Inspire Your Readers With Your Leadership Essay!

The best example of leadership is leadership by example’, says Jerry McClain of Seattle, WA. Good leadership quality is something that is not common among people. All of us cannot be good leaders because we need some followers! One cannot exactly teach someone to be a good leader. Leadership is a quality that one has to develop within oneself. However, by reading a good leadership essay and listening to a discourse given by a great leader, one can have an insight as to what leadership basically is.

Though Wikipedia or The Oxford dictionary or the Webster’s dictionary may have different definitions for leadership, it is rather difficult to explain what it is all about. If one has to do that, it would take ages! Each person has his own way of executing a certain task, which will give the same result. It is not always the same. However, to make things easier to understand, it is agreed that there are basically three types of leadership based on the behaviors or the traits of leadership which are as follows.

• •    Autocratic leadership
• •    Laissez-faire leadership
• •    Democratic leadership

• Autocratic leadership is almost equal to dictatorship. An autocratic leader commands his followers. The leader does not desire the participation of his members in making any decision. Rather, this decision making authority lies solely in the hands of the leader, whether good or bad. This type of behavior is not always suitable for all kinds of groups as they may not always produce effective results. The best example of autocratic leadership is the military troops in which the leader just commands and the others follow without raising any question whatsoever. It requires implicit obedience from the followers’ side.

  Laissez-faire leadership is another type of leadership behavior. The French term ‘laissez-faire’ means to ‘let do’. It implies just that. The leader lets the members do whatever they feel is correct. This is a situation in which the members are very experienced in what they do and all that the leader is expected to do is supervise or watch over the tasks performed. Though it may sound good, this type of leadership is not actually called leadership as the leader does not lead! He just fills the shoes of a supervisor. This may not produce effective results all the time and may also lead to confusion and mayhem as the control is not with the leader.

  Democratic leadership is one which is considered more suitable for most of the tasks. Here, the leader ensures that all his members participate in the activities undertaken. Although the final decision is made by the leader, he invites the suggestions and opinions of all the persons in his team. In spite of the fact that this teamwork or co-operation delays the execution of the task at hand, it produces better and more effective results than those of the autocratic and laissez faire leadership behaviors.

  Thus a leadership essay mainly deals with these types. Though it is true that leadership cannot be taught there are certain traits that qualify a person to be a leader. Some of these traits include having a clear vision, openness, conflict management, decision making, management of a crisis situation, dedication, assertiveness and so on. Leadership is not like mathematics where the solution to a problem can be found easily by using a fixed formula. For instance, a good leader has to be bold enough to make decisions during a crisis. Nobody can hand a prescribed set of formulae on how to manage a crisis. There can be guidelines but not solutions. The leader should be able to handle the situation by himself without anyone to instruct or help him.

  Thus these are some elements to be mentioned in a good essay on leadership. One must be able to obtain a basic picture of what leadership is from a leadership essay. It should inspire the readers!

  Tags: Essay Writing, essay writing tips, good essay, student essay