Introduction

The word leader has its root in every strata of society, be it a father in a family who acts as a

nucleus of the family. It may be in the form of a political leader like M .K. Gandhi and Ho

Chi Minh who inspired people to break the shackle from the foreign Intruder and then there

are business Leader. All the foresaid type of leaders has a vision or a goal to comply with.

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize about a business leader and the attributes required

by a business leader to become a better business leader .As stated earlier there are leaders in

every strata, the definition of leadership becomes ambiguous because of the nature every

leader posses. defines leadership as “making happen what you believe in” whereas argues

that leadership involves the relation of influence between a leader and follower. suggests that

“primary function of leadership is to produce change and movement”. All the above

definition emphasizes on the vision and change as the important aspect which revolves

around Leaders and followers.

suggests that business is an integrated set of activities and assets capable of being conducted

and properly managed to provide an economic benefits to investors or owners whereas

argues that business is a legal set up to provide either goods or services or both to consumers.

Thus the above definitions of leadership and business clearly suggests that the two aspects are

the light and dark of the same spectrum ,to properly manage and conduct economic activities

there has to be someone who is willing to guide people to achieve success and in turn obtain

profits.

With the insight into definition of leadership and business we tend to focus on definition of a

better business leader. As a word better is comparative adjective to good and the dictionary

meaning of better is more than the six letters contained in it to name a few it relates to greater

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excellence ,desirable or a standard landmark. suggests that a true Leader deflects more of the

credits towards the team member.

Thus a better business leader is someone who successfully manages people and avenues on

their road to achieve the objective and in turn enabling the organization in achieving a

sustainable economic growth.

Evolution as a Better Leader

suggests five practices of exemplary leadership and argues that leadership is not about

personality, it’s more about the behavior. First he suggests that the leader should Model the

Way, leaders should be the trend setters, to achieve the highest standards they should

replicate their behavior in a way they want others to behave as argued by that people trust

you when you are genuine and authentic, not a replica of someone else. Another Prospective

of modeling the way is the use of authoritative leadership style as stated by which makes

the people working under them understands what they do does matter and it has got some

essence in it, which goes similar to the view of that people follow the person first and then

implement the plan.

Secondly suggests that the leaders should Inspire a Shared Vision ,the leaders should

engage the energies of the people states that in today’s world getting others to follow you

does not only require command and control rather you have to earn their trust ,respect and

confidence, which acts as the key to the sustainable success as a Leader. argues that the

people don’t want to listen to the leader’s vision but rather they want to hear about their own

inspiration. suggests that the vision must have right components and content and should be

effectively articulated and communicated.

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The third practice by is to Challenge the process, he suggests that challenge might have

been an innovative new product, a cutting edge service ,a groundbreaking piece of legislation

or the start up of a new plant, all the challenge involve the case of changing from the status-

quo, another way of contemplating challenge is by the view of who suggests that ignoring

the trend can provide an opportunity to rivals to transform the industry thus a leader should

challenge the ways by following the trends and be able to have the first mover advantage.

The fourth one is to Enable Others to Act suggest that the leaders foster collaboration and

build trust exemplary whereas talks about delegating the assignment by five effective ways

by which you can achieve the success first by appropriately assigning the work to an

individual, secondly is to meet and discuss the assignment with the employee and the

expectation, third is to allow the employee to complete the assignment in the way he/ she

feels comfortable with, fourth is to check the progress of the assignment but do not rush to

the rescue at the first sign of getting away from the track and fifth is to recognize the

employee’s accomplishment and support it with an appropriate appraisal. In a way both of

them talk about the cohesiveness between the leader and the employee similar to the

cohesiveness in a human body between each part of the body, which is very much required

for the organizational success in this highly volatile world.

The last one of Exemplary practice is to Encourage the Heart suggests that genuine act of

caring uplift the spirit and draw people forward. suggest that one of the qualities to be

possessed by the leader is to manage employee with tough empathy. Another way of

interpreting this fact is as suggested by that when people feel comfortable to raise issues with

you ,that means that you have succeeded in creating an atmosphere of cooperation which

leads to organizational success. and both suggest that leader’s should recognize the

contribution and contemplate it with rewards. In a way it is about creating a culture of

celebrating values and victories.

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Effective Leadership Traits

The traits associated with leaders as suggested by divides leadership traits into three

categories Personality traits, Motivational Traits and Cognitive Trait.

Personality trait

The most important trait as a leader is the personality trait which takes us back to the famous

argument (whether leader’s are made or born?) .The general personality traits are the self

confidence which is very much required in a leader. states that self confidence is foremost

quality in being a leader and talks about self confidence as an indicative measurement of

being self assured in judgments, ideas, decisions and capabilities. Both of them argue that self

confidence is very much required in a leader so that he can ventilate his vision and ideas to

his followers with poise and confidence. Passion and Self confidence contemplate each other,

if a leader is passionate about his ideas it shows in the confidence with which he takes up the

idea and visualizes it and passes it on to the subordinates which in turn reflects in the success

of an organization. The leaders should be extrovert and should be enthusiastic, by being

extrovert means the leader should be vocal in putting his ideas forward and would help him to

exchange the ideas among the subordinates.

As a leader one should have high self esteem and high tolerance for frustration, because it is

not possible for a leader to succeed in whatever action he performs. All of the above traits are

also resonated by who suggests that authentic leaders demonstrate a passion for their

purpose, practice their values consistently and lead with their hearts as well as their heads.

Another key personal trait which can also be argued as a task related personality trait is

Emotional Intelligence as articulated by is the ability to manage ourselves and our relations

effectively and it consists of four fundamental capabilities viz. Self Awareness, Self

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management, Social Awareness and Social skill. Self Awareness is a way to comprehend that

what are the skills and attributes one has and what all attributes one need to inculcate the

habit of being successful. A very precise way to measure and increase self awareness is to use

the framework developed by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham {1955} which is known as

JOHARI WINDOW as mentioned in ,it has four core aspects to it. First is Open self, as a

human being we all have the ideas and image about our self, about the type of person we are,

and what we want others to know about our self. Second is the Hidden or concealed self,

these are things which we know and about which the others don’t know. This can be personal

thoughts, aspiration, feelings, weakness etc. Third is the unknown self, this is the part of

which nobody is aware of .Last is the Blind self is the way others perceive about us, about

which we do not know. Thus it is a very way to measure the self awareness. A similar way is

suggested by in his article suggesting five ways to become an effective leader first he

suggests to have 360 degree of feedback on the current level of effectiveness as a leader from

the coworkers whose judgment is respected by you. Second he suggest to screen out the best

behaviors which is required to enhance the effectiveness as a leader. Third is to continuously

ask the coworkers that what changes are required in the selected behaviors. Fourth is to listen

to all the ideas and then screen those suggestions which you think is necessary to increase the

effectiveness. Last is to follow up and analyze the changes over time as the business in

today’s world is too volatile, where changes do occur every hour and a leader should be alert

and flexible to cope with the changes. All of the above five ways is similar to the fact by

where he suggests the leaders should compose their self portrait so as to distill the

accumulated information.

Self management is about the self control which about controlling the conflicting and

impulsive ideas and emotion. Whereas social awareness relates to the empathy one should

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have as a leader. The last part Social skills relates to the way the leaders develop others

related to them and communicate their vision properly.

The leaders should also act as the locus of control. As the mathematical meaning of locus is

to behave as the center the distance from this is always equal from all points. Similarly

suggest that the leader act as the center of the organization and take the responsibility of the

organizational success. suggest that sense of humor is also one of the important trait which

helps to light the mood of subordinates in the difficult situations and help them rejuvenate to

again stand up work for organizational benefits.

Motivational Traits

It is one of the important trait a leader should posses as suggested by that motivation and

inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in right direction but by satisfying basic

human needs as we are leaving in the world were being a servant leader won’t serve the

purpose .Another way of motivating people as suggested by is the way Indian leaders

effectively motivate their employees by striking a deal of performance based incentives.

One of the other motivational trait is being an ethical leader suggests some ways of being

ethical, he suggests to focus on higher purpose such as looking for well being of customers

and employees, drawing strengths from people surrounding you, take risk without thinking of

failing and learn from our failures, which sounds similar to the famous phrase that failures are

the pillars of success and use your anger and frustration for good ,by this we can infer that the

leaders should have courage to stop the unethical behaviors going in front of him. The Leader

should take action against the unethical behaviors and prevent it to happen again.

Cognitive Trait

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This trait relates to the interpersonal skills such as wisdom, style of thinking or ability of

thinking. The farsightedness being one of the important traits as a leader, Leader comes up

with a industry transforming innovations as suggested by . suggests how effective leaders rely

heavily on their intuition to gauge the appropriate timing and course of their actions.

Conclusion

Leaders in this dynamic world should be committed to their business and there people as

suggested by, it is also suggested by them an effective leaders hold on the talented and

employees and continuously hone the talent .The leaders in this present dynamic world have

to have the mix of all the leadership style, and act with all the leadership style according to

the situation articulates that the leaders earns wisdom by a willingness to learn, he also that

an effective leader is the person who is viewed as the person who takes the blame and the one

who shares the credit. He also suggests that if a person who seeks to avoid conflict,

confrontation or big problems then leadership he should never try to be a leader. suggests

that the denial can be the greatest hurdle that leaders face in becoming self aware which is

very much essential for a person to be an effective leader , a leader should also balance the

extrinsic and intrinsic motivations so as to be effective in this highly dynamic business world.

Effective leader recognize that leadership is not about being successful or having loyal

followers it’s all about having a superior economic growth over a sustained period of time.

The leaders should be highly motivating to act effectively to rise to the ladder of success and

attain sustainable economic growth. The other way of being an effective leader is to think on

the lines of Indian leaders as stated by that how Indian leaders invest on employee

development, which develops their employee and in turn helps in achieving the

organizational success for sustainable period of time.

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