Leaders Are Being Influenced Dominantly By Either Confidence Or Competence Essay, Research Paper

Leaders Are Being Influenced Dominantly By Either Confidence Or Competence

Before a person can take any action to lead their followers, they must

be able to recognize approximately where their followers are in the

developmental cycle. To do this, he or she must watch closely the actions of

his or her followers and determine to what degree their actions are being

influenced dominantly by either confidence or competence.

Once the leader knows the point of confidence vs. competence in his or

her followers, he or she will know which factor to build on. When the leader

feels they have successfully motivated their followers to be both very confident

and competent, and that the followers are ready and have the responsibility to

lead themselves to their goal, then they know that at that point, the followers

are ready to accept some leadership themselves.

Once the followers are ready for some leadership of their own, the next

problem at hand becomes how to go about empowering them with the leadership

responsibilities. Needless to say, the leader cannot simply step away and allow

the responsibility to dump onto the followers; surely if that happened, they

would quickly lose confidence and possibly competence too. Instead, the

leadership and responsibility of the followers should be increased gradually as

they are steadily empowered, and at a rate that depends on how well the newly

gained leadership is handled.

At all times though, the leader must be prepared to guide or even

realign the direction the newly independent followers take. The leader must

also realize the risk of failure in the complete empowerment of his or her

followers, as starting over completely is hardly possible. Were that to occur,

the subject would near definitely experience a severe loss of confidence as a

major consequence to a premature empowerment situation.

And lastly, if a leader is completely successful in empowering his or

her subjects and has sent them well off on their way to their ultimate goal, the

leader must realize that he/she has completed his or her own goal, and is no

longer needed as holder of the leader position. Most likely, they must resign

(or retire, which ever term better applies to the situation). By resignation

meaning moving on to the next situation to start anew, the cycle continuing.