Leadership and mentoring Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4750 words

Leadership and mentoring - Essay Example The effects of leadership decisions on organizational growth are many.In fact, appropriate leadership practices can highly enhance the performance of a particular organization, an issue that needs to be taken into consideration when having to evaluate the role of leaders in establishing and promoting organizational strategies. In any case, leadership has been proved to be a critical concept for organizations operating in different industries. However, in most cases, the ability of leaders to promote effective strategies is doubted; failures in providing guidelines or making accurate provisions in regard to the potential needs of a specific plan seem to be common aspects of the leadership worldwide. Current study reviews the characteristics and the requirements of leadership as compared to mentoring. Reference is particularly made to the potential interaction between leadership and mentoring and the role of its of these concepts in the success of plans, either in the short or the long term. Both these concepts, leadership and mentorship, are explored in the context of the business environment. At the same time, the personal perceptions on leadership are presented. Using the example of leadership in work, the personal responses to the needs of such a role are described and explained. It is proved that leadership can highly affect the success of projects in all sectors; moreover, the personal experiences on leadership, as evaluated through an appropriate theoretical framework, lead to the following assumption: leadership and mentoring have a key role in the success of organizational plans. Moreover, the involvement of leadership and mentoring in the context of a business can be made clear in all parts of the business; in the workplace leadership is critical for the development of an effective relationship between the employee and the employer. In the long term, the success of leaders is necessarily evaluated by their competencies and experience, but also by their willingness to support all aspects of their organization’s activities without setting their own interest as a priority. 2. Literature review on leadership and mentoring 2.1 Definitions The development of leadership has been related to a series of different sectors; in fact, leadership has been involved in many social, economic and political activities. According to Daft and Lane (2008) the value of leadership as a social phenomenon has been identified quite early, even from the ancient times. However, it was just in ‘the twentieth century that scientific research on leadership first appeared’ (Daft and Lane 2008). A key characteristic of leadership is its complexity. More specifically, due to the high range of activities in which it is involved, leadership has been described using different criteria (Daft and Lane 2008). A common definition of leadership is the following one: leadership is ‘an influence relationship among leaders and followers who intend re al changes and outcomes that reflect their shared purposes’ (Daft and Lane 2008, p.4). In other words, leadership is defined by the perceptions of leaders and followers, as these perceptions are likely to affect the style of the leaders but also the relationship between leaders and followers. The above definition has an important implication: no reference is made to the potential independency of leaders from their followers neither to the independency of the latter from the former. In other words, leaders and followers are considered as fully committed to the achievement of certain common goals, a fact that cannot be verified by the social and economic practice. In fact, many leaders tend to decide independently, without being influenced by the percepti