Q1. Suggest some personal traits of leader you have known.

Which traits do you believe are

most valuable? Why?

Traits are distinguishing qualities or characteristics of a person, while character is the sum total
of these traits. There are hundreds of personality traits, far too many to be discussed here.
Instead, we will focus on a few that are crucial for a leader. The more of these you display as a
leader, the more your followers will believe and trust in you.

Traits of a Good Leader

• HONEST - Display sincerity, integrity, and candor in all your actions. Deceptive
behavior will not inspire trust.
• COMPETENT - Base your actions on reason and moral principles. Do not make
decisions based on childlike emotional desires or feelings.
• FORWARD-LOOKING - Set goals and have a vision of the future. The vision must be
owned throughout the organization. Effective leaders envision what they want and how to
get it. They habitually pick priorities stemming from their basic values.
• INSPIRING - Display confidence in all that you do. By showing endurance in mental,
physical, and spiritual stamina, you will inspire others to reach for new heights. Take
charge when necessary.
• MAGNANIMITY- means giving credit where it is due. A magnanimous leader ensures
that credit for successes is spread as widely as possible throughout the company.
Conversely, a good leader takes personal responsibility for failures. This sort of reverse
magnanimity helps other people feel good about themselves and draws the team closer
together. To spread the fame and take the blame is a hallmark of effective leadership.
• INTELLIGENT - Read, study, and seek challenging assignments.
• FAIR-MINDED - Show fair treatment to all people. Prejudice is the enemy of justice.
Display empathy by being sensitive to the feelings, values, interests, and well-being of
others.
• BROAD-MINDED - Seek out diversity.
• A SENSE OF HUMOR- is vital to relieve tension and boredom, as well as to defuse
hostility. Effective leaders know how to use humor to energize followers. Humor is a
form of power that provides some control over the work environment. And simply put,
humor fosters good camaraderie.
• COURAGEOUS - Have the perseverance to accomplish a goal, regardless of the
seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Display a confident calmness when under stress.
• STRAIGHTFORWARD - Use sound judgment to make good decisions at the right
time.
• IMAGINATIVE - Make timely and appropriate changes in your thinking, plans, and
methods. Show creativity by thinking of new and better goals, ideas, and solutions to
problems. Be innovative!
• BUILDING EXCELLENCE- Leaders do not command excellence, they build
excellence. Excellence is "being all you can be" within the bounds of doing what is right
for your organization.
• CHARISMA- is a positive energy and an enthusiasm that inspires others to change.
When a leader possesses charisma, their warmth and joy is contagious. They don't waste
 time focusing on what cannot be done and why; they are excited, passionate and
optimistic regardless of whatever challenges come their way. People eagerly follow
charismatic leaders.
• DESIRE TO SERVE OTHERS- Authentic leaders genuinely desire to serve others
through their leadership.

CONCLUSION:
According to us the leader should have all of the above traits to prove him to be a good leader.
And the most valuable traits of the leader are:

• Be tactically and technically proficient

• Know yourself and seek self-improvement
• Know your workers and look out for their welfare
• Keep your workers informed
• Set the example
• Ensure the task is understood, supervised and accomplished
• Train your workers as a team
• Make sound and timely decisions
• Develop a sense of responsibility in your subordinates
• Employ your unit in accordance with its capabilities
• Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions

Inshort it can be said that the Intrinsic traits such as intelligence, good looks, height and so on are
not necessary to become a leader. Anyone can cultivate the proper leadership traits.

Q2. Does it make sense to you that a leader should develop an individualized relationship
with each follower? Explain advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

According to us the leader–member relationship varies from situation to situation. It can be

individualized it may not be individualized depending upon the situation as being discussed in
the Contingency theory. Leaders can actively develop the positive relationships with each
subordinate, although the positive relationship will have a different form for each person. For
example, one person might be treated with “consideration,” another with “initiating structure”
depending upon what followers need to feel involved and to succeed.

As we know that Management puts the accent on planning, on creating stability and routine,
allocating responsibility, controlling and solving problems, taking care of compliancy,
emphasizing the contractual commitments, keeping the power, distance and rationality of the
manager, approaching the environment creatively. But leadership emphasize more vision and
mission, creating change and renovation, motivation and inspiration, creating involvement,
stimulating extra effort, interest in others and intuition thereof of the leader, empowerment of the
others, a pro-active attitude and creating possibilities and conditions.
Leader is one who is selected on the basis of elections and a leader should know his followers
theirs problems and have an interaction with there followers to resolve the internal conflicts.
Leader is one who keeps the followers on achieving target but its also depends on the size of
organization if followers are in thousands or millions so a leader should have team whom he
have given the power to lead and control and they are responsible to him and they are the one
with whom leader in contact personally

If a leader has 1 million followers so he can give the power to 10 people to lead one lac so the
work can be divided and the leader can be informed what their followers want and what they are
doing, through this followers can also express their feelings and motivation to their leader.

EXAMPLE:

The training of a sports-team is a nice example of developing the individualized relationship with
each member. A football-team from Greece becomes then Olympic Champion, without a doubt
less due to the present individual talent than to the cohesion of the team. And this again is an
achievement of the trainer.

ADVANTAGES:

The advantages of having individualized relation with the followers are as follows:-

LEADER AS A COORDINATOR:

The leader can make sure that no important task will be overlooked, and can take care that
everybody at all times have a task. He can make sure that most of the resources are put in for the
tasks that need most time. He can make sure that everybody got a task that is most appropriate to
his possibilities. In short, he can take care of the coordination.

DIRECTION GIVING:

The leader can make sure that the whole team goes in one direction, so that individual members
do not have to worry about a direction, and do not have to keep an eye on the others, to see if
they keep more or less to the same direction.

STIMULATOR:

The leader can stimulate the dialogue between the team-members. He can make sure that people
listen to each other, even if they wouldn’t do that easily otherwise.

DISADVANTAGES:

Besides the advantages of the individualized relationship with subordinates, there are many
disadvantages of it. These are given as follows:
BIASNESS:

Because of leader’s individualized relationship with subordinates some times it may lead to the
biasness among the workers which lower the motivational level of the workers affecting the
efficiency and effectiveness of the organization.

PERSONAL LIKING AND DISLIKING:

It may lead to the personal liking and disliking of the leader for the subordinates working in the
organization.

DISCRIMINATION:

Leader may give offers and appoint the worker of his own liking to the task without viewing the
talent of the other worker; it may lead to the discrimination among the workers.

DISPUTES:

Some times due to this situation many disputes may arise among the workers, it will affect the
performance of the workers leading towards the lack of trust and coordination among them.

CONCLUSION:

In general, the leader can take care of all the tasks that come under management, or make sure
that these are taken care of: planning, distribution of responsibilities, controlling and solving
problems, making sure that people work together, taking care of a good bond with the
environment, making sure that contractual commitments are taken care of, etc.

Also the leader-member exchange theory supported the idea of individualized relationship
with the followers as they says that high-quality relation ships have a positive outcome for
leaders, followers, work units , and the organization. Leader can attempt to build individualized
relationship with each subordinate as a way to meet needs for both consideration and structure.