Introduction
In any environment like in school, workplace, or at home, groups typically need guidance to obtain and achieve their goals and objectives. In this view, each group needs someone to motivate, coordinate and sustain the group leader (Forsyth, 2018). A leader shapes a group’s future by constantly changing a group’s incompetent status into a productive and active group using various personality qualities that remain relevant to leadership styles, and other tactics like power use. A leader who uses all these approaches successfully transforms a group into a successful one that obtains set goals and objectives. This research paper aims to discuss my changing experience as a member of the sports club group in our community through leadership.
Sports Club Group
Our community’s sports club group comprises community members that play soccer for the district to raise funds. The group seeks to ensure that each family from a poor financial background gets access to clean community water like other communities using the funds raised from matches played. However, since 2018 the group failed to effectively obtain the set goals and objectives since it has not reached the halfway mark of the set region required for various reasons. In 2019 the group met and elected Johnson King as the group’s new leader due to a lack of motivation, inadequate coordination, and unstable sustainability of group issues because of ineffective leadership. Employees need to be motivated to them perform well and give the best services to clients (Wille et al., 2018). Since 2019 the leadership change has remarkably transformed the group because it has effectively reached the set objectives. Mainly using power tactics, practical leadership qualities, and effective leadership styles have transformed the group.
Personality Qualities Relevant to Leadership
The dynamics of a group involve influential interpersonal processes such as leadership in groups. When Johnson King took over as a group leader, the group was good but not doing great. A community sports group destined for greatness was not performing well, and Johnson felt the group’s strengths were not exploited fully. He focused on the strategy, structure, systems, and members with optimistic, energetic, and fearless styles. As a group leader, he guided the group using his outstanding qualities of organizing people from inefficiency and disorganization to efficiency and organizing a group that effectively performed its duties.
Previous research indicates that leadership takes place in a group context. For instance, when Johnson took over as the sports club group leader, he sent each member a personal text message expressing massive confidence in the club and encouraged them that change would take place fast. Thus, leadership is a process of influence where members of a group guide each other to pursue collective and personal goals and objectives (Gandolfi & Stone, 2018). Consequently, leadership is a process of influence and not a position in an office through experience leadership (Jain et al., 2018). Johnson’s other personal quality of leadership identifies the group members’ sub-tasks as it pursued its goals. He assigned each task to specific employees who can handle it more professionally.
Studies show that leaders have particular personality characteristics that separated them from the rest. The personality of a leader guarantees stronger relationships among employees and hence, it ensures the successful leadership of a group (Huertas-Valdivia et al., 2019). Other personality qualities include but are not limited to self-monitoring, selfishness, dominance, social motivation, and assertiveness. The experiences under Johnson King as the group leader also show that these personalities’ interactions with the situation help lead a group. Therefore, organized, conscientious, self-controlled, and achievement-oriented people remain most likely to emerge as successful leaders in circumstances that encourage task-oriented leaders (Huertas-Valdivia et al., 2019). Besides that, handling projects promptly satisfy clients’ needs.
On the other hand, extroverted persons lead when the circumstances need interpersonal skills. Johnson as a leader had stable emotions and remained open to new experiences to help the group achieve its goals. Additionally, Johnson’s self-authenticity helped guide the group to its success as he remained aware of his qualities, beliefs, values, and more miniature exhibition of bias when handling self-relevant information. The authenticity made the group members accept him as a leader, hence working in coordination to perform the duties and responsibilities placed upon them. Additionally, his assertiveness helped him to be considered the greatest leader.
Leadership Styles
Johnson applied the implicit leadership theory to ensure the group succeeds in its objectives. In this case, the theory suggests that the leader must ensure hardworking among groups and ensure things get done. The leader must inspire by motivating members to remain positive, encouraged, and dynamic, like when Johnson sent a text message of encouragement and promised change in the group (Hensel & Visser, 2018). The theory also suggests that the leader remains in command, has relationship skills, is caring, truthful, interested in others’ ideologies, is influential, and active (Hensel & Visser, 2018). As a leader, Johnson utilized charisma, likeability, and persistence as suggested by Robert Lord in the Implicit Theory to lead the sports group to success (Forsyth, 2018). Therefore, the leadership theory advocates for inspirational, intelligent, diplomatic, visionary, high integrity, dedication, team-oriented, and relational. Implicit leadership theory asserts that a leader ought to remain motivational, inspiring, caring, open to new ideologies from other members, and relational.
The experiences also demonstrate that Johnson King used various leadership styles like the shared leadership style. Such leadership remains effective, like centralized leadership that emphasizes a leader’s monopoly in power (Hensel & Visser, 2018). Moreover, a shared leadership style reduces the leader’s authority and influence in a group by distributing responsibility for critical leadership functions among each group member. In this view, Johnson King shared essential leadership functions and assigned critical functions of the ground to each member, creating a sense of togetherness that helped achieve the group’s objectives of raising funds to provide tap water to each member in the community.
Charismatic leadership style assisted Johnson in guiding the group to greatness for two years only. In this case, he transformed the group to achieve more in terms of personal satisfaction, growth, and performance. The style helps each group member establish themselves well, enabling them to pursue group objectives and goals that result in the success experienced within and outside the group (Hensel & Visser, 2018). Transactional leadership also involves a leader and a follower cooperating in pursuing the shared goals and objectives. However, the relationship remains based on exchanging resources such as money, time, instruction, and help. In this case, Johnson utilized the transactional style to obtain set goals.
Use of Power Tactics
Power is one of the group-level processes that remain predicated on differentiation in every member’s capability in influencing others. Those that have it make demands that group members might resist. Additionally, power might result in conflicts, hatred, and tension, but it brings order, efficiency, and stability (Mohiuddin, 2017). Some people resist power, but some obey and follow orders without force. Studies indicate that power remains relational and originates in inequalities in control of punishment and resources.
Therefore, when an individual experiences negative and positive outcomes rely on another individual not dependent, it results in differences in power. There are five forms of power: legitimate, referent, coercive, expert power, and reward. In this case, reward power remains considerable because it enables the leader to control the allocation of both personal and impersonal rewards (Mohiuddin, 2017). Johnson King utilized power as a leader through the experiences witnessed to ensure people followed and remained obedient to the directives and instructions that helped achieve the set objectives. In this view, impersonal rewards include awards, food, promotions, while personal rewards include interpersonal reinforcements
Conclusion
Through group experiences, groups require leadership guidance to help in working on setting goals and objectives. Utilizing practical personality qualities relevant to leadership, suitable leadership style, and power motivate, inspire, and guide groups towards a typical course of obtaining set targets. Johnson succeeded in leading the group by effectively using these aspects of his leadership. Therefore, leadership involves a process of influence where each group member guides one another to achieve collective and personal goals. In transforming the group, Johnson King’s personality qualities include self-monitoring, assertiveness, selfishness, motivation, dominance, and social motivation. A shared leadership style allows the leader to share responsibilities that help group functionality. Power could cause conflicts, tension, and aggression, but it could also lead people to obey their leaders, hence achieving set objectives.
References
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