Leadership

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Introduction
Leadership means different things to different people world over and different things in different circumstances. The perception of leadership usually depends on the philosophies, values, cultures and professions of those who define it. It relates to community leadership, political, and religious leadership differently. Leadership is generally defined as the art of inspiring or influencing others towards the leader’s goals. Therefore, a leader is an individual who possesses the ability to motivate and influence his subjects. Leaders are found in multitudes of venues and as such, what constitutes leadership varies a great deal. There are many different identified styles of leadership. There is transformational leadership style that is based on building relationships and motivating staff members, a democratic leadership style that encourages open communication and collective decision-making, autocratic leadership style where leaders make individual decisions without input from the firm and Laissez-faire leadership that encourages little or no supervision from employees (Kuhnert 87). Although leadership means different thing to many people, there are a few essential leadership skills that a leader must have: they are relationship building, delegation, collective decision making and effective communication. This paper seeks to give account on what leadership means to five identified leaders (political leader, religious leader, organizational leader, school and a hospital leader) in their respective professions.

Leadership is never equal. While the language might be similar, terms, implications, and styles are different in the various professions.
Nursing
I had the chance to talk to a nurse who works with Jackson Memorial Hospital (Miami). She describes nursing as a discipline of practice and political acts. According to her, leadership in nursing is all about thinking critically, taking action and advocacy- and it applies to all functions and segments of the nursing practice. This leadership plays an essential role in the lives of the nurses themselves and patients and impacts immensely on our country’s entire health system. She describes a good nursing leadership and emphasizes that there should be steady and energized leaders across the discipline’s functions and segments that are visible, credible, courageous and inspirational to the other junior nurses.
She appreciates that leadership is a proportioned responsibility and that if nurses in all the functions and segments of practice and at the different leadership levels maximize their leadership abilities and skills, the patients and organizational teams will all benefit. Her idea of leadership involves leaders undertaking to coach, support, mentor, reward, and attract other budding leaders at all levels in the healthcare structure. She insists that nurse leaders like her must pay close attention to the need of multiple generations of practicing nurses and put in place mechanisms to attract new employees, ideas and new energy into the nursing leadership. Further, she notes that for proper service delivery, leaders in this field must develop innovative models for service delivery that reduce waiting, leads to improved access to healthcare and strengthens the whole healthcare system.
Political leadership
The world as we know now is full of many aspiring political leaders but very few live up to the political principles. In fact, many political leaders seem to severely lack some of the most important leadership qualities, such as integrity and accountability. Political leaders are essential in every government. Political leaders are responsible for assessing the distribution of power and resources and building relationships with stakeholders.
I had the chance to talk to Senator Andrew Johnson who is the Senator from North Carolina. He argues that leadership in the political framework requires a long-term good of the State rather than the short-term personal interests. He says that he never allows his decisions to be dictated by public opinions. Instead, he changes the public opinion to support excellent policy making. Mr. Johnson attributes charisma and integrity to his success in political leadership. As a leader, he notes, one should make decisions based on what will be best for the greatest number of people as opposed to making decisions that will please on a few members of the society.
Johnson notes that taking responsibility is one of the key leadership qualities. He maintains that while it is very hard for leaders to take the blame, he has always found a way to accept responsibility for the mistakes and acknowledge the political contribution to the problem. Finally, he notes that keeping the constituents happy should be the goal of any politician.
Religious Leadership
For this kind of leadership, I spoke to Pastor Steve Brown founder of the Church of the Rock International Ministries. His idea of leadership is way different. He says that the best place to start defining leadership is with Jesus. He personified leadership and directed thinking and led people towards truth, love forgiveness and eternal life. He describes himself as influencing and developing Christians to accomplish the purpose that they were called for using supernatural power. He leads a church that helps the followers of Christ function within Gods purpose for the church, his mission for the church and to glorify Christ in all and through all situations. The result is that there is a breakthrough with the love of Christ and salvation to the sinners. As a leader of the church, he notes that the best gift that a church leader can give to the congregation Jesus Christ. He further notes that programs and excellent facilities are not essential and are merely tools and not the main attraction. His view of leadership is different and involves servant leadership, being a good teacher, performing community service and organizing volunteers to achieve desired goals. He is not keen to become a competent administrator and a dynamic leader.
Organizational Leader
I also spoke to Mr. Ted Mosby a private Chief Executive Officer at I and M Holdings. He explains that the company is affected by the personality of the founding leader and the culture imposed at the foundation of the company. He notes that he provides inspiration, objectives and operational oversight to his company that is geared towards achieving the ultimate vision. His goal as an organizational manager is to develop leadership and management skills of employees who have the interests of the company a heart and who are competent enough to act. He chooses what type of leadership is to be used in what situations. He, for example, uses autocratic leadership style when he has some serious decisions to make and democratic style when he needs to have input from the employees.
He reveals that successful company or an organization must create corporate policies, organize, plan, control and direct organizations resources to achieve the desired goals. Further, it must use the appropriate leadership style at a given time.
Family Leadership
The family is one of the most important organizations in the world, and like other organizations, it needs leadership. I spoke to Mellissa Tabs, a mother of two. She believes she is a leader because she guides her children to be the best they can be. As a good family leader, she notes that one needs to decide what kind of mother or father he or she wants to be. The kids watch closely what the parents do, and therefore we need to make sure we make a good example to them. Mellissa observes that positive communication with children in the family gives better results. Further, she observes that yelling creates a negative effect on the children. For effective leadership, she prescribes that parents should practice self-awareness and self-growth and have a vision for the family’s future.
Conclusion
It should be reiterated that there is a different type of leadership styles, democratic, autocratic, Laissez-Fare and transformational leadership style. Different kinds of leaders use the preferable leadership style at any given point to achieve success. It is no doubt that leadership means different thing to different people (Yukl 123). We have grown in different places, with different people doing unique things and as such our leadership skills have been affected. We have been impacted either positively or negatively, and we must accordingly impact on the people. Notably, everyone has a unique view of leadership. This view is based on current and past influence on organizational styles, pressures and people within those environments. That said, though; we must begin to deeply think about the leadership and the kind of leaders we need to better our society. We must understand the context and the view of leadership and adopt an appropriate style to implement leadership principles better.
Works Cited
Kuhnert, Karl W. “Transforming leadership: Developing people through delegation.” (1994).
Yukl, Gary A. “Leadership in organizations.” (2002).