Categories Of Leadership And Their Followers

Leaders are charismatic people entrusted with the burden of forwarding a course with the help of followers. Leadership cannot be performed in a vacuum. There must be the members or the followers and objective of leadership. It can take place under any condition and any reason at all; in a company for team building functions, in marriages, religious settings, and what have you. Leadership and their followers is a subject that is widely discuss in today’s society mostly due to the development of things in modern settings which calls for leadership positions. No wonder why there are many institutions dedicated to raising leaders in the society. For the proper execution of a goal under specialize condition involving many people like the corporate entity and other organizations there has to be a leader to champion the course that will lead to the achievement of goals. Because, attaining the set goals are crucial and the fact that a leader no matter how charismatic, intelligent, efficient and smart, cannot act in isolation, he or she will need contribution from others and the way to go about it is to act as a team working together to achieve an aim. How this is done plus the different categories of leadership and their followers is up for discussion.

Leadership Qualities

Leadership is a complex role needing a whole lot of things or qualities to enforce their performance. These features are what qualify one as a leader and most times it is inborn and sometimes acquired. So before commencing with the topic proper – categories of leadership and their followers, here are some features that makes one a leader.

I. Charismatic qualities: A leader must have a charismatic habit that endears people to him or her. A charismatic personality has the habit of making people tow their line or accept their views without much effort. This traits is highly required if you wish to become an effective leader; gain respect and audience from your followers. If you do not possess the charismatic traits look for a way to acquire one.

II. Intelligence: ability to understand issues easily without much fuss is a desirable quality that a leader must have. Remember that as a leader you must be ahead of your followers at all times and this involves exhibiting high amount of intelligence. However, even though intelligence is required from a leader, he or she may have a member that is more intelligent. In this setting the leader is expected to play smart.

III. Cleverness: Smartness is all about intelligence and more. It begins where intelligence stop. An intelligent person may not be smart, while you can do without intelligence you can never cope without smartness. The reason is that as an intelligent person you are suppose to understand things without much explanation but been smart requires that you not only be intelligent but know how to effectively activate your knowledge to bring the optimal yield.

IV. Equity: A leader must practice fairness in all dealings with his or her members

V. Educated: A leader must have acquired basic education that makes him or her stand out from the pack. Education may not necessarily be a formal one, having knowledge or hands on experience combined with smartness will place you ahead of your followers any day.

These are some of the qualities of a leader next is to take a look at the categories of leadership and their followers.

Categories Of Leadership And Followers

1) The blind leading the blind: This is type of leadership is based on ignorance. Ever wonder why some teams fail? Well the reason might not be far fetched from the fact that some leaders are not well equipped with the know-how required to achieve an aim, they lack most if not all the qualities discussed above. This makes them blind and if they have a follower that will certainly be the case of a blind leading the blind

2) The blind leading the seeing: It is rather unfortunate that there are people – surprisingly intelligent ones, willing to be led by an ignoramus that calls himself a leader. Blind here is figurative; it can be ascribe to people who lack proper decorum and social etiquette. Example is adolf Hitler, though he was a man with obvious leadership quality, but his erroneous ideas of life makes him a blind leader and the many soldiers who though must have known better, ignore it just to satisfy selfish interest or evade punishment from their leader. Another vital example is tyrannical presidency like the ones found in Africa like Egypt (Mubarak leadership), Uganda (India min), Nigeria (many especially under the military regime) etc. Here the category of leadership and their followers is coercive in nature.

3) The seeing leading the blind: This refers to a type of leadership where the leader possesses all the qualities of leadership and more leading packs of blind people. This type of leadership is very frustrating because apart from the expected leadership role, the person will be moved to educate followers with the view of making them embrace his or her views. Example Jesus and His disciples, Teachers and students, etc.

4) Seeing leading the seeing: This is a perfect category of leadership and their followers. The leader possesses the qualities of leadership and more, while the followers also possess traits that enable leaders to operate efficiently leading to faster goal attainments.

Any leadership no matter the status and condition must constitute these categories of leadership and followers discussed above.