According to the Cambridge Dictionary (2016), Leadership is the set of characteristics that makes a good leader. Therefore a leader is a person who bears the ‘set of features that are expected from a leader’. All the leadership characteristics cannot be defined and documented accurately, nor can one person possess all these features. The required characteristics may differ from one situation to another, and one desired characteristic may not be much required in another context. Also, there is an argument that leaders are born, not made.

Despite there exist many perspectives and arguments on what traits a leader should have, according to my point of view, there are certain qualities that any leader must have to succeed. Honesty is one utmost characteristic a leader should possess. A leader’s honesty or dishonesty can directly decide whether the team as a whole succeeds or not. If he is not the person who he seems to be, it can break the trust and enthusiasm among follower. Positive thinking is another trait a leader has to have all the time. It’s in his direction the entire team threads, and so the leader has to tempt others in a positive manner. To make others feel positive, the leader himself should be positive thinking.

Another a must- have a characteristic of a leader is the humbleness. If he cannot be humble, then it’s a definite sign that he is destined to fail as a leader. Apart from these characteristics, tolerance and unbiasedness are two other most important traits of a leader. A leader always has to tackle different problematic situations and moreover, the people of different natures. To tackle those problems with the maximum contribution from the others in the team, a leader has to sometimes tolerate even some hard-to- tolerate natures of the people without making them feel disturbed or hurt. Also, the unbiasedness of him in the team is much admirable as people never like to be treated any lesser than others. If the biasedness occurs due to any reason, the maximum contribution of some team members may not be any longer available, and it may also severely affect their personality that someone else was favored over them. I would like to cite trustworthiness and creativity are also of mush importance for a leader as per my point of view.

As a person, I believe that I own many of the desirable characteristics to be the good leader as well as a good team member. I am a trustworthy and a very tolerant person who cares for others often than not. I am often humble and genuine in nature and like to behave ethically as much as possible. I still notice some cases where my personal values conflict with my professional values. Sometimes when I work under pressure to meet deadlines, the heavy workload seems to lessen my temper, and I often feel intolerant towards even some minor mistakes my colleagues make. Though I often regret those situations later, I still cannot completely stand such quick anger under pressure. Also, I sometimes feel not selecting certain people into my workgroup when I see some extreme undesirable natures in their behavior. Even knowing that a leader should not discriminate people, I am not still brave enough to take the challenge of including those extreme natured people in the team.

The worst implication of all these conflicts is that there is a possibility that I can be seen somewhat biased by other people and moreover the guilty conscience I get at the end of the day, either after being short tempered or intentionally excluding certain people from my team.

References

Cambridge Dictionary 2016,’Definition of Leadership’. Viewed on 19 August 2016 athttp://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/leadership

Martindale, N 2011, ‘Leadership Styles: How to handle the different personas’, Strategic Communication Management, vol. 15, no 8, pp 32–35.

Thornton, PB 2013, ‘All leaders want to change the status quo, but they use different means’, Four types of Leaders, viewed on 19 August 2016, https://trainingmag.com/four-types- leaders

Williams, M 2005, ‘Leadership for Leaders’, London: Thorogood.