Developing Passionate Folower

Developing Passionate Followers
Leadership is the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a set of goals. Trait theory holds that leaders cannot be trained, instead, leadership depends on personal attributes such as charisma, courage, decisiveness and being risk-taking, etc. However, this article suggests that inspirational leadership can be developed through training. This view is in line with what behavioral theories of leadership believe.

This article suggests that it is important to distinguish between management and leadership. Good management bring about order and consistency by drawing up plans, design organizational structures and monitoring results against the plans, whereas leaders establish direction by developing a vision of the future and then align people by communicating this vision and inspiring them to overcome hurdles. This author argues that one needs both management skills and leadership to be successful.

Secondly, this article advises that by going through a so called “leadership peak experiences” exercise can help people recognize the profound impact of great leadership and the fact that leadership is a trainable set of skills. This exercise asks employees to recall how a leader inspired them to overcome doubts and difficulties or to achieve a seemingly insurmountable goal. This exercise can help managers learn from the past experiences how to encourage employees to tackle problems and meet challenges.

I believe that passion serves as the best source of motivation. Managers assign tasks and monitor the process while leaders instill into employees a sense of purpose. It is the sense of purpose that will drive employees to pursue the goal and take ownership of what they do.

In addition to the above, I feel that in most cases the best way to inspire employees is setting oneself as a role model.   There is an old saying that action is much more powerful than words. If you are a passionate, sensible, hard-working and...