open and two-way communication. This can be strengthened by adopting an open-door policy where employees can approach freely and comfortably to discuss corporate related issues such as new ideas, projects, and complaints.

Leaders are both born and made; thus, leadership traits are inherent while others are learned, primarily through experience. The Action-Observation-Reflection model plays a crucial role in describing ways leadership traits can be learned. The A-O-R model explains that through action, observing, and reflecting, people gain experience in their area of expertise, thus learning certain traits. Action stands for what a leader does in leadership positions, including leading and managing a startup business, heading a project team, and driving organizational change. Secondly, while taking action, observing the impacts of decisions made and examining employee’s reactions to one’s behavior is crucial (Curphy, 2014). Thirdly, leaders learn vital lessons from decision impacts, employee reaction to the behavior exhibited, and mitigation strategies for mistakes made. This journey provides a leader with experience, through which he or she learns and acquires diverse leadership traits.

In conclusion, exemplary and successful leaders should be flexible and adaptable with their leadership styles. This helps address diverse situations, as no leadership style is perfect to use in all cases. Leaders can learn through continuous learning, training and development, and most especially through experience.

References

Curphy, G. (. (2014, September 15). How to Learn from Experience. Retrieved from LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140915110708-36824143-how-to-learn-from-experience

Kouze, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2013). The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership – Asia. San Francisco, CA: Wiley.