Leader Essay, Research Paper

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