Good leaders

This is a great discussion post for this week because this past week in the Army, I was in a promotion board and some topics focused on leadership. In my opinion, if you have the skills to be a leader, then you can be effective in any environment. According to ADP 6-22, qualities of a leader are character, presence, intellect, lead, develops, and achieves. First off, you must have character to be a leader; in Army terms, you have to live the Army values, have empathy, follow the Warrior Ethos, and be disciplined. Next, is presence, you have to be confident in what you do and have military bearing. Third, intellect includes your expertise in your field and is mentally fit. Fourth, you have to lead others and build trust. Next, a leader has to develop their subordinates, while bettering themselves and everyone else around them. Last but not least, they achieve to get results. (2012, p. 5). To translate this into civilian terms, it is the same. A leader has to show that they have character, be there physically, have knowledge, develop others and themselves, and achieve goals in order to lead.

In my course of being in the Military, as well as experiencing life on the civilian side, I have seen many leaders, some who are my role model to this day. In high school, I had this counselor who I did not realize until I graduated, was a leader to me. I saw him work with students and helped them with whatever they needed. To me, he was just doing what he was supposed to do. Looking back, if I had to model after someone, it would be him. Although he was not necessarily in the role to lead, I looked up to what he did. I noticed that he was a man of character, he was always there when you needed him, he knew what he was preaching, he helped students mold into who they are, and at the end of the day, he got all of us to graduate.

Second, in the Army I have a Warrant Officer to look up to. The Army’s ratio of females is 51% and only 17% of these females are leaders. When I first joined the JAG office, there was only one other female there; she took me under her wings until I was comfortable enough to do things on my own. She made sure that I knew where I was going, had a place to stay, understood the material, etc. Now that I am used to my job and role, it is now my duty to do the same to new soldiers coming in, females and males. At the end of the day, leading is not any different in any terms. Robbins and Judge defined leadership as “the ability to influence a group toward the achievement of a vision or set of goals” (2015, p. 332). The Army’s definition of leadership is “The process of influencing people by providing purpose, direction, and motivation to accomplish the mission and improve the organization” (2012, p. 11). If you look at the two definitions, it does not look like there lays a difference. Even Liu defines leadership as “the process of giving meaningful direction to collective effort and causing willing effort to be expended to achieve collective goals” (2010, p. 19). This brings me back to my original statement that if one has the necessary skills to be a leader, then they can be a leader in any environment.

References

Department of the Army. (2012, August). ADP 6-22 Army Leadership. Retrieved April 6, 2016.

Liu, C. (2010). Leadership: Qualities, skills, and efforts. Interbeing, 4(2), 19.

Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T.A. (2015). Organizational behavior (16th edition). New York: Pearson ISBN 0133507645