Essay/Term paper: Leaders are being influenced dominantly by either confidence or competence

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Social Issues

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.