Key Characteristics That Define a Leader and How Leadership Can Essay - 1

Key Characteristics That Define a Leader and How Leadership Can Motivate Employees - Essay Example The paper tells that presence of motivating and inspiring leaders elicits responses from followers that work to the advantage of every stakeholder involved. Gandhi, Abraham Lincon, and Napolean are examples of great leadership that led their nations forward. There is, however, considerable debate as to what constitutes inspiring and motivating leadership. The usual suspects are personality traits, which are further subdivided into five traits, nurturing, and training, environment and heredity. Some of the key ingredients necessary for leadership in the new age are the vision and the ability to handle new situations and adapt aptly. Furthermore, the presence of charisma and a good feel elicits positive responses necessary to bring about change. While one may have the personality traits, he must also understand what motivates employees and subjects and how their motivation can be aligned with the goals of the organization. The ability to empathize with the employees is one of the key f actors that determine the quality and success of leaders. While we shall discuss what motivates employees in detail, a key motivating factor is the kind of work they are doing. This is where the leadership’s role to identify what is best for each individual employee comes into play. Leadership is different to management and the differentiating factor is the role of charisma. Leadership and management are two completely different phenomena and most individuals do not exceed at both simultaneously. Organizations today need to breed leadership rather than waiting for a leader to come along. It is also important that while nurturing leadership, management skills and tactics are kept intact. The importance of vision and a clear sense of direction into the long-term goals of the organization cannot be underplayed at any stage. This is what differentiates the functional leaders from the visionary leaders.

Compare and Contrast Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Essay

Compare and Contrast Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X - Essay Example The Martin Luther king’s dream was wide; it included poverty and what he called â€Å"militarism†. Today, Luther King is known for his tremendous efforts against racial discrimination. As much as King fought against racial discrimination, it is vast and complex, and cannot be treated as a single subject. This is because it included the social, education, political and economic discrimination of Black people in America. In 1962, King, On behalf of the Black community, made an appeal to President Kennedy to complete his work of giving freedom to the Black community (Schlueter 60). However, because Martin Luther King came from a background of loving parents and later Christian leader, he preached peaceful demonstrations in all the campaigns he was involved in. America will remember Dr. Luther, for his peaceful movements such as Black Civil Rights Bill enforcement as well as Supreme Court Ruling against the laws of Jim Crow. His major strategy was peaceful protesting; mostl y inspired by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. In this various speeches, Luther, created an image of an activist of peace across the United States (Schlueter 70 -77). Malcolm X was a frustrated person from his childhood age until his times of changing America’s ideology about African-Americans. Malcolm sought refuge in Islamic nations and used the same to protest in his campaign against racism. In his protest, he did not preach for peaceful demonstration, but, taught the Black people to use anything in their power to reject racism. Unlike Luther King, Malcolm X disliked white people because of their oppressiveness especially the poor Black poor people in the ‘ghetto’ (Ladenburg 31). However, Malcolm X, just like Luther King, wanted to end racism and the best for the Black community. Before Martin Luther began his journey to fleeing his fellow Black from racial segregation, ‘Negros’ had no rights to vote or register