The document discusses 5 important leadership traits: 1) Ability to inspire subordinates through passion about the organization's vision and mission, 2) Integrity and maintaining high ethical standards to build trust, 3) Self-discipline including being structured and sticking to goals, 4) Ability to effectively teach others the necessary skills through preparation, explanation, demonstration and practice, 5) Taking a scientific approach to problem-solving by defining problems, formulating hypotheses, testing solutions, analyzing evidence and drawing conclusions. These traits were exemplified by the author's professor who led a successful project and helped the author to learn important skills.
1. LEADERSHIP TRAITS
Prepared for
Dr. Ben Baliga Ph.D., P.E., P.E.M.
Professor and Graduate Director,
Engineering Management
Saint Cloud State University
Prepared by
Sathish Yaramada
Tech Id : 12190144
February 11, 2014
2. Abstract
This report presents the 5 most important traits that a leader should
posses amongst the 18 leadership traits defined by Peterson and Plowman. I
have presented the traits of my professor under whom I did my project. The five
highly ranked traits which I rate are:
1.
Ability to inspire
2.
Integrity.
3.
Self-discipline
4.
Ability to teach others.
5.
Scientific approach
3. TABLE OF CONTENT
page no.
1. INTRODUCTION
4
2. FIVE IMPORTANT TRAITS
5
•
Ability to inspire
5
•
Intigrity
5
•
Self-descipline
6
•
Ability to teach others
6
•
Scientific approach to problems
7
3. CONCLUSION
8
4. REFERENCE
9
4. LEADERSHIP
TRAITS
A leader has to achieve the goals with objectives as well as emotions balancing
the team's need. The common activities of a leader are planning, organizing,
directing and commanding. He need to listen to the ideas of the subordinates
and has to think about things from other people’s perspective, that are in the
best interest of the team, might not be great. It is hard to describe Leadership,
only through hard work and experience one can acquire the skills that can lead
others effectively. There a number of different leadership styles, the best leaders
share some common traits.
Peterson and Plowman presented 18 traits based on physical qualities,
personal attributes, character attributes and intellectual attributes. They are:
1. Health
2. Vitality
3. Endurance
4. Personal magnetism
5. Cooperativeness
6. Enthusiasm
7. Ability to inspire
8. Persuasiveness
9. Forcefulness
10. Tact
11. Integrity
12. Humanism
13. Self-discipline
14. Stability
15. Hard work
16. Mental capacity
17. Ability to teach others
18. Scientific approach to problems
5. A person who is being within the company can be a good leader
rather than a one from outside. Many successful organizations follow this,
recently Microsoft made Satya Nadella as CEO who is within the company for
more than 20 years.
FIVE IMPORTANT TRAITS
The five important traits that I noticed from my professor under
whom I did my project during under graduation are:
1.
Ability to inspire:
The ability to inspire the people is the skill that improves the
performance of the subordinates and reaches the success. The inspirational
leaders feel passionately about the vision and mission of the organization. He
has to inculcate that passion into the coworkers in a way that even they have to
feel passionate. It is not that easy to build passion in to the others since others
may not have same zeal and enthusiasm levels as that leader .I was given a
project which was earlier tried by seniors but they failed to complete the project
since project has many complexities. The project title is BUS
ENTRYAUTHENTICATION AND STUDENT RECORD, It needs a good grip
over java programming and a new platform called eclipse on which the
programming has to done. I have little knowledge on programming and I’m
new to the platform. Even I have to concentrate on hardware components like
sensor, rfid and IC’s. He is very passionate towards the project and had a clear
vision and mission over it. He stood as backbone to our team and inspired a lot
to throw the misconceptions from our minds. Responsibility a factor which
make us more inspired, he gives individual responsibilities in project.
Integrity:
Integrity is the most important trait a leader has to possess. In any
organization a leader has to lead the subordinates towards the success. A leader
is the role model for the group to which he has to influence. And he has to
model the group’s behavior towards success. This is why he has to maintain
high standards of character and integrity in on and off the duty. Without the
integrity a leader can never gain the respect and built confidence of
subordinates in the organization. Individual integrity is never easy and is not
recommended, this is the most difficult of all traits because of its complicated
nature and multiple dimensions.
The professor, leader of my project has some very good professional
ethic. He is a person who matches his actions with the words he spell. He is an
optimist, never gets his confidence down if he fails to complete a task, he learn
from the failures and keep moving forward. We learned a lot from his character
and ethics, this not only helped us in professional life but also in personal life.
2.
6. He has a clear vision over the project he takes and this helped me what actually
I have to do and what is my role in the project.
Self-discipline:
The common trait in the successful people is self-discipline
Discipline is a fundamental element in obtaining goals, dreams and desire. Any
person building an organization, Self-discipline is must. We have to constantly
believe in our purpose. Discipline keeps us going when times are tough and it
makes the bad times easier to get through. Having discipline means being very
structured in our approach to reach our goal. Discipline sometimes requires
some sacrifice to reach the end goal. An athlete will have a training schedule,
competition, diet plan. They will follow this until they reach their ultimate goal.
Because they know through disciplined practice they can hone their skills to be
the best they can be, ultimately reaching their goal. Professor of our project is
self-disciplined, stick to his morals. He is timely to the class and never wastes
time on the silly things. Not only in the professional life he maintains the selfdiscipline even in his personal life, he is very strict in his diet and seems
healthy.
3.
4. Ability to teach others
Teaching is not primarily telling. It’s helping other people learn. That
means the focus is on the learners, not the teacher. . Teaching a skill involves
five basic steps: Preparation, Explanation, Demonstration, Practice,
Application, and Time Balance in teaching a skill.
Preparation: It is the first step in teaching a skill, A leader has to
obtain the necessary equipment and supplies in sufficient quantity so that the
skill can be demonstrated, taught and practiced. Preparation has to be done in
such a way that the learner have to understand the concept.
Explanation: Introduce the subject by giving some background about
its usefulness and applications and describe the subject in a simple way. The
explanation should create a desire to become proficient in the skill.
Demonstration: Here you have to show how to do the skill.
Demonstration should be done in such a way that a beginner can understand
what you are teaching.
Practice: Practice makes man perfect, this is very important before
teaching prepare well and practice deliberately before the teaching the
subordinates.
Application: This is the last step and we have to apply the skill learnt
in to the practical world.
My professor has good programming skills. We being a non IT
background feared about the programming part in the project but this skill of
7. our professor helped us a lot. He taught us how to do the programming in
eclipse platform this is the user friendly platform.
5. Scientific approach to the problems:
A leader should have scientific approach to the problem this is most
effective in developing skill in employing the science processes. There are five
methods to be followed for scientific approach.
Sensing and defining the problem
Formulating hypothesis
Testing the likely hypothesis
Analysis interpretation and evaluation of evidence
Formulating conclusions
He has a scientific approach towards the problem and has wide
technical knowledge. He first senses the problem and selects the best
technology to analysis interpretation and evaluates then comes to a clear
conclusion.
8. CONCLUSION
There may be some leaders who may fail even if they follow these
traits; the truth is there no magic combination of characteristics that makes a
leader successful because they vary up on the different circumstances. This
doesn’t mean that one cannot be a good leader. He has to understand various
approaches to leadership, so that he can know the right approach to good leader.
